This is a lifetime to-read list and also tracker of books I've read. The initial list came from Reddit's Favorite Books in 2010. In 2011, I added entries from NPR's top 100 sci-fi/fantasy novels. Every so often I'll add some books recommended to me to the list. The items are generally sorted in the order given above. I don't restrict myself to reading books only from this list. You can browse the books list to see other things I've read.
Last updated: 13 Apr 2022
Finished reading (parentheses indicates year read, and link to relevant content if any) (You can jump to the unread list.)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
- 1984 by George Orwell.
- Dune by Frank Herbert. (2014)
- Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. (2013)
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. (entire series sometime around 2006-2008)
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. (2016)
- The Bible by Various. (circa 1992)
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. (2021)
- Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. (2016)
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman. (2016)
- Neuromancer by William Gibson. (2021)
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (2016)
- The Foundation Saga by Isaac Asimov. (2013 - Foundation Trilogy only: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation)
- Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. (1992, 2nd year HS English class)
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
- His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. (2016)
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (1992, 2nd year HS English class)
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
- Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. (2014)
- The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (2016)
- Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. (2016)
- A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. (first three books 2011, the rest as they came out)
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. (1991 - 1st year HS English class)
- Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.
- John Dies at the End by David Wong. (2016)
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. (2016)
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. (2017)
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman. (2004)
- The Dark Tower by Stephen King. (2005-2006)
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. (2004)
- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
- Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. (2016)
- The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. (around 1996-2013(!!))
NPR top 100:
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson (2017)
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (2021)
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (2005)
- The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind (around 2006-2007)
- The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson (2015-???)
- Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin (2021)
Unread:
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
- To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
- Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse.
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwelski.
- The Giver by Lois Lowry.
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell.
- A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus.
- Various by Dr. Seuss.
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
- The Monster At The End Of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick.
- A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
- The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- Odyssey by Homer.
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- Ringworld by Larry Niven.
- The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick.
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein.
- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
- The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
- Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
- Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi.
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley.
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
- Contact by Carl Sagan.
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
- The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
- The Stand by Stephen King.
- The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
- Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer.
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media ** by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.
- Asimov's Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov.
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
- Collapse by Jared Diamond.
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallave.
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
- Chaos by James Gleick.
- Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon.
- You Can Choose to Be Happy by Tom G. Stevens.
- The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler.
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
- Candide by Voltaire.
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
- The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum.
- In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
- The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
- The Making of a Radical by Scott Nearing.
- The Turner Diaries by Andrew MacDonald.
- The Scar by China Mieville.
- Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
- Going Rogue by Sarah Palin.
- 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis De Sade.
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke.
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
- Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.
- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
- Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.
- Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke.
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
- The Book of Ler by MA Foster.
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.
- Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
- Watership Down by Richard Adams.
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.
- Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel.
- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
- The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson.
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck .
- American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
- The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
- The Chomsky Reader by Noam Chomsky.
- The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould.
- Flatland by Edwin Abbot.
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac .
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
- The Classical Style by Charles Rosen.
- Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman.
- An American Life by Ronald Reagan.
- Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.
- The Little Schemer by Friedman & Felleisen.
- Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau.
- Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West.
- Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
- Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
- The Game by Neil Strauss.
- Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
- The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter.
- Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft.
- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
- The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.
- The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker.
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
- The Wasteland by TS Elliot.
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
- Pi to 5 million places by [kick books].
- The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
- Guts by Chuck Palahniuk.
- fear and trembling by Søren Kierkegaard.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.
- Ulysses by James Joyce.
- Macbeth by Shakespeare.
- Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
- Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith.
- The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
- Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder.
- Women by Charles Bukowski.
- Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
- We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
- How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland.
- Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- The singularity is near by Ray Kurzweil.
- The Day of the Trifids by John Wyndham.
- The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman).
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts.
- The Elegant Universe by Brian Green.
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.
- Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
- King Lear by Shakespeare.
- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell.
- The Voyage of Argo: The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes.
- The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.
- Nichomachean ethics by Aristotle.
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandlla.
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
- The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.
- The Occult by Colin Wilson.
- Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
- Hamlet by Shakespeare.
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
NPR top 100:
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
- The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles) by Patrick Rothfuss
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- Dragonflight (Pern) by Anne McCaffrey
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
- The Belgariad by David Eddings
- The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Once and Future King by T.H.White
- Stardust by Neil Gaiman
- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
- The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
- Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
- The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
- The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark
- I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
- The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
- The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks
- Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard
- The Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Aurdrey Niffenegger
- A Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne
- The Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore
- Old Man's War series by John Scalzi
- Kushiel's Dart trilogy by Jacqueline Carey
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
- The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series by Steven Erickson
- The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
- The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
- The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson
- The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
- The Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn (partially read as of 2017)
- Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
- The Elric saga by Michael Moorcock
- The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
- Sunshine by Robert McKinley
- The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
- The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
- The Xanth series by Piers Anthony
- The Space trilogy by C.S.Lewis
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- Gentlemen Bastard series by Scott Lynch
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