The lovely Paula @ Book Jotter has tagged me to do the Amazon 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime tag!
The rules are as follows:
- Include a link back to Amazon’s official 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime page.
- Tag Perfectly Tolerable, the creator of this meme
- Tag the person who nominated you
- Copy the list of books and indicate which titles you have read.
- Tally up your total.
- Comment on the post you were tagged in and share your total count.
- Tag five new people and comment on one of their posts to let them know.
I’ve actually never seen the Amazon 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime list before, even though I’ve seen others, so it was really interesting to see such a wide range of books on the last. It is aimed at US readers though so I’ve never even heard of some of the books featured here. I’d like to see Amazon do other lists aimed at other countries too.
I’ve bolded the books that I’ve read. I’ve also marked the books on my TBR. Okay, on to the list…
- 1984 – George Orwell
- Age of Innocence, The – Edith Wharton
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Michael Chabon
- Autobiography of Malcolm X, The – Malcolm X
- Bad Beginning: Or, Orphans!, The – Lemony Snicket {TBR}
- Brief History of Time, A – Stephen Hawking {TBR}
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- All the President’s Men – Bob Woodward
- Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir – Frank McCourt
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume
- Bel Canto – Ann Pratchett
- Beloved – Toni Morrison
- Book Thief, The – Markus Zusak {TBR}
- Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
- Breath, Eyes, Memory – Edwidge Danticat
- Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The – Junot Diaz
- Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
- Catcher in the Rye, The – J.D. Salinger
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
- Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
- Color of Water, The – James McBride
- Corrections, The – Jonathan Franzen
- Cutting For Stone – Abraham Verghese
- Daring Greatly – Brené Brown
- Devil in the White City, The – Erik Larson
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Jeff Kinney
- Diary of a Young Girl, The – Anne Frank
- Dune – Frank Herbert {TBR}
- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury {TBR}
- Fault in Our Stars, The – John Green
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
- Giver, The – Lois Lowry
- Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, The – Philip Pullman
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens {TBR}
- Great Gatsby, The – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
- Handmaid’s Tale, The – Margaret Atwood
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
- House at Pooh Corner, The – A.A. Milne
- Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, A – Dave Eggers
- Hunger Games, The – Suzanne Collins
- Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The – Rebecca Skloot
- In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
- Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
- Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth – Chris Ware
- Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
- Liar’s Club, The – Mary Karr
- Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
- Lightning Thief, The – Rick Riordan
- Little Prince, The – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- Long Goodbye, The – Raymond Chandler
- Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, A – Ishmael Beah
- Looming Tower, The – Lawrence Wright
- Lord of the Rings, The – J.R.R. Tolkien
- Love in the Time of Cholera – Garbriel Garcia Marquez
- Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich
- Man’s Search For Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl
- Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, The – Oliver Sacks
- Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
- Middlesex: A Novel – Jeffrey Eugenides
- Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game – Michael Lewis
- Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
- Omnivore’s Dilemma, The – Michael Pollan
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac
- Out of Africa – Isak Dinesen
- Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood – Marjane Satrapi
- Phantom Tollbooth, The – Norton Juster
- Poisonwood Bible, The – Barbara Kingsolver
- Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
- Power Broker, The – Robert A. Caro
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- Right Stuff, The – Tom Wolfe
- Road, The – Cormac McCarthy
- Secret History, The – Donna Tartt {TBR}
- Selected Stories: 1968-1994 – Alice Munro
- Shining, The – Stephen King {TBR}
- Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
- Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- Stranger, The – Albert Camus
- Sun Also Rises, The – Ernest Hemmingway
- Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
- Things They Carried, The – Tim O’Brien
- To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
- Very Hungry Caterpillar, The – Eric Carle
- Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
- Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak {TBR}
- Wind in the Willows, The – Kenneth Grahame
- Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The – Haruki Murakami
- World According to Garp, The – John Irving
- Wrinkle in Time, A – Madeleine L’Engle
- Year of Magical Thinking, The – Joan Didion
I’ve only read 22 books on this list and I’m genuinely not interested in reading most of the others.
I’m tagging:
Claire @ Art and Soul, Deanna @ A Novel Glimpse, Ashley @ Thrifty Bibliophile, Kristilyn @ Reading in Winter, and The Orangutan Librarian.
Please ignore this tag if you’d rather not take part!
Well done, Amy – and thank you for taking part! 😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for tagging me! 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for tagging me!
I’ve read 27 of these and, like you, I’m not greatly interested in reading many of the others! 🙂 I do remember enjoying The World According to Garp at the time… I must get round to re-reading it (although given the height of my current TBR I can’t see ir happening soon).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe you’ll have to add it to the bottom of your TBR. You’ll get to it one day!
LikeLike
22 is really good for this list! It is more that I have read.
As a US reader I had not heard of all these either, but now I am super curious to see what lists like this look like in other countries. I had never considered that they would be different. The thought just never crossed my mind, but now I really want to know how it would differ!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not sure that there are any other lists, just the one from the main editors in the US. I’d like to think that a UK version would have authors like Zadie Smith on there. It’d be cool to see them for non-English speaking countries though!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve only read 28, with about 5 more on my TBR. Like you, there aren’t a lot of titles here that I feel compelled to add onto my to-read list. Maybe Amazon is just trying to split the difference between variety and popularity?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe that’s true! It is important to balance well-known and less popular books on a list like this so that it’s not just the same books over and over again. I don’t think I’m going to pick many of them up that aren’t already on my TBR though.
LikeLike
Hi! I received an email with for a nomination “blogger recognition award ” The WordPress equivalent to chainmail or a Facebook ” like& share to win the Lottery!” but it gave me something to write about! so i’m using it to recognize your blog. despite having a busy schedule im inpresd at how often your posting entries
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! It looks like you’ve done a cool thing with the ‘award’. I’ll definitely look into it and do a post soon.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I haven’t read all the same books as you, but I’ve read the same #! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a coincidence! It seems like most people have only read around 20 or so of the books on the list.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for tagging me! I’ve seen this about and have been meaning to do it- only I was disappointed with the number I’d read when I saw it- that said, I’m like you with it- I genuinely have zero interest in checking out most of the other books on here (even though I usually like using these lists for recs)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think most people have read less than 30 of these books which is unusual. I usually use these lists for recs too! It’s a shame we couldn’t get many from this one.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bump – Fear and Loathing
LikeLike