100 Books To Read

Have picked out the 100 books I'm going to read before the end of 2006. Some are books I've always been meaning to read, but never found the time. Others, an excuse for me to re-read them. Then, there are the classics that I should read, but alas...

All here, the 100 shortlist, and I've revised it too many times over. The many omission is of course due to space constraints. And I will cheat somewhere down the road by altering the list a little.

But meanwhile, I've started on Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit last night (it's down there at #54). Decided to give it a good headstart. And no, it's not my favourite Winterson title. It's also not the Winterson title that I re-read most frequently. My personal favourite Winterson title is The Passion.

1. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust
   
2. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
   
3. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
   
4. The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky
   
5. The Gambler Fyodor Dostoevsky
   
6. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
   
7. Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
   
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
   
9. Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes
   
10. Steppenwolf Herman Hesse
    
11. Moby Dick Herman Melville
    
12. The Pure and the Impure Colette
    
13. The Claudine Novels Colette
    
14. Norweigian Woods Haruki Murakami
    
15. Marioka Sisters Junichiro Tanizaki
    
16. Tale of Genji
    
17. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee
    
18. Death In Venice Thomas Mann
    
19. Nightwood Djuna Barnes
    
20. Perfume Patrick Suskind
    
21. The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
    
22. The Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
    
23. The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
    
24. The Iliad Homer
    
25. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
    
26. Gilgamesh trans. Stephen Mitchell
    
27. The Immoralist Andre Gide
    
28. Fruits of the Earth Andre Gide
    
29. The Wings of the Dove Henry James
    
30. The Moonstone Wilkie Collins
    
31. Great Expectations Charles Dickens
    
32. Dracula Bram Stoker
    
33. The Deptford Trilogy Robertson Davis
    
34. The Quiet American Graham Greene
    
35. Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
    
36. Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
    
37. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
    
38. Middlemarch George Eliot
    
39. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
    
40. Villette Charlotte Bronte
    
41. Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
    
42. Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
    
43. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster
    
44. Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar
    
45. The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
    
46. Complete Father Brown G. K. Chesterton
    
47. The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
    
48. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
    
49. Giovanni's Room James Baldwin
    
50. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
    
51. The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
    
52. Blindness Jose Saramago
    
53. Hunger Knut Hamsun
    
54. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson
    
55. Sexing the Cherry Jeanette Winterson
    
56. Orlando Virginia Woolf
    
57. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey
    
58. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
    
59. Les Liaisons Dangereuses Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
    
60. The Colour Purple Alice Walker
    
61. The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad
    
62. Magus John Fowles
    
63. Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera
    
64. The Four Quartets T. S. Eliot
    
65. Fall on Your Knees Ann-Marie MacDonald
    
66. Gitanjali Rabindranath Tagore
    
67. The Conference of the Birds Farid Ud-Din Attar
    
68. The Prophet Khalil Ghibran
    
69. Maximum City Suketu Mehta
    
70. The Snow Leopard Peter Matthiessen
    
71. Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond
    
72. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes Amin Maalouf
    
73. Yogasutra of Patanjali
    
74. Ways of Seeing John Berger
    
75. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard
    
76. The Qu'ran
    
77. Art of War Sun Tzu
    
78. Book of Five Rings Miyamoto Musashi
    
79. Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair Pablo Neruda
    
80. Hagakure
    
81. Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton
    
82. Stiff Mary Roach
    
83. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Dee Brown
    
84. Meditations Marcus Aurelius
    
85. A History of God Karen Armstrong
    
86. A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway
    
87. Diet For A Small Planet Frances Moore Lappe
    
88. Dark Night of the Soul John of the Cross
    
89. Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus
    
90. The Places that Scares You Pema Chodron
    
91. In Praise of Folly Erasmus
    
92. Beyond Belief Elaine Pagels
    
93. The Histories Herodotus
    
94. Bhagavad Gita
    
95. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth Mohandas Gandhi
    
96. Confessions Saint Augustine
    
97. Saint Francis of Assisi G. K. Chesterton
    
98. The Varieties of Religious Experience William James
    
99. A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf
    
100. Dhammapada