PBT Top 100 Lists

My favorite online bookish hangout is a group called Play Book Tag, which is hosted by Goodreads. In 2015, we voted on our favorite 100 fiction titles. This is not a "list to read before you die" or even an "absolute best." This is a list of books loved by a very diverse group of passionate readers because they remind us of why we read fiction: a story well told, beautiful writing, unforgettable characters, etc. Some of the books are very recent, some are standards in the classics genre. In 2016, we decided to create another list, this one for nonfiction, using the same criteria as our fiction list. Titles in gray are those I have read in the recent past (ten years or less) and have no plans to reread in the near future. A number of the titles, mostly classics, I have read but would like to revisit, so I did not mark them as read.

100 Fiction Books PBT Members Think You Should Read:

11/22/63 by Stephen King

1984 by George Orwell

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (own)

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (own)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres (own)

Blindness by Jose Saramago

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (own)

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guinn

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Dune by Frank Herbert

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (own)

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (own)

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (own)

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (own)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (own)

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

Hawaii by James Michener

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (own)

The Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (own)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) by J. R. R. Tolkien 

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (own)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

On the Beach by Nevil Shute
The Once and Future King by T. H. White (own)

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

The Painter by Peter Heller

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (own)

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (own)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Princess Bride by William Goldman (own)

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (own)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Room by Emma Donoghue

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (own)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (own)

The Stand by Stephen King

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (own)

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (own)

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (own)

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough 

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell (own)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (own)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (own)

Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (own)

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (own)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

100 Nonfiction Books PBT Members Think You Should Read:

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (own)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Malcolm X
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose (own)

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
Black Count by Tom Reiss (own)
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

Bonk by Mary Roach
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

The Colony by John Tayman
Columbine by Dave Cullen

Desert Queen by Janet Wallach

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Dewey by Vicki Myron, Bret Witter
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (own)

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, Ron Powers
Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kieran

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (own)

Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff, Sheryl Wudunn

Hero by Michael Korda (own)

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

Hiroshima by John Hershey

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (own)

I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
If This is a Man by Primo Levi
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson (own)
John Adams by David McCullough

King Leopold's Ghost by Alan Hochsch
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beahild
Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
Never Cry Wolf by Mowat
Nicholas and Alexandra by Massie

Night by Ellie Wiesel
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
Notes of a Native Son by Baldwin
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (own)

On Writing by Stephen King

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
People of the Deer by Farley Mowat
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (own)

Quiet by Susan Cain

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
A Reporter's Life by Walter Cronkite
The River of Doubt by Candace Millard
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolfe
Roots by Alex Haley

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (own)
Spillover by David Quammen
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (own)
Stiff by Mary Roach
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

Truman by David McCullough (own)

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Winterdance by Gary Paulson (own)
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion