A while back I had begun working on a series of non-fiction books I called the Book Club Companion series. The idea was to read and review current popular fiction, and then write some pop-literary analysis with an eye towards helping folks who might want to discuss said books with others, but who don’t have the literary background to feel comfortable doing so.

The secondary goal, of course, was to give me an excuse to read more, and in particular read outside of my normal wheelhouse (Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy mostly).

That project has been mothballed indefinitely, mostly because Amazon doesn’t seem to understand what literary analysis is. They allowed me to publish and to offer the books for sale, but then disabled them in all of the stores and made it impossible to actually buy it. They say “our customers generally find this type of book to be unsatisfying”. Oh, well. I only wasted a couple of weeks in writing the first book, designing the cover templates and covers, editing, formatting, and publishing. We’ll just add this to the pile of reasons why Amazon makes me hope Hell is a real place.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a clever plan to fill the gap. I’m just going to read a shitload of books and then review them here.

But what books to read?

Well, to get the ball rolling, I Googled up a few of those “Top 100 Novels of All Time”-style lists and consolidated a handful of them into one ginormous list. I included a couple of lists from Goodreads that looked interesting, as well as the Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time list, a list of newer books, and a Sci-Fi and Fantasy themed one from NPR. Then I made a combined ranking to generate a list from best to least-best. Now that I have the master list, I can read them in least-best to best order.

Make sense?

Here’s the list:

