In July 2014 I set myself the challenge to finish 100 must-read books before I die. Here is the list of books and my ongoing tally.
- Total books read: 62
- Books to go: 38
- Time passed: 11 years, 4 months
#100bookchallenge
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (11th book read – finished 28 March 2015, 428 pages over 33 days, read my review here)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (45th book read – finished 7 February 2021, 592 pages over 55 days, read my review here)
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (23rd book read – finished 11 September 2016, 307 pages over 8 days, read my review here).
6 The Bible – The New Testament (56th book read – finished 25 March 2024, 570 pages over 168 days, read my review here)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (26th book read – finished 17 April 2017, 316 pages over 52 days, read my review here).
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell (46th book read – finished 9 May 2021, 297 pages over 7 days, read my review here)
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (58th book read – finished 11 September 2024, 397 pages over 12 days, read my review here).
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (15th book read – finished 7 October 2015, 484 pages over 65 days, read my review here)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott (22nd book read – finished 1 September 2016, 504 pages over 70 days, read my review here)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (51st book read, finished 23 October 2022, 392 pages over 25 days, read my review here)
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller (14th book read – finished 3 August 2015, 518 pages over 82 days, read my review here)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (29th book read – finished 10 November 2018, 448 pages over 21 days, read my review here)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien (41st book read – finished 30 June 2020, 310 pages over 41 days, read my review here)
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk (52nd book read – finished 12 January 2023, 407 pages over 43 days, read my review here).
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (7th book read – finished 14 December 2014, 220 pages over 5 days, read my review here)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (6th book read – finished 8 December 2014, 518 pages over 35 days, read my review here).
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (13th book read – finished 12 May 2015, 215 pages over 32 days, read my review here).
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (1st book read – finished 23 August 2014, 509 pages over 31 days, read my review here).
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (55th book read – finished 30 September 2023, 331 pages over 61 days, read my review here)
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (24th book read – finished 28 September 2016, 327 pages over 12 days, read my review here)
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen (30th book read – finished 29 December 2018, 574 pages over 48 days, read my review here).
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (27th book read – finished 1 July 2017, 301 pages over 70 days, read my review here)
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis (17th book read – finished 13 November 2015, 185 pages over 5 days, read my review here).
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (21st book read – finished 17 June 2016, 340 pages over 6 days, read my review here)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres (54th book read – finished 27 July 2023, 533 pages over 177 days, read my review here).
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (62nd book read – finished 11 November 2025, 493 pages over 15 days, read my review here)
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne (48th book read – finished 23 May 2021, pages over 102 days, read my review here)
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (33rd book read – finished 27 July 2019, 608 pages over 35 days, read my review here).
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (61st book read – finished 7 September 2025, 421 pages over 217 days, read my review here)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery (60th book read – finished 23 October 2024, 392 pages over 10 days, read my review here)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy (36th book read – finished 8 December 2019, 445 pages over 33 days, read my review here).
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (44th book read – finished 13 November 2020, 319 pages over 13 days, read my review here)
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (10th book read – finished 14 February 2015, 223 pages over 10 days, read my review here)
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (43rd book read – finished 27 November 2020, 354 pages over 18 days, read my review here).
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (20th book read – finished 10 June 2016, 562 pages over 99 days, read my review here).
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons (16th book read – finished 4 November 2015, 233 pages over 15 days, read my review here)
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (2nd book read – finished 31 August 2014, 206 pages over 8 days, read my review here)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon (39th book read – finished 4 April 2020, 268 pages over 5 days, read my review here)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (38th book read – finished 31 March 2020, 424 pages over 34 days, read my review here).
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (25th book read – finished 23 January 2017, 121 pages over 1 day, read my review here)
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold (31st book read – finished 8 January 2019, 328 pages over 4 days, read my review here)
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac (53rd book read – finished 24 January 2023, 280 pages over 11 days, read my review here).
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (35th book read – finished 5 November 2019, 310 pages over 11 days, read my review here).
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville (42nd book read – finished 8 November 2020, 634 pages over 104 days, read my review here).
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker (28th book read – finished 5 January 2018, 613 pages over 35 days, read my review here)
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (19th book read – finished 10 March 2016, 298 pages over 6 days, read my review here)
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (5th book read – finished 19 October 2014, 265 pages over 17 days, read my review here).
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome (57th book read – finished 14 May 2024, 370 pages over 49 days, read my review here)
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (40th book read – finished 19 May 2020, 529 pages over 45 days, read my review here)
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (47th book read – finished 14 July 2020, 258 pages over 7 days, read my review here).
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (58th book read – finished 29 September 2024, 361 pages over 124 days, read my review here)
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White (8th book read – finished 21 December 2014, 175 pages over 7 days, read my review here).
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom (12th book read – finished 10 April 2015, 196 pages over 14 days, read my review here)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (9th book read – finished 7 December 2015, 508 pages over 17 days, read my review here)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (49th book read – finished 24 July 2021, 93 pages over 34 days, read my review here)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks (4th book read – finished 24 September 2014, 184 pages over 11 days, read my review here)
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams (37th book read – finished 24 February 2019, 470 pages over 77 days, read my review here).
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole (34th book read – finished 14 October 2019, 429 pages over 47 days, read my review here)
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute (18th book read – finished 7 February, 2016, 359 pages over 85 days, read my review here).
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (3rd book read – finished 13 September 2014, 337 pages over 14 days, read my review here)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl (32nd book read – finished 13 June 2019, 155 pages over 35 days, read my review here).
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (50th book read – finished 28 September 2022, 1194 pages over 409 days, read my review here)
(This list has been copied from here at List Challenges.)
Jessie Ansons 