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Harvard Book Store, Top 100 Books [2010]

114 entries: 110 monographical, four otherwise

Ranked

The Harvard Book Store's list of the staff's "favorite books of all time" is one of the few ranked lists documented here , created much like album lists in popular music: each participant submitted a list in order of preference, then all of the books listed were transferred to a single list, their position determined by how highly they ranked in the individual lists. Presumably, a first-place finish gave a book a certain number of points, a second-place finish a slightly-smaller number, and so on; the description does not go into such detail. Nor is there a list of which staff members participated. Similar collective ranked lists included at Greater Books are those put together by Raymond Queneau, in Nineteen-Fifties France, and more recently by the Norwegian Book Club and J. Peder Zane.

  1. Charlotte Brontë

    2. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
    originally published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell, 1847—English

  2. Jane Austen

    3. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  3. Kurt Vonnegut

    4. Breakfast of Champions
    1973—English

  4. Gabriel García Márquez

    5. Cien Anõs de Soledad
    One Hundred Years of Solitude
    1967—Spanish

  5. Murakami Haruki

    6. Nejimaki-Dori Kuronikuru
    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
    originally published in three volumes, 1994-5—Japanese

  6. Virginia Woolf

    7. To the Lighthouse
    1927 —English

  7. Vladimir Nabokov

    8. Lolita
    1955—English

  8. J R R Tolkien

    9. The Lord of the Rings
    published in three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of the King, 1954-5—English

  9. Ralph Ellison

    10. Invisible Man
    1952—English

  10. Toni Morrison

    11. Beloved
    1987—English

  11. Jorge Luis Borges

    12. Ficciones
    originally entitled El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan, published 1941; expanded 1944 and 1956—Spanish

  12. Dante

    13. La Divina Commedia
    The Divine Comedy
    originally entitled La Commedia; written ca. 1308-21—Italian

  13. Margaret Atwood

    14. The Handmaid's Tale
    1985—English

  14. Michael Chabon

    15. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
    2000—English

  15. Virginia Woolf

    16. Mrs. Dalloway
    published in part, Jul. 1923, as 'Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street', in the Dial; in its entirety, 1925—English

  16. Mikhail Bulgakov

    17. Mástyer i Margaríta
    The Master and Margarita
    published in part, 1966-67, in Moskva; in its entirety, 1973; revised 1989—Russian

    Lewis Carroll
  17. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    18. 1865—English

  18. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

    19. 1871—English

  19. George Eliot

    20. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
    originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872—English

  20. Madeleine L'Engle

    21. A Wrinkle in Time
    1962—English

  21. John Irving
    A Prayer for Owen Meaney
    1989—English

    • Joan Didion

    22. Slouching Toards Bethlehem
    essays originally published 1961-7 in the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times, Holiday, Vogue, and the American Scholar—English

  22. Italo Calvino

    23. Se una Notte d'Inverno un Viaggiatore
    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
    1979—Italian

  23. Harper Lee

    24. To Kill a Mockingbird
    1960—English

  24. Charles Dickens

    25. Great Expectations
    originally published serially Dec. 1860-Aug. 1861 in All the Year Round—English

    J K Rowling
  25. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    26. 1997—English

  26. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    27. 1998—English

  27. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

    28. 1999—English

  28. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

    29. 2000—English

  29. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

    30. 2003—English

  30. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

    31. 2005—English

  31. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

    32. 2007—English

  32. Leo Tolstoy

    33. Anna Karenina
    published in part serially 1873-7 in Rússkij Véstnik; in its entirety, 1877;—Russian

  33. James Joyce

    34. Dubliners
    1914—English

  34. Salman Rushdie

    35. Midnight's Children
    1981—English

  35. Amitav Ghosh

    36. Sea of Poppies
    2008—English

  36. Don DeLillo

    37. White Noise
    1985—English

  37. Tracy Kidder

    38. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, the Man Who Would Cure the World
    2003—English

  38. Fyodor Dostoevsky

    39. Prestuplénie i Nakazániye
    Crime and Punishment
    originally published serially Jan.-Dec. 1866 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian

  39. Joseph Heller

    40. Catch-22
    1961—English

  40. Phillip Pullman

    41. His Dark Materials
    originally published in three volumes: Northern Lights, 1995 (U S title: The Golden Compass); The Subtle Knife, 1997; The Amber Spyglass, 2000—English

  41. Carson McCullers

    42. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    1940—English

  42. Louisa M Alcott

    43. Little Women
    originally published in two volumes: Little Women, 1868; and Good Wives, 1869—English

  43. Ursula K Le Guin

    44. A Wizard of Earthsea
    1968—English

  44. Ernest Hemingway

    45. A Moveable Feast
    1964—English

  45. Kurt Vonnegut

    46. Cat's Cradle
    1963—English

  46. Douglas Adams

    47. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    1979 novel based on 1978 radio play—English

  47. Herodotus

    48. Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek

  48. William Faulkner

    49. The Sound and the Fury
    1929—English

  49. Murakami Haruki

    50. Hitsuji o Meguru Boken
    A Wild Sheep Chase
    1982—Japanese

  50. F Scott Fitzgerald

    51. The Great Gatsby
    1925—English

  51. Zora Neale Hurston

    52. Their Eyes Were Watching God
    1937—English

  52. Norton Juster

    53. The Phantom Tollbooth
    1961—English

  53. Marilynne Robinson

    54. Housekeeping
    1980—English

  54. Patricia C Wrede

    55. Dealing With Dragons
    published in part, 1987, as 'The Improper Princess', in Spaceships and Spells; in its entirety, 1990—English

