125 Books We Love for Adults

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

About this list

NY Public Library, 125 Books

125 Books We Love
Celebrate the Library’s anniversary with 125 books, from the last 125 years, that inspire a lifelong love of reading.

This list was originally published in 2020 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
1238 The Age of Anxiety W. H. Auden 1947 British English
9073 Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow 2004 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
5491 Along Came A Spider James Patterson 1993 American English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
2192 American Gods Neil Gaiman 2001 British English
17151 American Primitive Mary Oliver 1983 American English
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
1703 The Argonauts Maggie Nelson 2015 American English
2657 Ariel Sylvia Plath 1965 American English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
7857 Autobiography Of Red Anne Carson 1998 Canadian English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
2367 Brooklyn Colm Toibin 2009 Irish English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
1861 Citizen Claudia Rankine 2014 American English
9073 Cleopatra Stacy Schiff 2010 Egyptian English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
9697 The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Langston Hughes 1994 American English
1626 The Colour of Magic Terry Pratchett 1983 British English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
1322 Devil in a Blue Dress Walter Mosley 1990 American English
1542 The Devil In The White City Erik Larson 2003 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
644 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 1992 Canadian English
3842 An Extraordinary Union Alyssa Cole 2017 American English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
1117 The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin 2015 American English
1060 Fun Home Alison Bechdel 2006 American English
1289 A Game of Thrones George R. R. Martin 1996 American English
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
14984 Gotham Edwin G. Burrows 1998 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
1783 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
223 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
748 Howl and Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
2898 Indigo Beverly Jenkins 1996 American English
1775 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 American English
2424 Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer 1997 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
14194 Julian Gore Vidal 1964 American English
892 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 2003 Afghan English
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
4139 The Liars' Club Mary Karr 1995 American English
1435 Life After Life Kate Atkinson 2013 British English
17151 Life On Mars Tracy K. Smith 2011 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1104 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
1895 Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris 2000 American English
3218 Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil John Berendt 1994 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
750 Money Martin Amis 1984 British English
2899 Moneyball Michael M. Lewis 2003 American English
5353 Motherless Brooklyn Jonathan Lethem 1999 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
5644 Naked In Death J.D. Robb 1995 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
1354 Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout 2008 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
1461 Oranges are not the only Fruit Jeanette Winterson 1985 British English
8387 The Orphan Master's Son Adam Johnson 2012 American English
3906 Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson 2003 Norwegian Norwegian
1328 Parable Of The Sower Octavia E. Butler 1993 American English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
1557 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard 1974 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
637 The Quiet American Graham Greene 1955 British English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
2069 The Round House Louise Erdrich 2012 American English
11191 Rules Of Civility Amor Towles 2011 American English
1563 Runaway Alice Munro 2004 Canadian English
17151 Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror John Ashbery 1975 American English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
488 The Shipping News Annie Proulx 1993 Canadian English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
5014 Slave To Sensation Nalini Singh 2006 New Zealand English
1020 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
1771 Stone Butch Blues Leslie Feinberg 1993 American English
680 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
143 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American English
1898 Tenth of December George Saunders 2013 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
2327 The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu 2006 Chinese Chinese
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
1684 Train Dreams Denis Johnson 2002 American English
189 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 American English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
770 The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead 2016 American English
3278 Up in the Old Hotel Joseph Mitchell 1992 American English
1972 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 American English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
909 The Warmth Of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson 2010 American English
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
1473 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English