1. _The Iliad_ by Homer – early 7th century BCE (trans.: Samuel Butler)
2. _The Odyssey_ by Homer – 8th – early 7th century BCE (trans.: Samuel Butler)
3. _The Aeneid_ by Virgil – 19 BCE (trans.: J. W. Mackail)
4. _Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius – 167 (translation not yet determined)
5. _The Prose Edda_ by Snorri Sturluson – 1220 (trans.: A. G. Brodeur) (Icelandic version of Norse mythology, suggested by a learned acquaintance)
6. _The Prince_ by Niccolò Machiavelli – 1532 (trans.: W. K. Marriott)
7. _Don Quixote_ by Miguel de Cervantes – 1615 (trans.: John Ormsby and John Rutherford versions)
8. _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ by John Bunyan – 1684
9. _Robinson Crusoe_ by Daniel DeFoe – 1719 (I read this in junior high school)
10. _Gulliver’s Travels_ by Jonathan Swift – 1735 edition
11. _Candide_ by Voltaire – 1759 (trans.: not yet determined)
12. _Tristram Shandy (The Life and Opinions of)_ – by Laurence Sterne 1759 – 1767
13. _Female Quixotism_ by Tabitha Gilman Tenney – 1801
14. _Pride and Prejudice_ by Jane Austen – 1816
15. _Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus_ by Mary Shelley – 1818
16. _Nightmare Abbey_ by Thomas Love Peacock – 1818
17. _Melmoth the Wanderer_ by Charles Maturin – 1820
18. _Last of the Mohicans_ by James Fenimore Cooper – 1826
19. _Paul Clifford_ by Edward Bulwer-Lytton – 1830 (“It was a dark and stormy night….”)
20. _Two Years Before the Mast_ by Richard Henry Dana Jr. – 1840
21. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ by Alexandre Dumas – 1844
22. _Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood_ by Rymer & Prest – 1847 (Not on _any_ “best novels” lists of which I am aware… until now!)
23. _Vanity Fair_ by William M. Thackeray – 1848
24. _Moby Dick_ by Herman Melville – 1851 (I vaguely recall reading this, or trying to, in junior high school)
25. _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ by Harriet Beecher Stowe – 1852
26. _Madame Bovary_ by Gustave Flaubert – 1856 (trans.: Paul de Man)
27. _A Tale of Two Cities_ by Charles Dickens – 1859 (Again, I read this in junior high school in Mr. Barker’s class)
28. _The Mill On The Floss_ (1960) or _Silas Marner_ by George Eliot – 1861 (I’ve long heard that this is a widely required high school read, but I’ve never read it)
29. _Les Miserables_ by Victor Hugo – 1862 (Harper Perennial Classics translation)
30. _The Water-Babies_ by Charles Kingsley – 1863 (Now you know the secret meaning behind the line, “I’d have named him Kingsley, if I’d had any say in the matter,” in the movie _The Life Aquatic_!)
31. _War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy_ – 1869 (trans.: not yet determined)
32. _Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Seas_ by Jules Verne – 1870 (trans.: F.P. Walter) (I read this in the 6th grade of elementary school)
33. _The Portrait of a Lady_ by Henry James – 1881
34. _Treasure Island_ by Robert Louis Stevenson – 1883
35. _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ by Friedrich Nietzsche – 1883-1885
36. _King Solomon’s Mines_ by H. Rider Haggard – 1895 (I read this some several years ago)
37. _Three Men in a Boat_ by Jerome K. Jerome – 1889 (I read this fairly recently, actually, but it’s too funny to not include!)
38. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde – 1890
39. _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ by Thomas Hardy – 1891
40. _The Diary of a Nobody_ by G. & W. Grossmith – 1892
41. _Hartmann the Anarchist; or, The Doom of the Great City_ by E. D. Fawcett – 1893 (Another title not likely found on “great books” lists)
42. _Heart of Darkness_ by Joseph Conrad – 1899
43. _Sister Carrie_ by Theodore Dreiser – 1900
44. _Kim_ by Rudyard Kipling – 1901
45. _Brewster’s Millions_ by George Barr McCutcheon (aka Richard Greaves) – 1902 (A prolific popular novelist of the late-19th and early 20th-centuries who deserves to be remembered, or at least not entirely forgotten)
46. _The Virginian_ by Owen Wister – 1902 (The “western” genre is decidedly absent from “best” lists. This is one of the early classics; I recently finished _Riders of the Purple Sage_ or that would have been my choice)
47. _The Riddle of the Sands_ by Robert Erskine Childers – 1903 (One of the earliest “secret agent” genre novels)
48. _White Fang_ by Jack London – 1906
49. _The Wind in the Willows_ by Kenneth Grahame – 1908
50. _The Nicest Girl in the School_ by Angela Brazil – 1909 (Schoolgirl stories, a genre to which I was recently introduced by a friend. They are _too_ much fun, and this is one of the stories responsible for the success and popularity of the genre)
51. _The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (aka The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu)_ by Sax Rohmer – 1913 (Pulp fiction at its finest! Or not. I’ve always wanted to read a Fu Manchu story)
52. _The Thirty-Nine Steps_ by John Buchan – 1915 (An early and influential pulp adventure novel)
53. _A Princess of Mars_ by Edgar Rice Burroughs – 1917 (One of the most exciting and surprising books I ever read! Haven’t read it in years)
54. _My Antonia_ by Willa Cather – 1918
55. _All Quiet on the Western Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque – 1919 (trans.: not yet determined)
56. _Ulysses_ by James Joyce – 1920
57. _Main Street_ by Sinclair Lewis – 1920
58. _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka 1925
59. _The Great Gatsby_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald – 1925
60. _The House Without a Key_ by Earl Derr Biggers – 1925 (The first Charlie Chan mystery)
61. _In Search of Lost Time_ by Marcel Proust – 1927 (trans.: Moncrieff)
62. _The Bridge of San Luis Rey_ by Thornton Wilder – 1927
63. _To The Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf – 1927
64. _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ by D.H. Lawrence – 1928
65. _Red Harvest_ by Dashiell Hammett – 1929 (Influential “hard-boiled” detective genre novel)
66. _The Sound and the Fury_ by William Faulkner – 1929
67. _Cakes and Ale_ by W. Somerset Maugham – 1930
68. _The Good Earth_ by Pearl S. Buck – 1931
69. _The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas_ by Gertrude Stein – 1933
70. _Appointment in Samarra_ by John O’Hara – 1934
71. _Out of Africa_ by Isak Dinesen – 1937
72. _Rebecca_ by Daphne du Maurier – 1938
73. _The Grapes of Wrath_ by John Steinbeck – 1939 (I would much rather re-read _Travels With Charlie_ or _Cannery Row_….)
74. _The Big Sleep_ by Raymond Chandler – 1939
75. _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ by Ernest Hemingway – 1940 (I had to include Hemingway, wasn’t sure which one. This seems to be highly regarded)
76. _The Earth is the Lord’s_ by Taylor Caldwell – 1941 (I needed to include a mid-20th century “popular” novelist)
77. _Brideshead Revisited_ by Evelyn Waugh – 1945
78. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ by George Orwell – 1949 (I think I read this, a long time ago)
79. _Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson_ by G. I. Gurdjieff – 1950 (trans.: not yet determined)
80. _The Catcher In the Rye_ by J. D. Salinger – 1951 (I’ve never read this)
81. _Invisible Man_ by Ralph Ellison – 1952 (I have no idea what this is about, but it’s on almost every “best of ” list)
82. _The Adventures of Augie March_ by Saul Bellow – 1953
83. _Fahrenheit 451_ by Ray Bradbury – 1953
84. _Casino Royale_ by Ian Fleming – 1953 (The first “Bond” novel; I’ve never read one)
85. _Lucky Jim_ by Kingsley Amis – 1954
86. _Lolita_ by Vladimir Nabokov – 1955 (Another one that’s on almost every “best of” list)
87. _On the Road_ by Jack Kerouac – 1957
88. _Our Man in Havana_ by Graham Greene – 1958 (I recently watched the movie on Turner Classic Movies)
89. _Naked Lunch_ by William S. Burroughs – 1959
90. _To Kill a Mockingbird_ by Harper Lee – 1960 (A “great” novel I’ve never read)
91. _Catch-22_ by Joseph Heller – 1961 (Haven’t read this one, either, although it’s on a lot of lists)
92. _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_ by Ken Kesey – 1962 (Ken Kesey went to high school with my mom)
93. _A Clockwork Orange_ by Anthony Burgess – 1962
94. _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeleine L’Engle – 1962 (Completed 22 Feb 2019)
95. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ by Gabriel García Márquez – 1967
96. _Slaughterhouse-Five_ by Kurt Vonnegut – 1969
97. _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ by Hunter S. Thompson – 1971
98. _Gravity’s Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon – 1973
99. _The Other Side of Midnight_ by Sidney Sheldon – 1973 (Representative of late-20th-century popular fiction)
100. _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ by Robert Pirsig – 1974 (I’ve started it a few times, but never get very far)
101. _White Noise_ by Don DeLillo – 1985 (I dunno… it’s on a lot of lists)
102. _A Year in Provence_ by Peter Mayle – 1989 (Often appears on British lists, but not on American lists)
103. _Snow Falling on Cedars_ by David Guterson – 1994
104. _His Dark Materials_ by Philip Pullman – 1995-2000 (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)
105. _Infinite Jest_ by David Foster Wallace – 1996
106. _Anathem_ by Neal Stephenson – 2008 (Hard sci-fi, recommended by a literate acquaintance)