  55. Sylvia Plath

    56. The Bell Jar
    originally published under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas, 1963—English

  56. John Steinbeck

    57. Cannery Row
    1945—English

  57. Murakami Haruki

    58. Sekai no Owari to Hadoboirudo Wandarando
    Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
    1985—Japanese

  58. J D Salinger

    59. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
    1961; two novellas originally published in the New Yorker, 1955 and 1959, respectively—English

    Gene Wolfe
  59. The Shadow of the Torturer

    60. first volume of four-volume The Book of the New Sun, 1980

  60. The Claw of the Conciliator

    61. second volume of four-volume The Book of the New Sun, 1981

  61. Nathaniel Hawthorne

    62. The Scarlet Letter
    1850—English

  62. Alan Moore
    Watchmen
    originally published serially 1986-7—English

    • Flannery O'Connor

    63. The Complete Stories
    1971; includes A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, 1955; Everything That Rises Must Converge, 1965; plus 12 stories previously published in periodicals or anthologies—English

  63. Virginia Woolf

    64. Orlando: A Biography
    1928—English

  64. Herman Melville

    65. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  65. Nick Hornby

    66. High Fidelity
    1995—English

  66. Richard Adams

    67. Watership Down
    1972—English

  67. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    68. Half of a Yellow Sun
    2006—English

  68. Junot Díaz

    69. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    2007—English

  69. Albert Camus

    70. L'Étranger
    The Stranger
    1942—French

  70. Vladimir Nabokov

    71. Pale Fire
    1962—English

  71. Anne Frank

    72. Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 - 1 Augustus 1944
    The Diary of a Young Girl
    1947—Dutch

  72. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

    73. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
    1990—English

    C S Lewis
  73. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

    74. 1950—English

  74. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

    75. 1951—English

  75. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

    76. 1952—English

  76. The Silver Chair

    77. 1953—English

  77. The Horse and His Boy

    78. 1954—English

  78. The Magician's Nephew

    79. 1955—English

  79. The Last Battle

    80. 1956—English

  80. Ernest Hemingway

    81. For Whom the Bell Tolls
    1940—English

  81. Grace Paley

    82. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
    1974—English

  82. Salman Rushdie

    83. Haroun and the Sea of Stories
    1990—English

  83. Dave Eggers

    84. You Shall Know Our Velocity
    2002—English

  84. Umberto Eco

    85. Baudolino
    2000—Italian

  85. Richard Fariña

    86. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
    1966—English

  86. Nikolai Gogol

    87. Mërtvyâ Duši
    Dead Souls
    1842—Russian

  87. Robert Graves

    88. I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B C, Murdered and Deified A D 54
    1934—English

  88. Ernest Hemingway

    89. In Our Time
    1924; expanded 1925—English

  89. Wendell Berry

    90. Jayber Crow
    2000—English

  90. John Crowley

    91. Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament
    1981—English

    --
  91. Popul Vuh

    92. Harvard Book Store specifies the Dennis Tedlock translation—K'iche'

  92. Ursula K Le Guin

    93. The Left Hand of Darkness
    1969—English

  93. Howard Pyle

    94. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
    1883—English

  94. W Somerset Maugham

    95. The Razor's Edge
    1944—English

  95. Iris Murdoch

    96. The Sea, the Sea
    1978—English

  96. Milan Kundera

    97. Nesnesitelná Lehkost Bytí
    The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    French translation, L'Insoutenable Légèreté de l'Être, 1984; Czech original, 1985—Czech

  97. Keri Hulme
    The Bone People
    1984—English

    • J D Salinger

    Nine Stories
    originally published 1948-53 in varied periodicals: the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Information World Review—English

    • Junot Díaz

    98. Drown
    ten stories, six of which originally published in Story, the New Yorker, Time Out New York, and the Paris Review—English

  98. William Shakespeare

    99. Hamlet
    1602—English

  99. David Foster Wallace

    100. Infinite Jest
    1996—English

  100. Edith Wharton

    101. The Age of Innocence
    1920—English

  101. Robin McKinley

    102. The Blue Sword
    1982—English

  102. Homer

    103. Odýsseia
    The Odyssey
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  103. Toni Morrison

    104. Song of Solomon
    1977—English

  104. Marilynne Robinson

    105. Gilead
    2004—English

  105. Frances Hodgson Burnett

    106. A Little Princess
    originally entitled Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's Boarding School, published serially 1888 in St. Nicholas Magazine; revised and retitled 1905—English

  106. Howard Zinn

    107. A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present
    1980; expanded and revised through fifth edition, 2005—English

  107. Victor Hugo

    108. Les Misérables
    1862—French

  108. Ken Kesey

    109. Sometimes a Great Notion
    1964—English

  109. David Mitchell

    110. Cloud Atlas
    2004—English

  110. Walt Whitman

    111. Leaves of Grass
    1855; expanded and revised through ninth edition, 1892—English