Top 100 books released in the last century shared by Goodreads | Books | Entertainment

So many books, so little time – it’s a stress that all book lovers feel. But to try and help with your ever-growing TBR, Goodreads has created a list of top books from the past 100 years.

Essentially, if you read one book from each year of release, it should be this one.

They explained that they wanted to cover a “wide range of genres, topics, authors, and ideas,” rather than just choosing the most ‘popular’ book from each year, as they joked that some years were “very Agatha Christie”.

Sharon from Goodreads explained that “you’ll see several stone-cold classics, along with a few books you probably read in your high school English class”.

So, which are the best books from each year? Let’s find out…

1925 – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

1926 – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

1927 – Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

1928 – All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

1929 – Passing by Nella Larsen 

1930 – As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 

1931 – The Waves by Virginia Woolf 

1932 – Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley 

1933 – Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain 

1934 – Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1935 – Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

1936 – Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

1937 – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

1938 – Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier 

1939 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1940 – Native Son by Richard Wright

1941 – The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

1942 – The Stranger by Albert Camus

1943 – The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

1944 – No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

1945 – The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

1946 – The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

1947 – The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

1948 – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

1949 – 1984 by George Orwell

1950 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

1951 – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

1952 – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

1953 – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

1954 – The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

1955 – Lolita  by Vladimr Nabokov

1956 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

1957 – On the Road by Jack Kerouac 

1958 – Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

1959  – The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

1960  – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1961 – Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

1962 – A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle 

1963 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

1964 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 

1965 – Dune by Frank Herbert

1966 – Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

1967 – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

1968 – A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

1969 – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 

1970 –  The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison

1971 – The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

1972 – The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

1973 – The Princess Bride by William Goldman

1974 – If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

1975 – Shogun by James Clavell 

1976 – Roots by Alex Haley

1977 – The Shining by Stephen King

1978 – The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

1979 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

1980 – The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

1981 – Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

1982 – The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende 

1983 – The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

1984 – The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

1985 – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood

1986 – Maus by Art Spiegelman

1987 – Beloved by Tony Morrison

1988 – The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushtie 

1989 – The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

1990 – V for Vendetta by Alan Moore 

1991 – Possession by A.S. Byatt

1992 – The Secret History by Donna Tartt

1993 – Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

1994 – The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

1995 – Wicked by Gregory Maguire 

1996 – A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

1997 – Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer 

1998 – A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

1999 – all about love by bell hooks

2000 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2001 – Atonement by Ian McEwan

2002 – Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 

2003 – The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2004 – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

2005 – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2006 – The Road by Cormac McCarthy 

2007 – In The Woods by Tana French

2008 – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2009 – Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese 

2010 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2011 – The Martian by Andy Weir

2012 – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

2013 – Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

2014 – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

2015 – The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin 

2016 – The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

2017 – Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 

2018 – Circe by Madeline Miller

2019 – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

2020 – The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

2021 – Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 

2022 – Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsoliver 

2023 – Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

2024 – James by Percival Everett 

How many of these top-recommended books have you read so far?

We have so many more books we want to read now, thanks to this amazing list, packed full of must-buy authors.

Which are you going to read next?