# Amazon Editors Pick 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime



## T.K. (Mar 8, 2011)

Here's the list.

How many have you read?

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_399124682_3?ie=UTF8&node=8192263011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=hero-quick-promo&pf_rd_r=0CVHX059CBKQQBVN8NNW&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1721171242&pf_rd_i=B00GYDMJJW


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

I've read 4 of these.

_1984
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The Handmaid's Tale
_

A couple are on my TBR list, though.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Nice list. Thanks for posting the link.

Interestingly, only nine of those titles are $3.99 or under in Kindle version. I think that means something about pricing, but I'll need to noddle on that a bit.


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## @Suzanna (Mar 14, 2011)

24. There are a few more I've been meaning to read, but I just haven't gotten around to it.


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## maineavalanche (Mar 22, 2013)

I'm looking at about twenty, but I appreciate that this is a much different list then what these usually are and there's a lot of variety.


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## Error404 (Sep 6, 2012)

I have do disagree with a lot of the books on the list.  Golden Compass, but not Narnia?  Lolita?  Really?  No ancient classics like Homer or the Canterbury Tales?

And don't get me started on all the political-social commentary books on that list...


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## Just Browsing (Sep 26, 2012)

Nearly all... some good picks!

I didn't think they were saying these were "the best" books (Valley of the Dolls? lol We passed that around in middle school, though...), just a collection to make you 'well rounded.' Interesting that a number of these have been (possibly still are?) banned books (in various school libraries).


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## B Sheridan (Dec 5, 2011)

46

And I just added 6 of those I haven't read to my cart.

I think this is a really cool list. No top-whatever book list will have everything people think it should, but this is a lot different from lists I've read before. I love that non-fiction was included, I read a ton of it. Probably one of the most affecting books I've ever read is on that list, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah about his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Powerful, powerful truth telling.


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## valeriechase (Nov 22, 2013)

Interesting list! I appreciated the diversity when it came to age range (picture books, middle grade, adult literary, etc.). 

I've read 35, and I definitely need to add some of those titles to my TBR pile.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

I just can't believe none of MY books are on there.  Sheesh.


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## spike Pedersen (Feb 2, 2014)

I've read nine, and loved them all. And I started four of them on the list and could not finish them because they were bad, or boring.


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## zoe tate (Dec 18, 2013)

Blake Sheridan said:


> 46


Wow, I'm impressed with that! I've read 37 of them.

There are undeniably some wonderful books there. And one or two surprises, as well, that I haven't read and really wasn't intending to at all. (Probably I have something to learn, there.)



MacWillard said:


> Lolita? Really?


For sure: a beautifully written classic by one of the world's greatest ever authors. I'm biased because I'm just reading his autobiography (also fascinating).



MacWillard said:


> No ancient classics like Homer or the Canterbury Tales?


I don't still have the list in front of me now, but are they perhaps all books originally written in English? (I think most people wouldn't really call Chaucer "English", in that translations into English are also published?). That would account for it?



JimJohnson said:


> Interestingly, only nine of those titles are $3.99 or under in Kindle version. I think that means something about pricing, but I'll need to noddle on that a bit.


I entirely agree, and will noddle with you, if that's ok.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

12.

Wait. Does it count if you've seen the movie?


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

I've read 19 of them.  Some were very good, others not worth the while.  That list is too heavily weighted towards modern books.  Some of those titles I wouldn't read if you paid me.


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## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

18, most because I had to for some related project, but among them are others I thoroughly enjoyed like Dune, P&P, and The Handmaid's Tale.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

28

"we didn't want the list to feel like homework"=no free classics.
Even their few titles in the public domain cost money because they were annotated.

As lists go, less serious than usual.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

zoe tate said:


> I entirely agree, and with noddle with you, if that's ok.


Sure. I'll start a new thread so that it doesn't get in the way in this one.

And yes, I realize I misspelled noodle. I think 'noddle' has a certain charm. Like, thinking about something for a while then nodding off. 

Or maybe non-verbally comforting someone. Listen to them, nod your head...noddling. Eh. Anyway.


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## vrabinec (May 19, 2011)

28 1/2. I didn't make it through the Great Gatsby, but I'll give myself a half for it. Too many books I like are missing from that list, and too many I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole are on it.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Angela's Ashes; Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret; Alice in Wonderland; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Charlotte's Web; Great Expectations; Man's Search for Meaning; Pride and Prejudice; The Great Gatsby; Omnivore's Dilemma; The Stranger; Kitchen Confidential; Me Talk Pretty; The Corrections. Of those that I have read, I like Angela's Ashes and The Stranger the best.


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## Error404 (Sep 6, 2012)

zoe tate said:


> For sure: a beautifully written classic by one of the world's greatest ever authors. I'm biased because I'm just reading his autobiography (also fascinating).


