Harvard Book Store Staff's Favorite 100 Books

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Harvard Book Store, 106 Books

In early 2010 Harvard Book Store employees worked together to come up with a list of our favorite books. Each staff member submitted a list of their favorite books of all time, in (rough) order of preference. Their selections were then weighted according to the order and the results were tabulated. It was by no means a perfect system, but it was the best way we could think of to quantify opinions that are in no way quantifiable.

Now, we read a lot, so it was hard to narrow it down. What we came up with are the books that moved us, that changed the way we think about the world, and that we will happily read over and over again. We hope you enjoy them too.

This list was originally published in 2011 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
904 Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut 1973 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
293 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
524 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
1020 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
2144 Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets J. K. Rowling 1998 British English
1017 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban J. K. Rowling 1999 British English
1842 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling 2000 British English
1910 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J. K. Rowling 2003 British English
1755 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince J. K. Rowling 2005 British English
2232 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J. K. Rowling 2007 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
330 Dubliners James Joyce 1914 Irish English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
9829 Sea of Poppies Amitav Ghosh 2008 Indian English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
4455 Mountains Beyond Mountains Tracy Kidder 2003 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
399 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman 1995 British English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
278 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
681 Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 1963 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
624 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
6347 A Wild Sheep Chase Haruki Murakami 1982 Japanese Japanese
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
10127 Dealing With Dragons Patricia C. Wrede 1990 American English
103 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
942 Cannery Row John Steinbeck 1945 American English
5715 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami 1985 Japanese Japanese
8236 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters J. D. Salinger 1963 American English
9980 Shadow & Claw Gene Wolfe 1994 American English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
890 High Fidelity Nick Hornby 1995 British English
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
1158 Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2006 Nigerian English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
2223 Good Omens Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman 1990 British English
234 The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
7592 Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Grace Paley 1974 American English
1744 Haroun and the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie 1990 British English
13255 You Shall Know Our Velocity Dave Eggers 2002 American English
5118 Baudolino Umberto Eco 2000 Italian Italian
8455 Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me Richard Fariña 1966 American English
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
825 In Our Time Ernest Hemingway 1925 American English
1173 Little, Big John Crowley 1981 American English
6929 Jayber Crow Wendell Berry 2000 American English
2501 Popol Vuh Dennis Tedlock 1985 Mayan K'iche'
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
6157 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Howard Pyle 1883 American English
410 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
454 The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 1978 British English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
1145 The Bone People Keri Hulme 1984 New Zealand English
600 Nine Stories J. D. Salinger 1953 American English
12141 Drown Junot Diaz 1996 American English
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
3904 The Blue Sword Robin McKinley 1982 American English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
475 Gilead Marilynne Robinson 2004 American English
2080 A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett 1905 British English
2585 A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn 1980 American English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
1504 Sometimes a Great Notion Ken Kesey 1964 American English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English