These aren’t just the novels I emotionally loved, but books I admired, respected, recommend, want to remember, plan to reread, studied and want to study. This list is a work of memory – of both recalling what I’ve read over a lifetime, and a listing to remind me who I am by what I’ve read. Sadly, it’s also a list to supplement my aging and forgetting brain.
I figure I’ve read at least 2,000 novels in my lifetime. However, but not even one-tenth of them will make this list (currently at 171). It seems I could have skipped an awful lot of books. Many of the novels on this list are ones I’ve reread and plan to reread again. However, as I reread books I might remove them from the list. I’m expecting this list to shrink as I age.
My mind can barely recall these titles now. And as I reread these books, I will drop some from the list because they are forgettable. Others I will drop because I will no longer be able to keep them in my memory. I expect as I age, my list will distill down to a much shorter list, to ones I will regularly reread and cherish.
- 1719 – Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- 1812 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- 1815 – Emma by Jane Austen
- 1818 – Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- 1818 – Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- 1818 – Persuasion by Jane Austen
- 1826 – The Last Man by Marr Shelley
- 1843 – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- 1847 – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- 1847 – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- 1851 – Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- 1853 – Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- 1861 – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- 1868 – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- 1871 – Middlemarch by George Elliot
- 1874 – Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
- 1875 – The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
- 1877 – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- 1881 – The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- 1883 – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- 1884 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- 1888 – Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
- 1895 – The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- 1897 – Dracula by Bram Stoker
- 1898 – The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- 1900 – Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
- 1900 – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
- 1902 – The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- 1905 – The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- 1908 – Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- 1911 – The Hamdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford
- 1912 – Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
- 1912 – Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- 1913 – The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum
- 1913 – The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- 1915 – Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- 1916 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- 1920 – The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- 1922 – The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1927 – The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon
- 1928 – Lady Chatterley’s Love by D. H. Lawrence
- 1929 – The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- 1930 – Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
- 1930 – The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- 1933 – When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer
- 1934 – After Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer
- 1935 – Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
- 1936 – Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
- 1937 – Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- 1937 – Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
- 1938 – Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
- 1940 – Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
- 1940 – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- 1942 – The Stranger by Albert Camus
- 1945 – Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
- 1945 – High Barbaree by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
- 1947 – The Humanoids by Jack Williamson
- 1948 – Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1949 – Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
- 1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
- 1949 – The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
- 1950 – A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
- 1950 – Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1951 – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- 1951 – The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
- 1952 – City by Clifford Simak
- 1952 – Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
- 1952 – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- 1952 – The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1953 – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- 1953 – Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
- 1953 – More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
- 1953 – Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1954 – A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn
- 1954 – Brain Wave by Poul Anderson
- 1954 – Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- 1955 – The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
- 1955 – The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
- 1955 – Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1956 – Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1957 – On the Beach by Nevil Shute
- 1957 – On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- 1957 – The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1957 – The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
- 1958 – A Case of Conscience by James Blish
- 1958 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
- 1958 – Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1958 – The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
- 1959 – A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- 1959 – Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
- 1959 – Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 1961 – Catch-22 by Joseph Keller
- 1961 – Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1962 – Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
- 1962 – Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
- 1962 – The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
- 1963 – Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1963 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- 1963 – Way Station by Clifford Simak
- 1964 – Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick
- 1965 – Dune by Frank Herbert
- 1965 – Stoner by John Williams
- 1965 – The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
- 1966 – Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
- 1966 – Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany
- 1966 – Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- 1966 – Mindswap by Robert Sheckley
- 1966 – The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
- 1966 – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1968 – Chocky by John Wyndham
- 1968 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
- 1968 – Nova by Samuel R. Delany
- 1968 – Pavane by Keith Roberts
- 1968 – Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
- 1968 – Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
- 1968 – The Last Starship From Earth by John Boyd
- 1968 – True Grit by Charles Portis
- 1969 – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- 1969 – The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 1970 – Downward to the Earth by Robert Silverberg
- 1970 – Ringworld by Larry Niven
- 1970 – Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
- 1970 – The Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker
- 1972 – Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
- 1972 – When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold
- 1973 – Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
- 1975 – Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick
- 1975 – The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
- 1980 – A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- 1980 – Timescape by Gregory Benford
- 1984 – Neuromancer by William Gibson
- 1985 – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- 1985 – The Postman by David Brin
- 1986 – Replay by Ken Grimwood
- 1986 – Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
- 1987 – Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
- 1988 – Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- 1989 – Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- 1991 – A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
- 1992 – A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
- 1992 – Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
- 1992 – Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- 1994 – Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
- 1995 – The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
- 1996 – Bellwether by Connie Willis
- 1996 – Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling
- 1996 – The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
- 1999 – Duane’s Depressed by Larry McMurtry
- 1999 – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
- 2001 – The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- 2002 – The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
- 2004 – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- 2004 – The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
- 2006 – King Dork by Frank Portman
- 2006 – The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- 2008 – Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
- 2009 – The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
- 2009 – Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
- 2010 – House Rules by Jodi Picoult
- 2011 – Among Others by Jo Walton
- 2011 – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- 2013 – The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
- 2014 – Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
- 2014 – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- 2014 – The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
- 2015 – Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
- 2015 – Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
- 2016 – All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
- 2017 – New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Auxiliary Memory 