The top 100 books
Warning – includes photography and art books! Comics! A dictionary (of sorts)! And no Austen or Dickens or Middlemarch! In alphabetical order.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Tintin Hergé
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
The Americans Robert Frank
Atomised Michel Houellebecq
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller
A Biographical Dictionary of Film David Thomson
Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
Bound for Glory Woody Guthrie
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
The Cheese Monkeys Chipp Kidd
Chronicles Volume One Bob Dylan
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
Collected Stories Tennessee Williams
Collected Short Stories W. Somerset Maugham
A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson
The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham
Death and the Penguin Andrey Kurkov
Designed by Peter Saville Emily King
Dracula Bram Stoker
Eric Gill Fiona McCarthy
Factory Records: The Complete
Graphic Album Matthew Robertson
Factotum Charles Bukowski
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Fictions Jorge Luis Borges
The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
Fungus the Bogeyman Raymond Briggs
The Ginger Man JP Donleavy
Going East: Two Decades of Asian Photography Max Pam
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond
Herzog Saul Bellow
The Hills Were Joyful Together Roger Mais
Hitchcock Francois Truffaut
The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende
In Cold Blood Truman Capote
In the Eye of the Sun Ahdaf Soueif
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
The Journey is the Destination:
The Journals of Dan Eldon Dan Eldon
Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
Letters Francois Truffaut
London Fields Martin Amis
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
The Lorax Dr Seuss
Lost Horizon James Hilton
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
Maus Art Spiegelman
Max Ernst Collages Werner Spies
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
Midnight’s Children Salmon Rushdie
Miles: The Autobiography Miles Davis
Moonfleet J. Meade Falkner
Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio James Webb Young
Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
No Logo Naomi Klein
On the Road Jack Kerouac
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood
Perfume Patrick Süskind
Pigeon’s Luck Vladimir Tretchikoff
The Plague Albert Camus
Riddley Walker Russell Hoban
Ringolevio, A Life Played for Keeps Emmett Grogan
The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald
Rip It Up and Start Again Simon Reynolds
Robinson Chris Petit
Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design Jennifer Bass
A Scanner Darkly Philip K Dick
Scorsese on Scorsese Ian Christie (Ed.)
A Season in Hell Arthur Rimbaud
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ Sue Townsend
Short Stories Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
The Songlines Bruce Chatwin
The Story of Art EH Gombrich
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
The Tiger Who Came to Tea Judith Kerr
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky Patrick Hamilton
Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell Deborah Solomon
The War of the Worlds HG Wells
Watchmen Alan Moore
Ways of Seeing John Berger
We Need To Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
Where I’m Calling From: The Selected Stories Raymond Carver
Where the Wild Things are Maurice Sendak
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
William Eggleston’s Guide William Eggleston
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami
Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë
Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It Geoff Dyer
I really need a parallel life just for reading. I own about fifty books that I’ve never read but slowing getting through, plus I’ve a list of about a hundred I want to read (The Master and Margarita, Steppenwolf, etc) then after that (so in about a decade), all the books I should read – Middlemarch, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Moby-Dick, Tristram Shandy, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Then recent novels which I hardly ever read, something by someone like Sally Rooney or Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (which’ll be about twenty years old by the time I get around to reading them).
Previously on Barnflakes
The top 100 films
The top 100 albums
Books I’ve read this year, 2019
Top ten most difficult fiction books to read
Notes on not reading anymore, etc
Books of the year 2011
Illustrated children’s books (for parents)
Alice and Arthur