So many books, so little time – it’s a stress that all book lovers feel. But to try and help with your ever-growing TBR, Goodreads has created a list of top books from the past 100 years.
Essentially, if you read one book from each year of release, it should be this one.
They explained that they wanted to cover a “wide range of genres, topics, authors, and ideas,” rather than just choosing the most ‘popular’ book from each year, as they joked that some years were “very Agatha Christie”.
Sharon from Goodreads explained that “you’ll see several stone-cold classics, along with a few books you probably read in your high school English class”.
So, which are the best books from each year? Let’s find out…
1925 – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
1926 – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
1927 – Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
1928 – All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
1929 – Passing by Nella Larsen
1930 – As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
1931 – The Waves by Virginia Woolf
1932 – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1933 – Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
1934 – Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1935 – Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
1936 – Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
1937 – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
1938 – Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
1939 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1940 – Native Son by Richard Wright
1941 – The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges
1942 – The Stranger by Albert Camus
1943 – The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
1944 – No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
1945 – The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
1946 – The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
1947 – The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
1948 – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
1949 – 1984 by George Orwell
1950 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
1951 – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
1952 – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
1953 – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
1954 – The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
1955 – Lolita by Vladimr Nabokov
1956 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
1957 – On the Road by Jack Kerouac
1958 – Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
1959 – The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
1960 – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1961 – Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
1962 – A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle
1963 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
1964 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
1965 – Dune by Frank Herbert
1966 – Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
1967 – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1968 – A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
1970 – The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison
1971 – The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
1972 – The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
1973 – The Princess Bride by William Goldman
1974 – If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
1975 – Shogun by James Clavell
1976 – Roots by Alex Haley
1977 – The Shining by Stephen King
1978 – The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
1979 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1980 – The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
1981 – Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1982 – The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
1983 – The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
1984 – The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
1985 – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood
1986 – Maus by Art Spiegelman
1987 – Beloved by Tony Morrison
1988 – The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushtie
1989 – The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
1990 – V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
1991 – Possession by A.S. Byatt
1992 – The Secret History by Donna Tartt
1993 – Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
1994 – The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
1995 – Wicked by Gregory Maguire
1996 – A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
1997 – Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
1998 – A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
1999 – all about love by bell hooks
2000 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2001 – Atonement by Ian McEwan
2002 – Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2003 – The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2004 – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2005 – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2006 – The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2007 – In The Woods by Tana French
2008 – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
2009 – Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
2010 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
2011 – The Martian by Andy Weir
2012 – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
2013 – Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
2014 – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
2015 – The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
2016 – The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
2017 – Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
2018 – Circe by Madeline Miller
2019 – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
2020 – The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
2021 – Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
2022 – Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsoliver
2023 – Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
2024 – James by Percival Everett
How many of these top-recommended books have you read so far?
We have so many more books we want to read now, thanks to this amazing list, packed full of must-buy authors.
Which are you going to read next?
Content Source: www.express.co.uk