100 Books That Every Human Being Should Read In Their Lifetime

Reading changes lives. Yet, in the last year, 4 out of 5 American families did not buy or read a single book. It’s quite sad. The visitors to Good Reads put together a list of the top 100 books to read in your lifetime, and even if you only put a small dent in the list, you’re bettering yourself and doing your part to keep books alive.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

2. Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

3. The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

4. 1984

George Orwell

5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

J.K. Rowling

6. The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien

7. The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

8. Charlotte’s Web

E.B. White

9. The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien

10. Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

11. Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

12. Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

13. Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

14. Animal Farm

George Orwell

15. The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger

16. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

17. The Help

Kathryn Stockett

18. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis

19. The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

20. The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

21. The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

22. The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

23. Lord of the Flies

William Golding

24. Night

Elie Wiesel

25. Hamlet

William Shakespeare

26. A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L’Engle

27. A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

28. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

29. A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

30. Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

31. Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

32. The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

33. Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

34. The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

35. Where the Sidewalk Ends

Shel Silverstein

36. The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

37. Anne of Green Gables

L.M. Montgomery

38. The Giver

Lois Lowry

39. Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

40. Macbeth

William Shakespeare

41. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain

42. The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

43. Holy Bible: King James Version

Anonymous

44. Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

45. The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

46. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson

47. East of Eden

John Steinbeck

48. In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

49. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

J.K. Rowling

50. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

51. The Color Purple

Alice Walker

52. Catch-22

Joseph Heller

53. The Stand

Stephen King

54. Watership Down

Richard Adams

55. Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card

56. Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

57. Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

58. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes #3)

Arthur Conan Doyle

59. Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden

60. Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

61. The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

62. The Princess Bride

William Goldman

63. Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

64. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1)

George R.R. Martin

65. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3)

J.K. Rowling

66. Life of Pi

Yann Martel

67. The Pillars of the Earth (The Pillars of the Earth #1)

Ken Follett (Goodreads Author)

68. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket #1)

Roald Dahl

69. The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

70. Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

71. The Chronicles of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia (Publication Order) #1-7)

C.S. Lewis

72. Dracula

Bram Stoker

73. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2)

Suzanne Collins

74. The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

75. The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd (Goodreads Author)

76. Water for Elephants

Sara Gruen

77. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6)

J.K. Rowling

78. The Good Earth (House of Earth #1)

Pearl S. Buck

79. One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

80. The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

81. The Time Traveler’s Wife

Audrey Niffenegger (Goodreads Author)

82. Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge 1995-2000

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

83. A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving (Goodreads Author)

84. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot (Goodreads Author)

85. And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie

86. The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough

87. The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls

88. The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien

89. The Road

Cormac McCarthy

90. The Odyssey

Homer

91. Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)

Suzanne Collins

92. Beloved (Toni Morrison Trilogy #1)

Toni Morrison

93. The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

94. Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

95. Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese

96. The Story of My Life

Helen Keller

97. Outlander (Outlander #1)

Diana Gabaldon (Goodreads Author)

98. Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn (Goodreads Author)

99. The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster

100. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

E.L. Konigsburg