The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013

Here we go again, another booklist.

What can I say, I love these. (I don’t quite know why.)

From Flavorwire.

1. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath (1963)
2. Herzog – Saul Bellow (1964)
3. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (1965)
4. Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (1966)
5. The Master and Margharita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
6. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion (1968)
7. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (1969)
8. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume (1970)
9. The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor (1971)
10. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino (1972)
11. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (1973)
12. The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin (1974)
13. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (1975)
14. Speedboat by Renata Adler (1976)
15. The Shining by Steven King (1977)
16. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978)
17. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)
18. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1980)
19. Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak (1981)
20. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
21. Cathedral by Raymond Walker (1983)
22. Money by Martin Amis (1984)
23. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
24. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (1986)
25. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
26. Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (1988)
27. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
28. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
29. Possession by A.S. Byatt (1991)
30. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
31. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1993)
32. The Ice Storm by Rick Moody (1994)
33. Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
34. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
35. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
36. Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (1998)
37. Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee (1999)
38. Pastoralia by George Saunders (2000)
39. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (2001)
40. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
41. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)
42. The Epicure’s Lament by Kate Christensen (2004)
43. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (2005)
44. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
45. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
46. Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (2008)
47. Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr (2009)
48. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
49. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
50. Building Stories by Chris Ware (2012)
51. The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (2013)

The fifteen titles in bold are ones I’ve read.

An interesting list: novels, memoirs, short story collections, graphic novels, essay collections. Books I’ve heard of, others I haven’t. The original post lists other recommended titles for each year as well, and as the post’s author says:

Of course, this is by its very nature an absurd undertaking, and many books have gotten the short end of the stick — there’s no other way to do it. The choices here are influenced by the following: the stipulation that any specific author should not be chosen for more than one year, a general focus on fiction over other genres, and the tastes/whims/glaring prejudices of Flavorwire’s literary editor.

More for the never-ending To Read List.