100 Best Books Challenge

So, whilst having a brief (OK, not so brief) run around over at Bloglovin (thanks for the recommendation J Lenni Dorner), I came across this Challenge.

My initial reaction was that I’ll almost certainly be updating this list forever as people remind me of books I’ve loved, but not rated, over at Goodreads. But, a person’s got to start somewhere, so here’s my best shot. The first 30 or so were relatively easy to choose, as they all got a perfect 5/5 rating on Goodreads. But what do do about those that I’ve rated 4/5? There are way too many to fit into the remaining 70ish spaces, so how to decide on those which will make the cut?

1. The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
2. To Say Nothing of the Dog – Connie Willis
3. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War – Max Brooks
4. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
5. The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan
6. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor
7. Notes from an Exhibition – Patrick Gale
8. Regeneration – Pat Barker
9. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
10. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie
11. The Moon’s A Balloon – David Niven
12. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
15. Atonement – Ian McEwen
16. Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling
17. Lake Wobegon Days – Garrison Kiellor (audio version)
18. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
19. Flight Behaviour – Barbara Kingsolver
20. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
21. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
22. IQ84 – Haruki Murakami
23. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
24. J – Howard Jacobson
25. Days of Grace: A Memoir – Arthur Ashe
26. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
27. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
28. The Skeleton Cupboard: stories from a clinical psychologist – Tanya Byron
29. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
30. Being Mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end – Atul Gawande
31. The Secret History – Donna Tart
32. This Thing of Darkness – Harry Thompson
33. Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness – Alexandra Fuller
34. After You’d Gone – Maggie O’Farrell
35. The Great Gatsby – Scott F Fitzgerald
36. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
37. The Shadow of the Winds – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
38. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
39. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
40. The Matisse Stories – A S Byatt
41. In the Psychiatrist’s Chair – Anthony Clare
42. Monstrous Regiment – Terry Pratchett
43. The Raj Quartet – Paul Scott
44. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
45. The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde
46. Chesapeake – James Mitchene
47. His Dark Materials trilogy – Philip Pullman
48. Harry Potter series – J K Rowling
49. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
50. Pere Goriot – Honore de Balzac
51. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
52. Winnie the Pooh – A A Milne
53. My Antonia – Willa Cather
54. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby
55. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
56. Bring Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel
57. Love’s Executioner and other tales of psychotherapy – Irwin D Yalom
58. The Hare with Amber Eyes: A family’s century of art and loss – Edmund de Waal
59. Blame My Brain: the amazing teenage brain revealed – Nicola Morgan
60. Client Centred Therapy: its current practice, implications & theory – Carl R Rogers
61. Therapeutic Journal Writing: An Introduction for Professionals – Kate Thompson
62. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell
63. The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell
64. Slade House – David Mitchell
65. History of the Rain – Niall Williams
66. Red Storm Rising – Tom Clancy
67. The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management – Isa Lee Wolf
68. A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James
69. Basic Freud – Michael Kahn
70. Race, Culture and Counselling – Colin Lago
71. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke
72. The Drifters – James A Mitchener
73. The Garden of Evening Mists – Eng Tan Twan
74. Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
75. Strange Weather in Tokyo – Hiromi Kawakami
76. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture – Douglas Copeland
77. My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout
78. The Fisherman – Chigoze Obioma
79. The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome – Tony Attwood
80. Centennial – James A Mitchener
81. The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
82. The Bridge: Dialogues across Cultures – Talia Levine Bar-Yoseph
83. Rough Music – Patrick Gale
84. Sane New World: Taming the Mind – Ruby Wax
85. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
86. Friendly Fire – Patrick Gale
87. The Leaving of Things – Jay Antani
88. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster – Svetlana Alexievich
89. The Year of the Runaways – Sahota Sunjeev
90. Gestalt Counselling in Action – Patruska Clarkson
91. Man with a Blue Scarf: On sitting for a portrait by Lucien Freud – Martin Gayford
92. Doomsday Book – Connie Willis
93. Making the Big Leap: Coach yourself to create the life you really want – Suzy Greaves
94. The Emotionally Absent Mother: A guide to self-healing and getting the love you missed – Jasmin Lee Cori
95. Do Not Say We Have Nothing – Madeleine Thien
96. How to Be Both – Ali Smith
97. The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
98. The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle
99. Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson
100. How to Look Good Naked – Gok Wan

I changed it slightly from the list I saw to include non-fiction, as that plays too big a part in my reading to ignore. I also included some favourites from childhood, as well as books on coaching and psychology by including multi-parters such as Harry Potter, His Dark Materials and the Raj Quartet as one selection.

I know it’s generally good manners to link to books, but 100 links …

What do you think of my selection?  I’d especially love to read your suggestions.  And your lists, perhaps you could link to them in the comments?

© Debra Carey 2017