  1. The Death of the Heart – Bowen, Elizabeth
  2. A Visit From the Goon Squad – Egan, Jennifer
  3. The Space Trilogy – Lewis, C.S.
  4. The Xanth Series – Anthony, Piers
  5. Falconer – Cheever, John
  6. The Kite Runner – Hosseini, Khaled
  7. An American Tragedy – Dreiser, Theodore
  8. Perdido Street Station – Mieville, China
  9. A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement – Powell, Anthony
  10. Doomsday Book – Willis, Connie
  11. Americanah – Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
  12. Under the Net – Murdoch, Iris
  13. Lucifer’s Hammer – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  14. Loving – Green, Henry
  15. The Mars Trilogy – Robinson, Kim Stanley
  16. The Caves of Steel – Asimov, Isaac
  17. Wuthering Heights – Bronte, Emily
  18. The Assistant – Malamud, Bernard
  19. The Sportswriter – Ford, Richard
  20. A Fire Upon the Deep – Vinge, Vernor
  21. Sunshine – McKinley, Robin
  22. Dog Soldiers – Stone, Robert
  23. The Color Purple – Walker, Alice
  24. The Illustrated Man – Bradbury, Ray
  25. The Recognitions – Gaddis, William
  26. A Death in the Family – Agee, James
  27. Little Women – Alcott, Louisa May
  28. The Elric Saga – Moorcock, Michael
  29. The Outlander Series – Gabaldan, Diana
  30. The Berlin Stories – Isherwood, Christopher
  31. A Handful fo Dust – Waugh, Evelyn
  32. The Thrawn triogy – Zahn, Timothy
  33. The Sheltering Sky – Bowles, Paul
  34. The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion, Joan
  35. The Book of the New Sun – Wolfe, Gene
  36. The Codex Alera series – Butcher, Jim
  37. Call It Sleep – Roth, Henry
  38. Hamlet – Shakespeare, William
  39. The World According to Garp – Irving, John
  40. At Swim-Two-Birds – O’Brien, Flann
  41. Anathem – Stephenson, Neal
  42. Herzog – Bellow, Saul
  43. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Murakami, Haruki
  44. The Crystal Cave – Stewart, Mary
  45. The Culture Series – Banks, Iian M.
  46. The Adventures of Augie March – Bellow, Saul
  47. The Sot-Weed Factor – Barth, John
  48. Between the World and Me – Coates, Ta-Nehisi
  49. The Eyre Affair – Fforde, Jasper
  50. The Malazan Book of the Fallen series – Erikson, Steven
  51. The Man Who Loved Children – Stead, Christina
  52. The Stranger – Camus, Albert
  53. Wicked – Maguire, Gregory
  54. Housekeeping – Robinson, Marilynne
  55. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Bradbury, Ray
  56. The Day of the Locust – West, Nathaniel
  57. Deliverance – Dickey, James
  58. The Dispossessed – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  59. Money – Amis, Martin
  60. The Kushiel’s Legacy series – Carey, Jacqueline
  61. The Right Stuff – Wolfe, Tom
  62. Rendezvous With Rama – Clarke, Arthur C.
  63. Appointment in Samarra – O’Hara, John
  64. Tropic of Cancer – Miller, Henry
  65. The Diamond Age – Stephenson, Neal
  66. Old Man’s War – Scalzi, John
  67. The Confessions of Nat Turner – Styron, William
  68. The Moviegoer – Percy, Walker
  69. The Legend of Drizzt Series – Salvatore, R.A.
  70. Pale Fire – Nabokov, Vladimir
  71. A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Verne, Jules
  72. The Heart of the Matter – Greene, Graham
  73. The Way of Kings – Sanderson, Brandon
  74. The Golden Notebook – Lessing, Doris
  75. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Niffenegger, Audrey
  76. The Farseer Trilogy – Hobb, Robin
  77. The Conan The Barbarian Series – Howard, R.E.
  78. Rabbit, Run – Updike, John
  79. The Shannara Trilogy – Brooks, Terry
  80. Ubik – Dick, Philip K.
  81. The Golden Compass – Pullman, Philip
  82. Lucky Jim – Amis, Kingsley
  83. The Night Watchmen – Erdrich, Louise
  84. The Riftwar Saga – Feist, Raymond E.
  85. Play It As It Lays – Didion, Joan
  86. The Giver – Lowry, Lois
  87. I Am Legend – Matheson, Richard
  88. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Clarke, Susanna
  89. A House for Mr Biswas – Naipaul, V.S.
  90. The Sword of Truth – Goodkind, Terry
  91. The Painted Bird – Kosinski, Jerry
  92. The Joy Luck Club – Tan, Amy
  93. Under the Volcano – Lowry, Malcolm
  94. The Mote in God’s Eye – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  95. Going Postal – Pratchett, Terry
  96. Gravity’s Rainbow – Pynchon, Thomas
  97. The Vorkosigan Saga – Bujold, Lois McMaster
  98. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Diaz, Junot
  99. White Teeth – Smith, Zadie
  100. Rubyfruit Jungle – Brown, Rita Mae
  101. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever – Donaldson, Stephen R.
  102. Red Harvest – Hammett, Dashiell
  103. Small Gods – Pratchett, Terry
  104. The Book Thief – Zusak, Markus
  105. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Chabon, Michael
  106. The Forever War – Haldeman, Joe
  107. Wide Sargasso Sea – Rhys, Jean
  108. The Last Unicorn – Beagle, Peter S.
  109. The Age of Innocence – Warton, Edith
  110. World War Z – Brooks, Max
  111. Homegoing – Gyasi, Yaa
  112. The Crying of Lot 49 – Pynchon, Thomas
  113. The Power and the Glory – Greene, Graham
  114. Cryptonomicon – Stephenson, Neal
  115. Stardust – Gaimen, Neil
  116. American Pastoral – Roth, Philip
  117. The Hyperion Cantos – Simmons, Dan
  118. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Wilder, Thornton
  119. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Cather, Willa
  120. And Then There Were None – Christie, Agatha
  121. Contact – Sagan, Carl
  122. Childhood’s End – Clarke, Arthur C.
  123. Out of Africa – Dinesen, Isak
  124. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Spark, Muriel
  125. Neverwhere – Gaimen, Neil
  126. Of Human Bondage – Maugham, W. Somerset
  127. The Once and Future King – White, T.H.
  128. The Silmarillion – Tolkien, J.R.R.
  129. Revolutionary Road – Yates, Richard
  130. The Left Hand of Darkness – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  131. East of Eden – Steinbeck, John
  132. Infinite Jest – Wallace, David Foster
  133. White Noise – DeLillo, Don
  134. Ringworld – Niven, Larry
  135. Middlesex – Eugenides, Jeffrey
  136. The Mistborn Series – Sanderson, Brandon
  137. Brideshead Revisited – Waugh, Evelyn
  138. The Mists of Avalon – Bradley, Marion Zimmer
  139. Naked Lunch – Burroughs, William S.
  140. The Belgariad – Eddings, David