If you can gag past the content.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

For those who'd like a simpler list to check:

[*]_1984_ ~ George Orwell
[*]_A Brief History of Time_ ~ Stephen Hawking
[*]_A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_ ~ Dave Eggers
[*]_A Long Way Gone_ ~ Ishmael Beah
[*]_A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition_ ~ Lemony Snicket
[*]_A Wrinkle in Time_ ~ Madeleine L'Engle
[*]_Alice Munro: Selected Stories_ ~ Alice Munro
[*]_Alice in Wonderland_ ~ Lewis Carroll
[*]_All the President's Men_ ~ Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
[*]_Angela's Ashes: A Memoir_ ~ Frank McCourt
[*]_Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret_ ~ Judy Blume
[*]_Bel Canto_ ~ Ann Patchett
[*]_Beloved_ ~ Toni Morrison
[*]_Born To Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen_ ~ Christopher McDougall
[*]_Breath, Eyes, Memory_ ~ Edwidge Danticat
[*]_Catch-22_ ~ Joseph Heller
[*]_Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ ~ Roald Dahl
[*]_Charlotte's Web_ ~ E.B. White
[*]_Cutting For Stone_ ~ Abraham Verghese
[*]_Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead_ ~ Brene Brown
[*]_Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1_ ~ Jeff Kinney
[*]_Dune_ ~ Frank Herbert
[*]_Fahrenheit 451_ ~ Ray Bradbury
[*]_Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream_ ~ Hunter S. Thompson
[*]_Gone Girl_ ~ Gillian Flynn
[*]_Goodnight Moon_ ~ Margaret Wise Brown
[*]_Great Expectations_ ~ Charles Dickens
[*]_Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_ ~ Jared M. Diamond
[*]_Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ ~ J.K. Rowling
[*]_In Cold Blood_ ~ Truman Capote
[*]_Interpreter of Maladies_ ~ Jhumpa Lahiri
[*]_Invisible Man_ ~ Ralph Ellison
[*]_Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth_ ~ Chris Ware
[*]_Kitchen Confidential_ ~ Anthony Bourdain
[*]_Life After Life_ ~ Kate Atkinson
[*]_Little House on the Prairie_ ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
[*]_Lolita_ ~ Vladimir Nabokov
[*]_Love in the Time of Cholera_ ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[*]_Love Medicine_ ~ Louise Erdrich
[*]_Man's Search for Meaning_ ~ Viktor Frankl
[*]_Me Talk Pretty One Day_ ~ David Sedaris
[*]_Middlesex_ ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
[*]_Midnight's Children_ ~ Salman Rushdie
[*]_Moneyball_ ~ Michael Lewis
[*]_Of Human Bondage_ ~ W. Somerset Maugham
[*]_On the Road_ ~ Jack Kerouac
[*]_Out of Africa_ ~ Isak Dinesen
[*]_Persepolis_ ~ Marjane Satrapi
[*]_Portnoy's Complaint_ ~ Philip Roth
[*]_Pride & Prejudice_ ~ Jane Austen
[*]_Silent Spring_ ~ Rachel Carson
[*]_Slaughterhouse-Five_ ~ Kurt Vonnegut
[*]_Team of Rivals_ ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin
[*]_The Age of Innocence_ ~ Edith Wharton
[*]_The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_ ~ Michael Chabon
[*]_The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ ~ Malcolm X and Alex Haley
[*]_The Book Thief_ ~ Markus Zusak
[*]_The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_ ~ Junot Diaz
[*]_The Catcher in the Rye_ ~ J.D. Salinger
[*]_The Color of Water_ ~ James McBride
[*]_The Corrections_ ~ Jonathan Franzen
[*]_The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America_ ~ Erik Larson
[*]_The Diary of Anne Frank_ ~ Anne Frank
[*]_The Fault in Our Stars_ ~ John Green
[*]_The Giver_ ~ Lois Lowry
[*]_The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials_ ~ Philip Pullman
[*]_The Great Gatsby_ ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
[*]_The Handmaid's Tale_ ~ Margaret Atwood
[*]_The House At Pooh Corner_ ~ A. A. Milne
[*]_The Hunger Games_ ~ Suzanne Collins
[*]_The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks_ ~ Rebecca Skloot
[*]_The Liars' Club: A Memoir_ ~ Mary Karr
[*]_The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1)_ ~ Rick Riordan
[*]_The Little Prince_ ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
[*]_The Long Goodbye_ ~ Raymond Chandler
[*]_The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11_ ~ Lawrence Wright
[*]_The Lord of the Rings_ ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
[*]_The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales_ ~ Oliver Sacks
[*]_The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals_ ~ Michael Pollan
[*]_The Phantom Tollbooth_ ~ Norton Juster
[*]_The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel_ ~ Barbara Kingsolver
[*]_The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York_ ~ Robert A. Caro
[*]_The Right Stuff_ ~ Tom Wolfe
[*]_The Road_ ~ Cormac McCarthy
[*]_The Secret History_ ~ Donna Tartt
[*]_The Shining_ ~ Stephen King
[*]_The Stranger_ ~ Albert Camus
[*]_The Sun Also Rises_ ~ Ernest Hemingway
[*]_The Things They Carried_ ~ Tim O'Brien
[*]_The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ ~ Eric Carle
[*]_The Wind in the Willows_ ~ Kenneth Grahame
[*]_The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel_ ~ Haruki Murakami
[*]_The World According to Garp_ ~ John Irving
[*]_The Year of Magical Thinking_ ~ Joan Didion
[*]_Things Fall Apart_ ~ Chinua Achebe
[*]_To Kill a Mockingbird_ ~ Harper Lee
[*]_Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption_ ~ Laura Hillenbrand
[*]_Valley of the Dolls_ ~ Jacqueline Susann
[*]_Where the Sidewalk Ends_ ~ Shel Silverstein
[*]_Where the Wild Things Are_ ~ Maurice Sendak


