The challenge came from Jean-Marc, then Cuné picked it up: list your 100 favorite novels. I'm jumping in because I'm a sucker for lists, even with constraints. And there were two big ones:
One: novels only. No travel writing, no essays, no memoirs—just fiction.
Two: one title per author max (unless it's a series). For someone like me who reads obsessively and collects multiple books by the same writers, this hurt. If I could only keep one book per author on my shelves, I'd lose three-quarters of my collection.
But I played along. Some of these books I've loved for decades—some I'm afraid to reread in case they don't hold up. Others I discovered recently. This list would've been different a year ago. It'll be different a year from now. Call it a snapshot.
The List
- Abe, Kobo - The Woman in the Dunes
- Abbey, Edward - The Monkey Wrench Gang
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Half of a Yellow Sun
- Audeguy, Stéphane - The Theory of Clouds
- Auster, Paul - The Music of Chance
- Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
- Bello, Antoine - The Falsifiers Trilogy
- Berberova, Nina - The Italics Are Mine
- Boyd, William - The New Confessions
- Boyden, Joseph - Through Black Spruce
- Boyle, T.C. - Water Music
- Bioy Casares, Adolfo - The Invention of Morel
- Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
- Bruen, Ken - The Guards
- Byatt, A.S. - Possession
- Cabré, Jaume - Confiteor
- Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Céline, Louis-Ferdinand - Journey to the End of the Night
- Cercas, Javier - The Impostor
- Claudel, Philippe - The Brodeck Report
- Coetzee, J.M. - In the Heart of the Country
- Davies, Robertson - The Deptford Trilogy
- De Beauvoir, Simone - Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
- De Kerangal, Maylis - The Heart
- Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations
- Djian, Philippe - Betty Blue
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
- Du Maurier, Daphné - Rebecca
- Dumas, Alexandre - The Count of Monte Cristo
- Eco, Umberto - The Name of the Rose
- Edwards, G.B. - Sarnia
- Ellroy, James - The Black Dahlia
- Fante, John - Ask the Dust
- Ferrari, Jérôme - The Principle
- Forster, E.M. - A Room with a View
- Fruttero & Lucentini - The Lover with No Fixed Abode
- Gaiman, Neil - Neverwhere
- García Márquez, Gabriel - One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Garde, François - What Became of the Savage?
- Gaskell, Elizabeth - North and South
- Hanff, Helene - 84, Charing Cross Road
- Harrison, Jim - Dalva
- Hayder, Mo - Tokyo
- Hilsenrath, Edgar - The Nazi and the Barber
- Hrabal, Bohumil - I Served the King of England
- Huston, Nancy - Fault Lines
- Hustvedt, Siri - What I Loved
- Indriðason, Arnaldur - Jar City
- Irving, John - The World According to Garp
- Ishiguro, Kazuo - The Remains of the Day
- Kerouac, Jack - The Dharma Bums
- Kingsolver, Barbara - The Poisonwood Bible
- Krauss, Nicole - The History of Love
- Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Laclos, Choderlos de - Dangerous Liaisons
- Lafayette, Madame de - The Princess of Clèves
- Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di - The Leopard
- Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
- Lehane, Dennis - A Drink Before the War
- Lewis, Roy - The Evolution Man
- Lodge, David - Small World
- Lurie, Alison - The Truth About Lorin Jones
- Mauvignier, Laurent - Around the World
- Meyer, Philipp - The Son
- Mishima, Yukio - The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
- Modiano, Patrick - Pedigree
- Mulisch, Harry - The Discovery of Heaven
- Murakami, Haruki - Kafka on the Shore
- Nothomb, Amélie - Hygiene and the Assassin
- O'Faolain, Nuala - My Dream of You
- Pamuk, Orhan - My Name Is Red
- Perec, Georges - Life A User's Manual
- Pessl, Marisha - Night Film
- Potocki, Jan - The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
- Poulin, Jacques - Volkswagen Blues
- Powers, Richard - The Time of Our Singing
- Price, Richard - Clockers
- Pullman, Philip - His Dark Materials (trilogy)
- Pym, Barbara - Quartet in Autumn
- Reinhardt, Éric - Cendrillon
- Roth, Philip - American Pastoral
- Roy, Arundhati - The God of Small Things
- Soucy, Gaétan - The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches
- Tesich, Steve - Price
- Thackeray, William Makepeace - Vanity Fair
- Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
- Toussaint, Jean-Philippe - Making Love
- Triolet, Elsa - Roses on Credit
- Trollope, Anthony - The Way We Live Now
- Twain, Mark - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Vian, Boris - Foam of the Daze
- Wassmo, Herbjørg - Dina's Book (trilogy)
- Waters, Sarah - Fingersmith
- Wharton, Edith - The Custom of the Country
- Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Wolfe, Tom - The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Yalom, Irvin D. - Lying on the Couch
- Yoshimura, Akira - Shipwrecks
- Zola, Émile - Germinal
- Zweig, Stefan - Letter from an Unknown Woman
You'll notice Anglo-Saxon literature dominates. South American authors? Major gaps there. But I've got lists for later—one day, maybe. A reader's life is just an endless journey through an ocean of random desires.