The title is obviously misleading, because of course I’ve read a lot more than 100 books. But what I did was read a list of the 100 “greatest” books of the 20th century. I started on it back in 2015, because I wanted to read a bunch of the so-called classics, many of which I feel get ignored these days (unless your high school teacher forces it on you), but also because I wanted to challenge myself to expand past my normal daily reading into genres and themes I wouldn’t normally pick up off the shelf.
It’s been a blast. It took a hair over 5 years total, though in my defense, a solid year (May 2017 – May 2018) I took as a break to read some other books. During that time, I read some current books that had stacked up on me, and also, having read a few books by Willa Cather on the list (which I loved), I read through her other books which were not on the list. I also took a small break to read Infinite Jest, because I’d recently seen a movie about the author, and was intrigued.
As expected, I didn’t enjoy everything. Some books took a really long time to read, and others were difficult for their own reasons. But what a joy to read some of the truly greatest authors of the last 100 years, writers you recognize from a single name alone: Lewis, Hemingway, Conrad, Fitzgerald, Joyce (Henry and James!), Wolfe (and Woolf!), Steinbeck, and so many more. Some of these books made me think, some made me cry. Reading through these (many of which were old) books also expanded my tastes in the films I watched. Whereas I used to stick to modern releases, as you can see from my blog, I got heavy into films of all genres, countries, and ages.
So what’s next? I don’t know! I love setting goals for myself, but right now I don’t have one. I saw 100 movies in the theater in 2014, read 100 books from then till now, and last year saw 365 films in a year. I can’t possibly go any bigger. There are still plenty of great books and movies out there left unknown to me, so I think I’m going to keep watching, keep reading, and please, if you see or read something good, recommend it to me. I might try to start writing longer (better) reviews for the newer films I watch, more like I used to a few years ago, but these days I watch so much that I’m not sure I can stick to it. We’ll see!
For posterity’s sake, here’s the final list (read in reverse order, started at # 100) :
- # 1 The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
- # 2 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
- # 3 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- # 4 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- # 5 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- # 6 Ulysses by James Joyce
- # 7 Beloved by Toni Morrison
- # 8 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- # 9 1984 by George Orwell
- # 10 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- # 11 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- # 12 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- # 13 Charlotte’s Web by EB White
- # 14 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- # 15 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- # 16 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- # 17 Animal Farm by George Orwell
- # 18 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- # 19 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- # 20 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- # 21 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- # 22 Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
- # 23 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- # 24 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- # 25 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- # 26 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- # 27 Native Son by Richard Wright
- # 28 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- # 29 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- # 30 For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- # 31 On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- # 32 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- # 33 The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- # 34 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- # 35 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- # 36 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
- # 37 The World According to Garp by John Irving
- # 38 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
- # 39 A Room With a View by EM Forster
- # 40 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
- # 41 Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
- # 42 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- # 43 The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- # 44 Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
- # 45 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- # 46 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- # 47 The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
- # 48 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence
- # 49 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- # 50 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- – break –
- # 51 My Antonia by Willa Cather
- # 52 Howards End by EM Forster
- # 53 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- # 54 Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
- # 55 The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
- # 56 Jazz by Toni Morrison
- # 57 Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
- # 58 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
- # 59 A Passage to India by EM Forster
- # 60 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
- # 61 A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
- # 62 Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
- # 63 Orlando by Virgina Woolf
- # 64 Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
- # 65 The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
- # 66 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- # 67 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
- # 68 Light in August by William Faulkner
- -break- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- # 69 The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
- # 70 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- # 71 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
- # 72 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- # 73 Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
- # 74 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- # 75 Women in Love by DH Lawrence
- # 76 Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
- # 77 In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
- # 78 The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
- # 79 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- # 80 The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- # 81 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
- # 82 White Noise by Don Delillo
- # 83 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
- # 84 Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- # 85 War of the Worlds by HG Wells
- # 86 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
- # 87 The Bostonians by Henry James
- # 88 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
- # 89 Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- # 90 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- # 91 This Side of Paradise by F Scott Fitzgerald
- # 92 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- # 93 The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
- # 94 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
- # 95 Kim by Rudyard Kipling
- # 96 The Beautiful and the Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald
- # 97 Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- # 98 Where Angels Fear to Tread by EM Forster
- # 99 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
- # 100 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
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