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Know I've read: 11
May have read: 6 (books I can't remember if I've read them, or am just remembering reading about them and/or seeing the movie [one of the side effects of getting older])
Definitely on my to-read list: 1

So I'll call that a 14 +/- 3.


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

I have read sixteen, possibly seventeen of them. But that's really a fraudulent claim, since I read several of those as a kid, but remember Literally nothing about them, or almost nothing. My memories of the Pooh books, for instance have been almost entirely overwhelmed by viewing the Disney cartoons a few years later. And I think I read Little House in fourth grade, but not positive.

I do have three of the books on my tbr list, Team of Rivals, the Lemony Snickett book, and another which escapes me now. They moved high enough that I've had them on my Kindle to be ready when the mood strikes me. 

Added later, the third book was Diary of a Wimpy Kid.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

I've read 34 and seen the movies of several I haven't read.

I wonder if they were trying to come up with a list to be read over a lifetime, from infancy on.  There are so many children's and young adult books that I have read, but wouldn't necessarily seek out as an adult if I didn't have children or grandchildren to read them to now.

At least I have heard of or know something about most of the books on this list, that isn't always the case.  A pretty friendly list IMO.


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## Vivi_Anna (Feb 12, 2011)

I've only read 11 of those.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

About 22.
And I wish I could un-read Lolita 
Interesting list, thanks for posting.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I have read 3 and one I could not finish. 
I read Shining, Pride and Prejudice and 1984. 

I tried to read Gone Girl and it was just horrible so I gave up. 

I still have fond memories of reading 1984, since I read it actually in 1984 in school.  . So it had that special meaning to it. 

I have to say reading that list that I'd rather clean public bathrooms, with a toothbrush, than reading the majority on that list.  

There are maybe a handful I might consider. 

Apparently I read different things in school


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

Atunah said:


> I tried to read Gone Girl and it was just horrible so I gave up.


I forced myself to finish it, but I should have given up on it.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

I've read 37 from the list.  while I don't agree with everything on the list - mine would probably be much different - I do think it's a pretty decent sampler of writings from the past 130 or so years .... It could cause me to start putting together a top 100 list of my own (but then I'm a list geek).


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I've read 20 of them.


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## AbbyC (Sep 24, 2013)

I feel pretty good that I've read a majority of these!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

26, soon to be 27, as one of the books is in my TBR pile for this month.

Betsy


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

i'm claiming 12.  i think it's a weird list.  but then again, i don't think that there is one list of anything that everyone should do.


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## deckard (Jan 13, 2011)

16 for me.

I know ever lists is subjective and no one can be made entirely happy, but NO Mark Twain.

Deckard


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## David Peterson (Feb 8, 2014)

Lucky thirteen for me. 

I've read Moneyball and thought it was interesting, but wouldn't have expected to see it on the list.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

David Peterson said:


> Lucky thirteen for me.
> 
> I've read Moneyball and thought it was interesting, but wouldn't have expected to see it on the list.


Ditto: it's one of my have-reads, and I did like it, but I think it would probably make my personal top-100 list only if I limited it to nonfiction, and even then, I'm not 100% sure of that. But I will give it a hearty recommendation to anyone with at least a fair-to-middling interest in baseball.


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

39, but some of 'em were so long ago I can't recall much more than the fact that I read them.  I love looking at lists like this; there's always a reminder of something that belongs on the Amazing Colossal To-Be-Read Pile, and there's always the fun of trying to figure out how drunk the compilers of the lists had to be to include some of the things they did or to miss some of the titles they shouldn't have missed.


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## Alessandra Kelley (Feb 22, 2011)

32.

It's nice to see a lot of interesting nonfiction, like _A Brief History of Time_ and _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_ on the list.


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## Lorelei Logsdon (Feb 4, 2014)

I couldn't find this one in the Link Maker, but this one certainly should have been included:

Everyone Poops, by Taro Gomi


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