  141. Love Medicine – Erdrich, Louise
  142. The Road – McCarth, Cormac
  143. Blood Meridian – McCarthy, Cormac
  144. Go Tell It on the Mountain – Baldwin, James
  145. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – McCullers, Carson
  146. The Chronicles of Amber – Zelazny, Roger
  147. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold – le Carre, John
  148. The War of the Worlds – Wells, H.G.
  149. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – Fowles, John
  150. Flowers for Algernon – Keys, Daniel
  151. Interpreter of Maladies – Lahiri, Jhumpa
  152. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Thompson, Hunter S.
  153. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Verne, Jules
  154. To the Lighthouse – Woolf, Virginia
  155. Light in August – Faulkner, William
  156. The Time Machine – Wells, H.G.
  157. Ragtime – Doctorow, E.L.
  158. A Canticle for Leibowitz – Miller, Walter M.
  159. Cutting For Stone – Verghese, Abraham
  160. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Heinlein, Robert
  161. Native Son – Wright, Richard
  162. The Blind Assassin – Atwood, Margaret
  163. Dragonflight – McCaffrey, Anne
  164. Charlotte’s Web – White, E.B.
  165. Watership Down – Adams, Richard
  166. All the King’s Men – Warren, Robert Penn
  167. The Sound and the Fury – Faulkner, William
  168. Starship Troopers – Heinlein, Robert
  169. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
  170. The Sandman Series – Gaimen, Neil
  171. I, Claudius – Graves, Robert
  172. A Passage to India – Forster, E.M.
  173. Cat’s Cradle – Vonnegut, Kurt
  174. The Martian Chronicles – Bradbury, Ray
  175. Possession – Byatt, A.S.
  176. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass – Carroll, Lewis
  177. The Fault in Our Stars – Green, John
  178. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Hurston, Zora Neale
  179. The Stand – King, Stephen
  180. Selected Stories – Munro, Alice
  181. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Clarke, Arthur C.
  182. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – Rowling, J.K.
  183. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Eggers, Dave
  184. The Dark Tower Series – King, Stephen
  185. Mrs. Dalloway – Woolf, Virginia
  186. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Dick, Philip K.
  187. The Corrections – Franzen, Jonathan
  188. Angela’s Ashes – McCourt, Frank
  189. Frankenstein – Shelley, Mary
  190. The Kingkiller Chronicles – Rothfuss, Patrick
  191. Great Expectations – Dickens, Charles
  192. Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein, Robert
  193. I, Robot – Asimov, Isaac
  194. In Cold Blood – Capote, Truman
  195. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kesey, Ken
  196. The Wheel of Time Series – Jordan, Robert & Sanderson, Brandon
  197. The Princess Bride – Goldman, William
  198. Gone With the Wind – Mitchell, Margaret
  199. Pride and Prejudice – Austen, Jane
  200. American Gods – Gaimen, Neil
  201. Atonement – McEwan, Ian
  202. The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck, John
  203. A Wrinkle in Time – L’Engle, Madeleine
  204. The Foundation Trilogy – Asimov, Isaac
  205. Lord of the Flies – Golding, William
  206. Things Fall Apart – Achebe, Chinua
  207. Brave New World – Huxley, Aldous
  208. The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, Ernest
  209. The Shining – King, Stephen
  210. A Song of Ice and Fire – Martin, George R.R.
  211. Portnoy’s Complaint – Roth, Philip
  212. Valley of the Dolls – Susann, Jacqueline
  213. Ender’s Game – Card, Orson Scott
  214. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Adams, Douglas
  215. Anna Karenina – Tolstoy, Leo
  216. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Lewis, C.S.
  217. The Big Sleep/The Long Goodbye – Chandler, Raymond
  218. Midnight’s Children – Rushdie, Salman
  219. Never Let Me Go – Ishiguro, Kazuo
  220. The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, F. Scott
  221. Snow Crash – Stephenson, Neal
  222. On the Road – Kerouac, Jack
  223. Neuromancer – Gibson, William
  224. The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, J.D.
  225. Lolita – Nabokov, Vladimir
  226. Invisible Man – Ellison, Ralph
  227. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. – Blume, Judy
  228. A Clockwork Orange – Burgess, Anthony
  229. Catch-22 – Heller, Joseph
  230. Beloved – Morrison, Toni
  231. The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood, Margaret
  232. Farenheit 451 – Bradbury, Ray
  233. Animal Farm – Orwell, George
  234. Dune – Herbert, Frank
  235. To Kill A Mockingbird – Lee, Harper
  236. Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut, Kurt
  237. 1984 – Orwell, George
  238. The Lord of the Rings – Tolkien, J.R.R.

I’m looking forward to reading quite a few of these – some for the first time, more than a few for the second or third. In many cases I’ve read other books by an author on this list, but not the specific book listed. There are a few of these books I am very much *not* looking forward to reading. I remember loving A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as a child (I was probably 5 or 6 years old at the time). I tried reading it again a few years ago and found it unreadable. I’ll do my best to give it another shot. I have never liked The Giver. I taught it once to an ESL class of teenagers. They seemed to like it. Every page was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Again, I’ll see what I can do.

There are a few books on the list that I haven’t read, and that I suspect I will not enjoy. I will do my best to finish all of the books on this list, but I’m not going to punish myself by forcing myself to read a book I actively hate. I may bail on one or two of the books on the list. Maybe even three.

As always, you are cordially invited to read alongside me as I make my way through the list. I will be going through in the order listed above, so you’ll be able to figure out what I’m working on at any given time. Hopefully, there will be some lively discussion in the comments of each review. And speaking of comments, let me know what you think of my list in the comments below.

Happy reading!

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