If you are an avid reader, then you know the feeling of looking for your next read. We have made that easier with our list of the 52 must read books of all time. Keep reading to find out which books made our list!
Lists are meant to start discussions as well as help people find new books to read. This list contains our picks for must read books. You probably have read most of them but there also books here that you may not have gotten around to reading and should do so. You can see the full list below!
The 52 Must Read Books of All Time
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Gulliver’s Travel by Jonathan Swift
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
- Ender’s Game (Ender’s Saga, #1) by Orson Scott Card
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
- The Nightingale Kristin Hannah
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Must Read Books
We chose classic novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, and Jane Eyre to name a few. These classics are books that we believe everyone should read at least once. Even if you not end up considering them your favorites, their message, story, and writing are going to ensure that you are reading some of the best works of fiction.
Not every book on the list is going to change your life. But all of these novels contain stories that may do that. For example, a novel like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest novels ever written. Some people may end up hating this sense of humor but many have loved it as well as the simple but fun plot.
Our surprise picks are novels such as The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. These are lesser-known novels that are incredible reads. We wanted to highlight recent novels (Yes, I know The Secret History isn’t a recent novel but compared to many classics, it is) and these are the ones that won our hearts.
Conclusion
That is the end of our list of the 52 must read novels of all time. How many of these books have you read? What books should we include in our next list? Let us know in the comments below!
Come on, list maker, MULTIPLE duplicates! Edit yourself and be accurate, Please!
Read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach.
Doofus can’t even proofread their own list.
Why not make this a Western, English list, since most of the rest of the world is ignored, and the picks are obvious. Tastes are individual, but why Card’s cliched space opera instead of Clarke, Tiptree, or LeGuin, to name a few? Salinger? A boring drone of a book following a spoiled brat around Manhattan while he tries to get laid.
I would add “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” by Edgar Allan Poe.