13 "Top 100 Books" lists combined and condensed in to one master list
Image:
623 books in all -- a lifetime of reading potential!
The Great Gatsby
994 Points
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."
The Grapes of Wrath
963 Points
"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."
Nineteen Eighty-Four
946 Points
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Ulysses
925 Points
"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."
Lolita
856 Points
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth."
Catch-22
823 Points
"It was love at first sight."
The Catcher in the Rye
735 Points
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they...
Beloved
719 Points
"124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children."
The Sound and the Fury
703 Points
"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."
To Kill a Mockingbird
701 Points
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
The Lord of the Rings
691 Points
"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."
One Hundred Years of Solitude
667 Points
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de..."
Brave New World
664 Points
"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories."
To the Lighthouse
642 Points
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
Invisible Man
640 Points
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—...
Gone with the Wind
606 Points
"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were."
Jane Eyre
562 Points
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined..."
On the Road
543 Points
"I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up."
Pride and Prejudice
540 Points
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Lord of the Flies
537 Points
"The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon."
Middlemarch
519 Points
"Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not..."
Anna Karenina
505 Points
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (C. Garnett, 1946) and (J. Carmichael, 1960)All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy..."
Animal Farm
495 Points
"Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes."
A Passage to India
469 Points
"Except for the Marabar caves--and they are twenty miles off--the city of Chrandrapore presents nothing extraordinary."
In Search of Lost Time
455 Points
"For a long time, I would go to bed early. [Fr., Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure.]"
Wuthering Heights
417 Points
The Chronicles of Narnia
403 Points
"There is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. (From The Magician's Nephew, first in chronological order)Once there were four children whose names were..."
The Color Purple
392 Points
"You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy."
Midnight's Children
391 Points
"I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time."
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
389 Points
"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...."
Winnie-the-Pooh
383 Points
"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin."
Heart of Darkness
382 Points
"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it..."
Mrs Dalloway
365 Points
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa..."
Slaughterhouse-Five
358 Points
"All this happened, more or less."
War and Peace
357 Points
"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. (Maude/Maude)
Of Mice and Men
349 Points
"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green."
Moby-Dick
348 Points
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see..."
Little Women
348 Points
"“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."
Native Son
348 Points
"Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
344 Points
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million..."
Great Expectations
337 Points
"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be..."
The Sun Also Rises
335 Points
"Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton."
Rebecca
333 Points
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
The Stranger
331 Points
"Mother died today. (Stuart Gilbert translation)Maman died today. (Matthew Ward translation)Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
327 Points
"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or..."
For Whom the Bell Tolls
322 Points
"He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees."
The Hobbit
322 Points
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to..."
Madame Bovary
322 Points
"Nous étions à l'Etude, quand le Proviseur entra suivi d'un "nouveau" habillé en bourgeois et d'un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre.We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in,..."
The Wind in the Willows
318 Points
"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. "
The Handmaid’s Tale
316 Points
"We slept in what had once been the gymnasium."
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
315 Points
"On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor."
Their Eyes Were Watching God
312 Points
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."
A Prayer for Owen Meany
311 Points
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but..."
Emma
310 Points
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the..."
David Copperfield
309 Points
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I..."
The Portrait of a Lady
306 Points
"Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the..."
The Trial
304 Points
"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses..."
Crime and Punishment
298 Points
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. (Garnett..."
A Clockwork Orange
295 Points
"'What's it going to be then, eh?'"
The Age of Innocence
292 Points
"On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York."
Don Quixote
291 Points
"Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I would wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable.Prologue: Idle..."
As I Lay Dying
281 Points
"Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file."
His Dark Materials
277 Points
"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. (Northern lights)Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..."..."
Brideshead Revisited
269 Points
"When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning."
The Golden Notebook
266 Points
"The two women were alone in the London flat."
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
263 Points
"You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter.You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The..."
Things Fall Apart
255 Points
"Okonkwo was well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing..."
Tom Jones
255 Points
"An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money."
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
252 Points
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Song of Solomon
250 Points
"The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock."
Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable
247 Points
"I am in my mother's room."
Finnegans Wake
247 Points
"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
Absalom, Absalom!
246 Points
"From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it..."
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
244 Points
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much...
Charlotte's Web
236 Points
"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."
The Ambassadors
235 Points
"Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted."
Sons and Lovers
232 Points
"The Bottoms" succeeded to "Hell Row."
A Farewell to Arms
230 Points
"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains."
Women in Love
226 Points
"Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was..."
Birdsong
226 Points
"The boulevard du cange was a broad, quiet street that marked the eastern flank of the city of Amiens."
Gulliver's travels
225 Points
"My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons."
Watership Down
225 Points
"The primroses were over."
Gravity's Rainbow
221 Points
"A screaming comes across the sky."
Frankenstein
219 Points
"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.The event on which this fiction is founded has been..."
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
215 Points
"I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family."
The Old Man and the Sea
215 Points
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
Dune
214 Points
"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. . . . from "Manual of Muad'dib" by the Princess IrulanIn the week before their departure to Arakis, when all..."
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
211 Points
Go Tell It on the Mountain
208 Points
"Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father."
All the King's Men
207 Points
"MASON CITY. To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it."
The Magic Mountain
203 Points
"Die Geschichte Hans Castorps, die wir erzählen wollen, - nicht um seinetwillen (denn der Leser wird einen einfachen, wenn auch ansprechenden jungen Mann in ihm kennenlernen), sondern um der..."
The Call of the Wild
203 Points
"Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound..."
The Tin Drum
201 Points
"Granted: I'm an inmate of a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of his sight; for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see..."
The 42nd Parallel
200 Points
"General Mills with his gaudy uniform and spirited charger was the center for all eyes especially as his steed was extremely restless."
Under the Volcano
199 Points
"Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus."
Disgrace
193 Points
"For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well."
The Diary of a Young Girl
193 Points
"On Friday, 12th June, I woke up at six o' clock and no wonder; it was my birthday"
Bleak House
189 Points
"London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall."
Light in August
188 Points
"Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'"
The Scarlet Letter
187 Points
"A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the..."
Find the full list here: http://www.alistofbooks.com/
---
Syndicate
Recent comments