200 Books Every Person Should Read At Least Once in Their Lives
We all are different. Each of us relates to storylines and personalities in different ways and enjoys different book genres. But still, there are most brilliant books from the greatest writers of all times that are very influential to people, so there are good reasons why they are on “must have books” lists. Here’s the list of 200 books everyone should read in their lifetime, as voted on and ranked by users of Goodreads, the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Which of these books have you already read?
- “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
To Kill A Mockingbird became an instant bestseller when it was first published in 1960 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.
The Southern United States of the early 1930s; racially divided Alabama town. The story is told from the point of view of a 10-year-old tomboy. Her father is a lawyer, who defends a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman. But town citizens aren't willing to believe in the innocence of an accused black man.
2. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone” (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling
A future classic, to be sure, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in the United States in 1998. Harry Potter, an orphan boy, who has spent the worst 10 years of his life sleeping under the stairs of a family who treated him more like a servant than a member of the family, discovers his magical heritage. He is a wizard! And that’s where the adventure begins.
3. “1984” by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) is a dystopian novel published in 1949. Actions take place in Airstrip One (Great Britain in the past), a province of the superstate Oceania, a place where the Party scrutinizes human actions, defying a ban on individuality. 1984 tells the story of Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth, that is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. And while he diligently rewrites past newspaper articles to support the party line, he secretly hates the Party. And one day, he dares to express his thoughts in a diary…
4. “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
5. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank
6. “Animal Farm” by George Orwell
7. “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger
11. “The Lord of the Rings” (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) by J.R.R. Tolkien
12. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
13. “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare
14. “The Chronicles of Narnia” (Chronicles of Narnia, #1-7) by C.S. Lewis
15. “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak
16. “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
17. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” (Harry Potter, #7) by J.K. Rowling
18. “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein
19. “The Kite Runne”r by Khaled Hosseini
20. “The Giver” by Lois Lowry
21. “Charlotte's Web” by E.B. White
22. “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss
23. “Little Women” (Little Women, #1) by Louisa May Alcott
24. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
25. “The Hunger Games” (The Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins
26. “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë
27. “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (Harry Potter, #3) by J.K. Rowling
28. “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell
29. “Night” (The Night Trilogy #1) by Elie Wiesel
30. “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll
31. “Holy Bible: King James Version”
32. “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
33. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
34. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (Harry Potter, #4) by J.K. Rowling
35. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
36. “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare
37. “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) by Douglas Adams
38. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (Harry Potter, #6)
by J.K. Rowling
39. “Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited”
by Aldous Huxley
40. “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
41. “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
42. “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
43. “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden
44. “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett
45. “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss
46. “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) by C.S. Lewis
47. “The Odyssey” by Homer
48. “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett
49. “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
50. “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein
51. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
52. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
53. “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak
54. “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton
55. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez
56. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain
57. “Ender's Game” (Ender's Saga, #1) by Orson Scott Card
58. “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
59. “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini
60. “Anne of Green Gables” (Anne of Green Gables, #1) by L.M. Montgomery
61. “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel
62. “Oh, The Places You'll Go!” by Dr. Seuss
63. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” by Ken Kesey
64. “The Count of Monte Crist”o by Alexandre Dumas
65. “Winnie-the-Pooh” (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1) by A.A. Milne
66. “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy
67. “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom
68. “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
69. “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
70. “The Fellowship of the Ring” (The Lord of the Rings, #1) by J.R.R. Tolkien
71. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
72. “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
73. “Frankenstein” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
74. “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
75. “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare
76. “Twilight” (Twilight, #1) by Stephenie Meyer
77. “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood
78. “The Time Traveler's Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger
79. “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
80. “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse
81. “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
82. “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown
83. “The Stranger” by Albert Camus
84. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith
85. “The Little House Collection” (Little House, #1-9) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
86. “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy
87. “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess
88. “Uncle Tom's Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe
89. “The Stand” by Stephen King
90. “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
91. “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque
92. “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
93. The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
94. ‘The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver
95. “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ”
96. “Moby-Dick or, The Whale” by Herman Melville
97. “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
98. “The Good Earth” (House of Earth, #1) by Pearl S. Buck
99. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
100. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (Harry Potter, #2) by J.K. Rowling
101. “The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom” by Corrie ten Boom
102. “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
103. “The Da Vinci Code” (Robert Langdon, #2) by Dan Brown
104. “A Wrinkle in Time” (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1) by Madeleine L'Engle
105. “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
106. “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
107. “Matilda” by Roald Dahl
108. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
109. “Harry Potter Boxset” (Harry Potter, #1-7) by J.K. Rowling
110. “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen
111. “The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings” by Edgar Allan Poe
112. “The Iliad” by Homer
113. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
114. “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls
115. “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman
116. “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch
117. “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss
118. “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck
119. “The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States” by Founding Fathers
120. “Watership Down” (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams
121. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon
122. "Catching Fire" (The Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins
123. "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand
124. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Charlie Bucket, #1) by Roald Dahl
125. "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams Bianco
126. "Alice in Wonderland" by Jane Carruth
127. "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold
128. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl
129. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
130. "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
131. "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom
132. "A Game of Thrones" (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) by George R.R. Martin
133. "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London
134. "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" by Patrick Süskind
135. "Dune" (Dune #1) by Frank Herbert
136. "Angela's Ashes" (Frank McCourt, #1) by Frank McCourt
137. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (Oz, #1) by L. Frank Baum
138. "The Return of the King" (The Lord of the Rings, #3) by J.R.R. Tolkien
139. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving
140. "Animal Farm / 1984" by George Orwell
141. "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch
142. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Millennium, #1) by Stieg Larsson
143. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare
144. "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie
145. "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
146. "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson
147. "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
148. "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas
149. "The Two Towers" (The Lord of the Rings, #2) by J.R.R. Tolkien
150. "Persuasion" by Jane Austen
151. "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran
152. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
153. "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco
154. "The Golden Compass" (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman
155. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" by Dr. Seuss
156. "The Notebook "(The Notebook, #1) by Nicholas Sparks
157. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach
158. "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens
159. "The Red Tent " by Anita Diamant
160. "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett
161. "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
162. "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller
163. "Mockingjay" (The Hunger Games, #3) by Suzanne Collins
164. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" by John Boyne
165. “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez
166. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry
167. “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov
168. “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert
169. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera
170. “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
171. “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle
172. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
173. “Interview with the Vampire” (The Vampire Chronicles, #1) by Anne Rice
174. “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote
175. “The Shadow of the Wind” (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
176. J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
177. “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac
178. “Aesop's Fables” by Aesop
179. “Gulliver's Travels” by Jonathan Swift
180. “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll
181. “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
182. “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau
183. “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls
184. “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe
185. “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin
186. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
by Robert Louis Stevenson
187. “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis
188. “Sophie's World” by Jostein Gaarder
189. “Roots: The Saga of an American Family”
by Alex Haley
190. “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
191. “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo
192. “Candide” by Voltaire
193. “Watchmen” by Alan Moore
194. “The Prince” by Niccolò Machiavelli
195. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells
196. “The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales” by Jacob Grimm
197. “Go Ask Alice” by Beatrice Sparks
198. “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk
199. “The Trial” by Franz Kafka
200. “Emma” by Jane Austen