Harvard Book Store, Top 100 Books [2010]
114 entries: 110 monographical, four otherwise
Ranked
The Harvard Book Store's list of the staff's "favorite books of all time" is one of the few ranked lists documented here , created much like album lists in popular music: each participant submitted a list in order of preference, then all of the books listed were transferred to a single list, their position determined by how highly they ranked in the individual lists. Presumably, a first-place finish gave a book a certain number of points, a second-place finish a slightly-smaller number, and so on; the description does not go into such detail. Nor is there a list of which staff members participated. Similar collective ranked lists included at Greater Books are those put together by Raymond Queneau, in Nineteen-Fifties France, and more recently by the Norwegian Book Club and J. Peder Zane.
- Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
originally published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell, 1847English
- Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
originally anonymously published 1813English
- Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions
1973English
- Gabriel García Márquez
Cien Anõs de Soledad
One Hundred Years of Solitude
1967Spanish
- Murakami Haruki
Nejimaki-Dori Kuronikuru
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
originally published in three volumes, 1994-5Japanese
- Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
1927 English
- Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
1955English
- J R R Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
published in three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of the King, 1954-5English
- Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man
1952English
- Toni Morrison
Beloved
1987English
- Jorge Luis Borges
Ficciones
originally entitled El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan, published 1941; expanded 1944 and 1956Spanish
- Dante
La Divina Commedia
The Divine Comedy
originally entitled La Commedia; written ca. 1308-21Italian
- Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
1985English
- Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
2000English
- Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
published in part, Jul. 1923, as 'Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street', in the Dial; in its entirety, 1925English
- Mikhail Bulgakov
Mástyer i Margaríta
The Master and Margarita
published in part, 1966-67, in Moskva; in its entirety, 1973; revised 1989Russian
Lewis Carroll
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1865English
- Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
1871English
- George Eliot
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872English
- Madeleine L'Engle
A Wrinkle in Time
1962English
- John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meaney
1989English
Slouching Toards Bethlehem
essays originally published 1961-7 in the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times, Holiday, Vogue, and the American ScholarEnglish
- Italo Calvino
Se una Notte d'Inverno un Viaggiatore
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
1979Italian
- Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
1960English
- Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
originally published serially Dec. 1860-Aug. 1861 in All the Year RoundEnglish
J K Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
1997English
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
1998English
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
1999English
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2000English
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
2003English
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
2005English
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2007English
- Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
published in part serially 1873-7 in Rússkij Véstnik; in its entirety, 1877;Russian
- James Joyce
Dubliners
1914English
- Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children
1981English
- Amitav Ghosh
Sea of Poppies
2008English
- Don DeLillo
White Noise
1985English
- Tracy Kidder
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, the Man Who Would Cure the World
2003English
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Prestuplénie i Nakazániye
Crime and Punishment
originally published serially Jan.-Dec. 1866 in Rússkij VéstnikRussian
- Joseph Heller
Catch-22
1961English
- Phillip Pullman
His Dark Materials
originally published in three volumes: Northern Lights, 1995 (U S title: The Golden Compass); The Subtle Knife, 1997; The Amber Spyglass, 2000English
- Carson McCullers
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
1940English
- Louisa M Alcott
Little Women
originally published in two volumes: Little Women, 1868; and Good Wives, 1869English
- Ursula K Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea
1968English
- Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast
1964English
- Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle
1963English
- Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
1979 novel based on 1978 radio playEnglish
- Herodotus
Historiē
History
Fifth Century B CGreek
- William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury
1929English
- Murakami Haruki
Hitsuji o Meguru Boken
A Wild Sheep Chase
1982Japanese
- F Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
1925English
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
1937English
- Norton Juster
The Phantom Tollbooth
1961English
- Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping
1980English
- Patricia C Wrede
Dealing With Dragons
published in part, 1987, as 'The Improper Princess', in Spaceships and Spells; in its entirety, 1990English
- Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar
originally published under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas, 1963English
- John Steinbeck
Cannery Row
1945English
- Murakami Haruki
Sekai no Owari to Hadoboirudo Wandarando
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
1985Japanese
- J D Salinger
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
1961; two novellas originally published in the New Yorker, 1955 and 1959, respectivelyEnglish
Gene Wolfe
- The Shadow of the Torturer
first volume of four-volume The Book of the New Sun, 1980
- The Claw of the Conciliator
second volume of four-volume The Book of the New Sun, 1981
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
1850English
- Alan Moore
Watchmen
originally published serially 1986-7English
The Complete Stories
1971; includes A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, 1955; Everything That Rises Must Converge, 1965; plus 12 stories previously published in periodicals or anthologiesEnglish
- Virginia Woolf
Orlando: A Biography
1928English
- Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
1851English
- Nick Hornby
High Fidelity
1995English
- Richard Adams
Watership Down
1972English
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun
2006English
- Junot Díaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2007English
- Albert Camus
L'Étranger
The Stranger
1942French
- Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire
1962English
- Anne Frank
Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 - 1 Augustus 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl
1947Dutch
- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
1990English
C S Lewis
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
1950English
- Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia
1951English
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
1952English
- The Silver Chair
1953English
- The Horse and His Boy
1954English
- The Magician's Nephew
1955English
- The Last Battle
1956English
- Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls
1940English
- Grace Paley
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
1974English
- Salman Rushdie
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
1990English
- Dave Eggers
You Shall Know Our Velocity
2002English
- Umberto Eco
Baudolino
2000Italian
- Richard Fariña
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
1966English
- Nikolai Gogol
Mërtvyâ Duši
Dead Souls
1842Russian
- Robert Graves
I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B C, Murdered and Deified A D 54
1934English
- Ernest Hemingway
In Our Time
1924; expanded 1925English
- Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow
2000English
- John Crowley
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament
1981English
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- Popul Vuh
Harvard Book Store specifies the Dennis Tedlock translationK'iche'
- Ursula K Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
1969English
- Howard Pyle
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
1883English
- W Somerset Maugham
The Razor's Edge
1944English
- Iris Murdoch
The Sea, the Sea
1978English
- Milan Kundera
Nesnesitelná Lehkost Bytí
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
French translation, L'Insoutenable Légèreté de l'Être, 1984; Czech original, 1985Czech
- Keri Hulme
The Bone People
1984English
Nine Stories
originally published 1948-53 in varied periodicals: the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Information World ReviewEnglish
Drown
ten stories, six of which originally published in Story, the New Yorker, Time Out New York, and the Paris ReviewEnglish
- William Shakespeare
Hamlet
1602English
- David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest
1996English
- Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence
1920English
- Robin McKinley
The Blue Sword
1982English
- Homer
Odýsseia
The Odyssey
ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B CGreek
- Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon
1977English
- Marilynne Robinson
Gilead
2004English
- Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess
originally entitled Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's Boarding School, published serially 1888 in St. Nicholas Magazine; revised and retitled 1905English
- Howard Zinn
A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present
1980; expanded and revised through fifth edition, 2005English
- Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
1862French
- Ken Kesey
Sometimes a Great Notion
1964English
- David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas
2004English
- Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
1855; expanded and revised through ninth edition, 1892English