I’ve been saying it for years. I miss reading something other than Goodnight Moon or something written by Dr. Seuss. Don’t get me wrong, those are great books…for the kids. I love spending time reading with the kids, but I want to spend a little more time reading for myself something that isn’t for kids. Actually, I’m currently reading the Harry Potter series to the kids right now which is a great change, but I’m still looking for something just for me.
I decided I was going to write a list of 100 books I wanted to read this year. I will warn you before you dive into the list, I’m writing this list for me and it’s going to have a lot of books you may have read already. I haven’t sat down to read a good fiction book in years and I miss it! I have some catching up to do, some new authors to discover for myself, as well as a plethora of recommendations from friends and family.
A few weeks ago I read The Narrow Three by J.K. Miller II for a contest (yes, I won the iPad!) and it reminded me how much I missed reading. It was an amazing feeling to get lost in a book again, so I kicked it into gear and wrote up this list for myself.
In no particular order, here is my list of 100 books. I don’t think I’ll get through them all, but at least I have no excuse for not knowing what to read.
100 Books to Read This Year
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Paper Towns by John Green
- Catch-22 by by Joseph Heller
- The Stain by Rikki Ducornet
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- Insatiable Appetites by Stuart Woods
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Euphoria by Lily King
- Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich (I know there are a lot of them, I want to read them all!)
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- The Wanderer by Alain-Fournier
- Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- The Colour by Rose Tremain
- Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
- Frog Music by Emma Donoghue
- Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin
- The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble
- Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- The Joke by Milan Kundera
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- Contempt by Alberto Moravia
- Revival by Stephen King
- The Color of Water by James McBride
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
- American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
- The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli
- City of Glass by Paul Auster
- Redeployment by Phil Klay
- Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
- Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- The Bone Clocks by David Mitchel
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- Anything by Anne Rice. I’ve read some, but I need to catch up and read new series. One of my favorites when I was younger.
- My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell
- In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina; translated by Edith Grossman
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- Insurgent by Veronica Roth
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
- Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
- Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Magus by John Fowles
- A handful of dust by Evelyn Waugh
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
There’s my list of 100 books to read. I already know I’m not getting through them, but it will be fun to try!
What books would you add to this list? Tell me in the comments.
The Alchemist, and Memoirs of a Geisha are good adds!!
I haven’t read The Alchemist, but I LOVE Memoirs of a Geisha, so much better than the movie (aren’t they always?). I would have added it, but I was sticking with books I haven’t read.
Resonance by Emily elaine
This list looks great! I Wanted to say that I’m from the same area as you! And I homeschool too! Nice to ‘meet’ you =)
That’s awesome! I’m a member of NESHE so I do a lot of stuff with that homeschool group. Hopefully this list will help me break away from being in constant homeschool mode, lol