The Big Read - Family and Self

Top 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read:

Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction )

There is a total of 146 book in this section. How many have you read and how many do you own?


The Face of Another by Kobo Abe

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Epileptic by David B

Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker

Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac

Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett

A Legacy by Sybille Bedford

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

G by John Berger

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch

Evelina by Fanny Burney

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin

The Outsider by Albert Camus

Wise Children by Angela Carter

The Professor's House by Willa Cather

The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cocteau

The Vagabond by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

Manservant and Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Being Dead by Jim Crace

Quarantine by Jim Crace

The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir

Roxana by Daniel Defoe

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

My New York Diary by Julie Doucet

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Silence by Shusaku Endo

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Howards End by EM Forster

Spies by Michael Frayn

Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

The Man of Property by John Galsworthy

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Immoralist by Andre Gide

The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

The Shrimp and the Anemone by LP Hartley

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier

Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

The Ambassadors by Henry James

Washington Square by Henry James

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

The Unfortunates by BS Johnson

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane

Memet my Hawk by Yasar Kemal

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

Martin Eden by Jack London

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

The Chateau by William Maxwell

The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor

The Ordeal of Richard Feverek by George Meredith

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul

At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kezaburo Oe

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

The Good Companions by JB Priestley

The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

A Married Man by Piers Paul Read

Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson

The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Unless by Carol Shields

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

The Three Sisters by May Sinclair

The Family Moskat or The Manor or The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield

Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson

The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend

Death in Summer by William Trevor

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Peace in War by Miguel de Unamuno

The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smarest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

Frost in May by Antonia White

The Tree of Man by Patrick White

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Hmm I've read only one from this list.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

These ones are sitting on my book shelf though so I might get round to them eventually.

Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss