Nancy Pearl's 100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade

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

About this list

Book Lust (Book), 100 Books

For more than two decades librarian Nancy Pearl has been one of the USA's most important book 'influencers'
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/the-a-list-book-lister-nancy-pearl/

Her 2003 work Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason has a lot of recommended works, close to two thousand by my reckoning. There is one chapter in the work called '100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade', ten books per decade from 1900.

This list was originally published in 2009 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
13361 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, And Other Stories And Essays Mark Twain 1900 American English
444 The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
2705 My Brilliant Career Miles Franklin 1901 Australian English
289 A Room With a View E. M. Forster 1908 British English
247 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
144 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
13361 Psmith In The City P. G. Wodehouse 1910 British English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
344 The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan 1915 British English
1611 Some Experiences Of An Irish R.M. E.Œ. Somerville, Martin Ross 1899 Irish English
953 Trent's Last Case E. C. Bentley 1913 British English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
1167 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Anita Loos 1925 American English
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
905 Coming of Age in Samoa Margaret Mead 1928 American English
11577 Abraham Lincoln Carl Sandburg 1939 American English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
281 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
11546 Nineteen Nineteen John Dos Passos 1932 American English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
10587 Goodbye, Mr. Chips James Hilton 1934 British English
1137 Miss Lonelyhearts Nathanael West 1933 American English
11573 The Citadel A. J. Cronin 1937 British English
708 Captain Hornblower R.N. C. S. Forester 1937 British English
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
1214 The Moving Toyshop Edmund Crispin 1946 British English
13361 Gentleman's Agreement Laura Z. Hobson 1947 American English
6263 Shane Jack Schaefer 1949 American English
3310 Cross Creek Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 1942 American English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
2019 The Berlin Stories Christopher Isherwood 1945 British English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
4451 Gift From The Sea Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1955 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
13361 The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit Sloan Wilson 1955 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
568 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954 French French
233 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
2268 The Jewel In The Crown Paul Scott 1966 British English
5662 The Evolution Man Or How I Ate My Father Roy Lewis 1960 British English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
2024 The Chosen Chaim Potok 1967 American English
10986 The Eighth Day Thornton Wilder 1967 American English
9277 The Balkan Trilogy Olivia Manning 1960 British English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
1541 The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron 1967 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
1549 Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor 1971 British English
1313 The Optimist's Daughter Eudora Welty 1972 American English
663 The Siege of Krishnapur J. G. Farrell 1973 British English
13924 The Cowboy And The Cossack Clair Huffaker 1973 American English
3377 Ordinary People Judith Guest 1976 American English
13879 Edwin Mullhouse Steven Millhauser 1972 American English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
1676 Time and Again Jack Finney 1970 American English
14000 Rumors Of Peace Ella Leffland 1997 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2336 Libra Don DeLillo 1988 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
1830 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler 1982 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
11480 Victory Over Japan Ellen Gilchrist 1984 American English
5410 The Prince of Tides Pat Conroy 1986 American English
1552 Waterland Graham Swift 1983 British English
1325 A Far Cry From Kensington Muriel Spark 1988 British English
1094 Gorky Park Martin Cruz Smith 1981 American English
12129 The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell 1996 American English
5469 The Birthday Boys Beryl Bainbridge 1991 British English
1972 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 American English
14499 Train Go Sorry Leah Hager Cohen 1994 American English
14554 The Deep End Of The Ocean Jacquelyn Mitchard 1996 American English
3473 Native Speaker Chang-rae Lee 1995 American English
11893 The Bird Artist Howard Norman 1994 Canadian English
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English
751 All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy 1992 American English
14520 Memoir From Antproof Case Mark Helprin 1995 American English