Amazon 100 Books List

The wonderful editors of the world’s largest bookstore recently released a list of 100 books that they believe everyone should read. Now I know there are a number of lists like this out there, but I’m going to do my best to read every book listed on this one. The books are not ranked but rather listed in alphabetical order. I’ve read a few but not nearly as many as I’d like. I’m going to list the books and bold and strikethrough the ones I read. Let’s see how long it takes for me to work my way through. As of writing this for the first time I have read The Giver, The Great Gatsby, and The Hunger Games, which are numbers 65, 67, and 70, respectively. As of October, 2020 I’ve read 23 of the 100 books listed.

1. 1984 by George Orwell (view post)

2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

4. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

5. The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events #1) by Lemony Snicket

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

7. Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro

8. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

9. All The President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

10. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

11. Are you There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

12. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

13. Beloved by Toni Morrison

14. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

15. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

16. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

17. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (view post) (video)

18. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

19. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

20. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

21. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (video)

22. Dune by Frank Herbert

23. Fahrenheit 451 by Rad Bradbury (video)

24. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

25. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

26. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

27. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

28. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond

29. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling (view post)

30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

31. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

32. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

33. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

34. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

35. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

36. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

37. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

38. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

39. Love Medicine by Louise Erdich

40. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

41. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

42. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

43. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

44. Moneyball by Michael Lewis (view post)

45. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Mogham

46. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

47. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

48. Persepolis by Satrapi

49. Portnoy’s Complaint by Phillip Roth

50. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

51. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

52. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

53. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

54. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

55. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

56. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

57. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

58. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

59. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

60. The Color of Water by James McBride

61. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

62. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

63. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (view post)

64. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (view post)

65. The Giver by Lois Lowry

66. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman

67. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

69. The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

70. The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins

71. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

72. The Liar’s Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr

73. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan

74. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

75. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

76. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

77. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

78. The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

79. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

80. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

81. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

82. The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

83. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

84. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

85. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

86.The Shining by Stephen King

87. The Stranger by Albert Camus

88. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (video)

89. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

90. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

91. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

92. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Marukami

93. The World According to Garp by John Irving

94. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

95. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (video)

97. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

98. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

99. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

100. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

54 thoughts on “Amazon 100 Books List”

  4. John — VALLEY OF THE DOLLS was a HUGE bestseller when it came out in the late 60′s. (You said you’d read every book on the list, so you’ll get to it eventually.) It’s great trashy soap opera with lots of sex scenes (very shocking in the 60′s) and set in the entertainment world. Great fun. But a great book? HELL, NO!
    ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand was listed as second ONLY to the Bible in a 1990′s reader’s list from the Library of Congress and Reader’s Digest. Readers were asked to list in order the books that had changed their lives. AS was #2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Ayn Rand’s other great novel, made the top 10. I read AS and it changed my life too. Absolutely a revelation–a great original story with a fascinating underlying philosophy. And a great, great read.
    I know you’ll be plowing through the Amazon Top 100–but please make time for ATLAS SHRUGGED. I promise it’ll be worth it!

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  6. It is an eclectic list for sure. I’ve read quite a few of the books on the list. It’s interesting how they’ve chosen books both old and new for their list. I am curious why Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land didn’t make the cut. Either way, a list that is not overly stuffy and definitely readable.

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    • I’m not familiar with that book. But my last two reads have been from the list. Loved them both. Anne Frank and Harry Potter. I just finished the first Potter book about two minutes ago.

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      • Heinlein’s book was published in the late 60′s and it’s a hippy revolutionary type book with an alternate reality focused on trying to unify the human race. You have to read it to see what you feel about it. It’s campy to some, ridiculous to others, and totally sacreligious to many. It is interesting reading to me. Good luck in getting through this list! You will have many hours of reading pleasure.

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  8. Not a bad list at all, of course there are brilliant books missing (I’d rate Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, or Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes or…), but with only 100 that’s not a bad list. You could crack the children’s books in one happy afternoon. The Little Prince is pure delight. I’ve read a third of them and one more is sitting on my bedside table. Enjoy!

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  9. Slaughter House 5 was horrible, I can’t even write a review for it on my blog because I can’t be objective about it. Thank goodness it was short.

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  20. I really like your website and content. This book list is really useful in deciding which books to read. I unfortunately deleted the readingpioneerslibrary.wordpress.com account but would like to introduce to you my new website: readingpioneers.com. I think we both have similar interests in informing people more about books and reading. Perhaps if you are interested we can link exchange. My contact email is contact.readingpioneers@gmail.com

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  22. Hey! I also have a book blog, and I’m especially obsessed with classic novels. I also LOVE The Great Gatsby. It is truly a great book. I loved the ending of the book, even though Mr. Gatsby died. It was very “memorable”. What did you like about it?

    Please check out my blog. The first link it the actual website. The second one is about The Great Gatsby. Thanks!

    https://pinchofmagic.wordpress.com
    https://pinchofmagic.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/the-great-gatsby-2/

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