so, i’ve decided.  there are just some books i need to read.  most of them are classic literature, books i probably should have read at some point during my school career and didn’t.  some i will probably never read, based on the subject matter… but that’s a difference of opinion thing more or less.  i’m at least going to attempt it.  many of these have established the foundation of literature as we know it and are still beloved all over the world today.  the best part about a lot of these books is that they are Public Domain, so they are free.  i spent some time bulking up my iTunes Library last night with some of the best of these volumes.  i’m getting closer to wrapping up the “Little House” series, so i’m on the quest for my next read.  i really need to break away from my usual fantasy books and broaden out a little bit, and i’m tired of not knowing what people are talking about when they reference these books.

and now, the list. *s represent books that are Public Domain

1. *Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien   [ X ]   …my favorite book EVER
3. *Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling   [ X ]   …really loved these
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. the Bible   …can i put half an X?  i’ve read a lot of it…
7. *Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell   …again on the half an X, i’ve read it but vaguely remember.
9. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman   …may choose not to read this one.
10. *Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11. *Little Women by Louisa May Alcott   [ X ]   …may read this one again, actually.
12. *Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13. *Ulysses by James Joyce
14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell   …another half X, was supposed to read it in school.
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
20. *Call of the Wild by Jack London
21. *The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne   [ X ]   …:sigh:
22. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams   …another half X.
23. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis   [ X ]   …fantastic.
24. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
25. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
26. *The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
27. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
28. *War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
29. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
30. *Middlemarch by George Eliot
31. *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll   [ X ]   … <3
32. *David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33. *Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
34. Dune by Frank Herbert
35. *Emma by Jane Austen
36. *Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
37. *The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
38. *A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
39. *The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
40. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
41. *Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
42. *Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
43. *Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
44. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
45. *A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
46. Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding
47. *The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
48. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
49. *Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
50. *Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
51. *Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
52. *Complete Works of Shakespeare
53. *The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
54. *Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
55. *The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
56. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
57. *Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory
58. *Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
59. *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
60. *The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
61. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
62. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
63. Neuromancer by William Gibson
64. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
65. *The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
66. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
67. *The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
68. *The Prince by Nicholo Machiavelli
69. *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
70. *The Complete Tales of Edgar Allen Poe
71. *Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
72. *Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen
73. *Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
74. *Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
75. *Moby Dick by Herman Melville
76. *The Iliad / The Odyssey by Homer
77. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
78. *One Thousand and One Nights
79. *The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
80. *Grimm’s Fairy Tales
81. *Dracula by Bram Stoker
82. *The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
83. *The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown, in Nottinghamshire by Howard Pyle
84. Tbe Life of Pi by Yann Martel
85. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
86. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
87. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
88. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
89. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
90. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
91. *Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
92. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
93. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l’Engle
94. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
95. *The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
96. *Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
97. *Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
98. *The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
99. *The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
100. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

i may actually add to this list over time, and i will definitely come back and check them off as i read!  it was really hard to come up with just 100 titles looking over all the lists of “best books”, “best classic novels”, etc.  but definitely these, for sure.

feel free to join me on this adventure, leave comments, repost your list of 100 books to read and commit to it.  i’ve heard that despite my personal opinion, many of these books end up being better than expected despite not really liking the “genre” or subject material.  so, i’m going to give it a shot!!!

hope that your weekend is phenomenal!

peace, love and stickers -

ahhhhh….. one of my favorite types of lists!  i. LOVE. books.  i have always enjoyed reading since i was a little bitty kid.  we definitely plan on having a two-story library in our house someday, and our idea of date night is sitting on the floor at B&N with a cuppa Starbucks, surrounded by piles of books.  yeah, we’re not nerdy or anything :P

I ♥ Books.

Some of my all-time favorite books are:

• the Bible
• The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien)
• Hope for the Flowers (Trina Paulus)
• Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)
• A Song of Ice and Fire – series (George R. R. Martin)
• anything by Shel Silverstein
• The Dream Giver (Bruce Wilkinson)
• Harry Potter series (J. K. Rowling)
• Twilight series (Stephanie Meyer)
• The Chronicles of Narnia series (C. S. Lewis)

it’s a lot of fantasy fiction.  i am really into that… there are probably several other series and books i could list here just in that category, but i won’t bore you with all of that.  don’t be fooled, though, i spend the majority of my time in any bookstore in the nonfiction area, mostly camped out in the arts & crafts section