Friday 15 August 2014

Amazon's Top 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime - Plus Free A4 and FilofaxPrintables

Amanda Kennedy

I love book lists. They offer me new and unexpected titles to look out for; books I might not otherwise read.

So when Amazon published a list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime, I couldn’t resist typing out the whole thing to keep in my bag; something I could refer to (and tick off) when browsing the bookshelves at my favourite haunts.

After the jump, you’ll find the complete list (in alphabetical order). If you prefer, simply download the A4 sized PDF printable.

I’ve also developed a printable for Personal sized Filofaxes (which I’m currently using). This is designed to be printed on both sides of A$ paper - download here.

Feel free to print, reblog and share! I love great literature and am slowly working my way through the list, finding some unexpectedly wonderful reads along the way. I hope you will enjoy it too.


Amazon’s List of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime



A bucket list of books to create a well read life from the Amazon book editors.


http://www.amazon.com/100books



  1. 1984by George Orwell - Meet Big Brother


  2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking – Explore the universe


  3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers – Memoir as metafiction


  4. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah - A child soldier’s story


  5. A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket – Wicked good fun


  6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madelaine L'Engle – The 60’s kids classic


  7. Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munroe – A short-form master


  8. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol – Go down the rabbit hole


  9. All The Presidents Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – Unseated a president


  10. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt – An Irish-American memoir


  11. Are you There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume – The angst of adolescence


  12. Bel Canto by Ann Patchet – A literary page-turner


  13. Beloved by Toni Morrison – The ghosts of slavery


  14. Born To Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall – Why and how we run


  15. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat – A journey from Haiti


  16. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – Launched it’s own catchphrase


  17. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl – Vintage Roald Dahl


  18. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – The timeless classic


  19. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese – Ambitious and humane


  20. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown – Vulnerability breeds courage


  21. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney – For reluctant readers


  22. Dune by Frank Herbert – Classic science fiction


  23. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - “It was a pleasure to burn”.


  24. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson – Gonzo journalism takes flight


  25. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – Marriage can be a real killer


  26. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown – first published in 1947


  27. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Dicken’s best novel


  28. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond – Understanding societies


  29. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – Meet the wizard


  30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote – True crime at it’s best


  31. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – Award-winning short story debut


  32. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison – A literary milestone


  33. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware – A brilliant graphic novel


  34. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain – Don’t eat while you read this


  35. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – One of the best of 2013


  36. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder – Childhood on the Prarie


  37. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Nabokov’s triumph


  38. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – A Latin American masterpiece


  39. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich – A saga set on the reservation


  40. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – A life-changing book


  41. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris – Funny and poignant


  42. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – A beautifully-written novel


  43. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie – Rushdie’s breakthrough


  44. Moneyball by Michael Lewis – Lewis hits it out of the park


  45. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham – A writer’s writer


  46. On the Road by Jack Kerouac – The essence of the Beats


  47. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen – A remarkable woman’s story


  48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi – A groundbreaking graphic novel


  49. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth – Roth at his finest


  50. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen – The perennial favourite


  51. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson – The birth of ecology


  52. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut – The absurdist WWII novel


  53. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin – How Lincoln led


  54. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - 19th century high-society


  55. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – Chabon’s Magnum Opus


  56. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley – A classic modern autobiography


  57. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – The international sensation


  58. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz – The trials of a “ghetto nerd”


  59. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – Meet Holden Caulfield


  60. The Color of Water by James McBride – Exploring a mother’s past


  61. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – Great, but divisive


  62. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson – A triumph of narrative non-fiction


  63. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank – Moving and eloquent


  64. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green – A soulful young adult novel


  65. The Giver by Lois Lowry – Classic dystopia


  66. The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman – Pullman’s fantasy classic


  67. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – The rich are different…


  68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Feminist speculative fiction


  69. The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne – A boy, a bear, a honeypot


  70. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – Reality TV writ large


  71. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – Race, ethics and medicine


  72. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr – A darkly funny memoir


  73. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan – Monsters, mythology and a boy


  74. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Unique and universal


  75. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler – First rate Chandler noir


  76. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright – The history of terrorism


  77. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien – One ring to rule them all


  78. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks – A deeply human account


  79. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan – The origins of food


  80. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – An odd and original journey


  81. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver – Missionaries in Africa


  82. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro – The Enforcer


  83. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe – The inner life of astronauts


  84. The Road by Cormac McCarthy – This way to the Apocalypse


  85. The Secret History by Donna Tartt – A modern classic


  86. The Shining by Stephen King – Chilling and thrilling


  87. The Stranger by Albert Camus – Existentialist fiction


  88. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – Meet the lost generation


  89. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien – The best book on Vietnam


  90. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle – Baby’s first book


  91. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame – Mole, Toad, Rat and Badger


  92. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami – From the modern Japanese master


  93. The World According to Garp by John Irving – Beware the “undertoad”


  94. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – Life, Love, Death


  95. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe – Tradition vs. change


  96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – A beloved family story


  97. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand – An American inspiration


  98. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann – Addictively entertaining


  99. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein – The joys of imagination


  100. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak – Let the wild rumpus start!
Which titles have you read (and most importantly, enjoyed)?

Amanda Kennedy / Book Blogger, Writer & Editor

Amanda is a lifelong learner and book lover who lives in the North of England with her family and several cats. She writes book reviews, literary news and bookish articles here on All My Pretty Books.

To learn more about Amanda's own work, visit her personal website.

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