Our 100 favorite books, the biannual revision
Photo from Bookshelf Porn
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Anecdotes of Destiny, Isak Dinesen
The Stories of John Cheever
The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham
Dune, Frank Herbert
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Collected Stories of Grace Paley
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Outsider, Albert Camus
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Without Feathers, Woody Allen
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
A Boy and His Dog, Harlan Ellison
Isabelo’s Archive, Resil Mojares
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, Georges Simenon
Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant
First Love, Last Rites, Ian McEwan
A Sport and A Pastime, James Salter
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, David Markson
Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki, H.H. Munro
The Jeeves stories, P.G. Wodehouse
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Stories of Anton Chekhov
The Angel Esmeralda, Don DeLillo
The Smiley novels, John LeCarre
The Little Drummer Girl, John LeCarre
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
The Patrick Melrose novels, Edward St. Aubyn
Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin
Miss Garnet’s Angel, Salley Vickers
Our Story Begins, New and Selected Stories, Tobias Wolff
Any Human Heart, William Boyd
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
From Hell, Alan Moore
Love In A Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
Minotaur, Benjamin Tammuz
The Separation, Christopher Priest
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden
The Decameron, Boccacio
Jesus’s Son, Denis Johnson
The Book of J, David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom
Plays, Tom Stoppard
Utos ng Hari at Iba Pang Kuwento, Jun Cruz Reyes
The Ogre, Michel Tournier
Burning Your Boats, The Collected Short Stories, Angela Carter
HHhH, Laurent Binet
Don’t Look Now, Daphne Du Maurier
Light Years, James Salter
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo, Jose Rizal
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
100 Selected Poems, e.e. cummings
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Amphigorey (series), Edward Gorey
Night Soldiers, Alan Furst
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Complete Poems of T.S. Eliot
Ripley’s Game, Patricia Highsmith
The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley
Cubao: Pagkagat ng Dilim, Tony Perez
Zeno’s Conscience, Italo Svevo
Numbers in the Dark, Italo Calvino
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund De Waal
For Keeps, 30 Years at the Movies, Pauline Kael
Memoirs of An Anti-Semite, Gregor von Rezzori
Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
The Stones of Florence, Mary McCarthy
Into the Heart of Borneo, Redmond O’Hanlon
America’s Boy, James Hamilton Paterson
Longitude, Dava Sobel
Rubicon, Tom Holland
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Philip Gourevitch
The Drunkard’s Walk, Leonard Mlodinow
Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
The Forger’s Spell, Edward Dolnick
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
My Struggle vol. 1, Karl Ove Knausgaard
*titles in blue were not on the last list
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 2nd, 2014 at 08:23
Will look forward to your favorite books list revisions, Ma’am. Your list is daunting and inspiring, with so many authors I haven’t even heard about. The fact that I still have so many great books to read excites me.
I try to list my favorite books during my free time, too, and through the years I’ve come to this conclusion: that my tastes vary with time. The books I hate today may become my favorites next year. Case in point: Underworld by Don DeLillo.
I wish, though, that I had more Filipino novels in my list. I love reading stories about my city and my country. When I go to bookstores the Filipino fiction department is limited. I’m sure there are a lot of great writers out there, but maybe the publishers don’t find it profitable because our countrymen aren’t reading enough—which is sad. (A sidenote: When I take the public transport I see people checking their Facebook accounts or playing games in their iPhones. They could’ve spent their time reading something. Imagine if people actually read: the country would be a better place, I think.)
May 2nd, 2014 at 09:25
Hi JZ – among these books which would you recommend for someone who has trouble getting started with “longer” volumes (attempted Once and Future King twice to no avail). I enjoy creative nonfiction works of authors such as yourself, David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs.
May 2nd, 2014 at 20:54
greeneggsnham: Hahahaha The Once and Future King is of average length.
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman: fictional illustrations of the nature of time and space as described by general relativity. Very short chapters.
The Outsider by Albert Camus: Very short.
Short stories by Saki (H.H. Munro): Brief and exquisitely nasty.
Boccaccio’s Decameron: Short, funny, bastos.
Your attention span is deplorable. How will you achieve world domination if you can’t commit to a 300-page novel?
May 2nd, 2014 at 20:58
wenkebach: Of course tastes vary with time. We “got” Don DeLillo only recently, after several attempts, and we prefer his short stories.
The Philippines does not have a reading culture. Our friend Tina thinks it’s because the climate is unkind to paper. This might account for our very short memories, esp where politics is concerned.
May 3rd, 2014 at 02:10
What were books that had to be kicked out of the list to make way for the new ones?
May 3rd, 2014 at 04:11
A shelfie!
May 3rd, 2014 at 04:37
Thanks JZ! I blame my poor attention span on the videogames I played! I’ve read Einstein’s Dreams and Decameron! Will try the other two books you mentioned!
Re: world domination – I leave it up to more able folks – I’m happy to be a lieutenant (attention deficit notwithstanding)
May 3rd, 2014 at 09:49
this makes me happy! no more school for me so more time for pleasure reading! yay! SALAMAT DOMINATRIX!
May 3rd, 2014 at 10:48
Interesting point about a lack of reading culture in our country. Aside from the climate theory, I think it’s also because our pre-Hispanic ancestors practiced more of an oral tradition rather than a written one. This may also be the reason for our “tsismis” culture.
Going through your list, I saw The Lottery. Jackson’s short story still freaks me out a bit. Really good. Love that.
May 4th, 2014 at 12:42
Impressive list, Your Grace. Glad yours have Alan Moore’s two of some of comics greatest.