Harvard Book Store Top 100
In early 2010 Harvard Book Store employees worked together to come up with a list of our favorite books. Each staff member submitted a list of their favorite books of all time, in (rough) order of preference. Their selections were then weighted according to the order and the results were tabulated. It was by no means a perfect system, but it was the best way we could think of to quantify opinions that are in no way quantifiable. Now, we read a lot, so it was hard to narrow it down. What we came up with are the books that moved us, that changed the way we think about the world, and that we will happily read over and over again. We hope you enjoy them too.
- 1
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813 · 28 lists
- 2
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists
- 3
Harry Potter Collection
J.K. Rowling · 2000 · 0 lists
- 4
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank · 1947 · 0 lists
- 5
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847 · 26 lists
- 6
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 7
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1848 · 13 lists
- 8
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · 1861 · 19 lists
- 9
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954 · 23 lists
- 10
Hamlet
William Shakespeare · 1623 · 8 lists
- 11
- 12
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 · 13 lists
- 13
A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett · 1905 · 0 lists
- 14
The Odyssey
Homer · -800 · 21 lists
- 15
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle · 1962 · 7 lists
- 16
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 17
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963 · 12 lists
- 18
The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis · 1970 · 3 lists
- 19
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams · 1979 · 13 lists
- 20
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman · 1855 · 13 lists
- 21
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866 · 22 lists
- 22
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo · 1862 · 16 lists
- 23
Watership Down
Richard Adams · 1972 · 9 lists
- 24
The Stranger
Albert Camus · 1942 · 23 lists
- 25
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1876 · 24 lists
- 26
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 27
I, Claudius
Robert Graves · 1934 · 8 lists
- 28
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · 1925 · 20 lists
- 29
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967 · 33 lists
- 30
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 31 lists
- 31
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving · 1989 · 7 lists
- 32
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman · 2000 · 8 lists
- 33
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · 13 lists
- 34
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871 · 26 lists
- 35
Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut · 1963 · 0 lists
- 36
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 37
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck · 1945 · 3 lists
- 38
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1321 · 25 lists
- 39
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 1967 · 18 lists
- 40
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 41
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut · 1973 · 2 lists
- 42
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 43
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera · 2006 · 7 lists
- 44
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino · 1982 · 6 lists
- 45
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851 · 34 lists
- 46
Dubliners
James Joyce · 1914 · 8 lists
- 47
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969 · 9 lists
- 48
A Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1968 · 0 lists
- 49
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 50
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway · 1964 · 0 lists
- 51
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · 9 lists
- 52
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger · 1953 · 0 lists
- 53
Watchmen
Alan Moore · 1987 · 3 lists
- 54
The Razor’s Edge
W. Somerset Maugham · 1944 · 4 lists
- 55
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 1929 · 26 lists
- 56
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists
- 57
Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges · 1973 · 0 lists
- 58
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers · 1940 · 11 lists
- 59
Orlando
Virginia Woolf · 1928 · 11 lists
- 60
Dealing with Dragons
Patricia C. Wrede · 1990 · 0 lists
- 61
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami · 1997 · 8 lists
- 62
Baudolino
Umberto Eco · 2000 · 0 lists
- 63
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 64
The Blue Sword
Robin McKinley · 1800 · 0 lists
- 65
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace · 1996 · 11 lists
- 66
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson · 2004 · 12 lists
- 67
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson · 1980 · 10 lists
- 68
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Tracy Kidder · 0 lists
- 69
Sometimes a Great Notion
Ken Kesey · 1964 · 4 lists
- 70
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842 · 12 lists
- 71
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon · 2000 · 10 lists
- 72
The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster · 1961 · 0 lists
- 73
- 74
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison · 1977 · 14 lists
- 75
The Bone People
Keri Hulme · 1983 · 3 lists
- 76
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz · 2007 · 14 lists
- 77
The Complete Stories
Franz Kafka · 1971 · 6 lists
- 78
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
Howard Pyle · 1883 · 0 lists
- 79
The Sea, the Sea
Iris Murdoch · 1952 · 5 lists
- 80
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov · 1962 · 13 lists
- 81
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami · 2011 · 0 lists
- 82
White Noise
Don DeLillo · 1984 · 13 lists
- 83
High Fidelity
Nick Hornby · 1995 · 0 lists
- 84
Sea of Poppies
Amitav Ghosh · 2008 · 0 lists
- 85
- 86
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway · 1925 · 0 lists
- 87
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell · 2004 · 7 lists
- 88
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Richard Fariña · 1966 · 0 lists
- 89
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Salman Rushdie · 1990 · 0 lists
- 90
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion · 1968 · 0 lists
- 91
A Wild Sheep Chase
Haruki Murakami · 1982 · 0 lists
- 92
Shadow & Claw
Gene Wolfe · 1987 · 2 lists
- 93
You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Dave Eggers · 2002 · 0 lists
- 94
Jayber Crow
Wendell Berry · 2000 · 0 lists
- 95
Little, Big
John Crowley · 1932 · 0 lists
- 96
Drown
Junot Díaz · 1962 · 0 lists
- 97
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
Grace Paley · 1974 · 0 lists
- 98
The Histories of Herodotus
Herodotus · 1899 · 0 lists
- 99
Good Omens
Terry Pratchett · 1990 · 0 lists
