All that to say, I have created two lists - one of 50 Top Young Adult Books and one of 100 Classics. When creating the YA list I weeded out all of the top YA books that were written since I was no longer a YA. So these books were tops when I was a kiddo. As you can imagine, the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games series have taken up quite a few spots on modern lists. I left off the YA books that made the "classics" list as well...and I left off some series i.e Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. Not that they aren't great or tops, I just don't want to take up my time with all of one thing...maybe that will be next.
Whew, ok so the Classics list was created off of 2 lists that I found online. They each had 100 books but not all of the same. I first went through and picked all of the books that were on both lists. I then went back through and picked books off of both lists that I specifically remember being assigned and I never read. I then finished off the 100 by picking books that sounded most familiar. In my defense, there are some books on both lists that I did actually read but to keep it simple I'm putting them on here anyway and starting fresh.
This is a 10 year goal so that means I only have to read 10 a year of the classics and 5 a year of the YA (some are pretty short). By that time my daughter will be a YA and I won't have to admit that I've never read the books that she is being assigned. Plus, I will have paid my debts for my past laziness :). Oh, one more thing, I am aware that some of these books are horrendously boring but I am going to do my best to get through them. I would like to hear what your favorites are though!!
Here are the lists...
Start Date - 2/1/11. Completed books indicated by a strikethrough.
Rating system:
* - Shoot me now, that was awful!
** - That was bearable.
*** - I liked it.
**** - I actually liked it a lot.
***** - WOW! No wonder it's a classic!
100+ Classics (alphabetical by author)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Inferno - Dante
Roinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens, 1860
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Three Muskateers - Alexandre Dumas
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Seleced Essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
Faust - Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Roots - Alex Haley
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
A Farwell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Iliad - Homer
The Odyssey - Homer
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Beloved - Toni Morrison
1984 - George Orwell
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Complete Tales and Poems - Edgar Allan Poe
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Macbeth - William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Pearl - John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Gulliver's Travel - Jonathan Swift
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Vanity Fair - William Thackeray
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
Collected Stories - Eudora Welty
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Native Son - Richard Wright
50 Young Adult Classics (alphabetical by author)
Watership Down - Richard Adams, 1972
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Avi, 1990
The Indian in the Cupboard - Lynne Reid Banks, 1980
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. - Judy Blume, 1970
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl, 1964
James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl, 1961
Matilda - Roald Dahl, 1988
The Witches - Roald Dahl, 1983
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens, 1837
My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George, 1959
The Princess Bride - William Goldman, 1973
Summer of My German Soldier - Bette Greene, 1973
Letters from Rifka - Karen Hesse, 1992
Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster, 1961
Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes, 1966
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle, 1962
Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren, 1945
Number the Stars - Lois Lowry, 1989
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh - Robert C. O'brien, 1971
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell, 1960
The Chosen - Chaim Potek, 1967
Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls, 1961
Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers, 1972
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell, 1877
Go Ask Alice - Beatrice Sparks, 1971
Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare, 1958
Maniac Magee - Jerry Spinelli, 1990
Heidi - Johanna Spyri, 1880
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry - Mildred D. Taylor, 1976
The Devil's Arithmetic - Jane Yolen, 1988
New Addition (1/10/12): I've decided to add a list of all of the Newbery Award Winners too and maybe I'll read them all eventually as well. Obviously if they won the award that considers them a "most distinguished contribution to children's literature" for a given year then I should try to read them. Some of these books may show up on the above lists as well so I can knock them off of 2 lists at once. Here's the list in order of most recent winner.
Newbery Award Winners
2017: The Girl Who Drank the Moon - Kelly Barnhill
2016: Last Stop on Market Street - Matt de la Pena
2010: When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead
2009: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
2008: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village - Laura Amy Schlitz
2007: The Higher Power of Lucky - Susan Patron
2006: Criss Cross - Lynne Rae Perkins
2005: Kira-Kira - Cynthia Kadohata
2002: A Single Shard - Linda Sue Park
2001: A Year Down Yonder - Richard Peck
2000: Bud, Not Buddy - Christopher Paul Curtis
1997: The View from Saturday - E.L. Konigsburg
1996: The Midwife's Apprentice - Karen Cushman
1992: Shiloh - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
1991: Maniac Magee - Jerry Spinelli
1990: Number the Stars - Lois Lowry
1989: Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices - Paul Fleischman
1988: Lincoln: A Photobiography - Russell Freedman
1987: The Whipping Boy - Sid Fleischman
1985: The Hero and the Crown - Robin McKinley
1983: Dicey's Song - Cynthia Voigt
1982: A Visit to William Blake's Inn - Nancy Willard
1980: A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal - Joan Blos
1979: The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
1977: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred Taylor
1976: The Grey King - Susan Cooper
1975: M.C. Higgins, The Great - Virginia Hamilton
1974: The Slave Dancer - Paula Fox
1973: Julie of the Wolves - Jean Craighead George
1972: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert C. O'Brien
1969: The High King - Lloyd Alexander
1967: Up a Road Slowly - Irene Hunt
1966: I, Juan de Pareja - Elizabeth Borton de Treviño
1965: Shadow of a Bull - Maia Wojciechowska
1964: It's Like This, Cat - Emily Cheney Neville
1963: A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
1962: The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare
1961: Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
1960: Onion John - Joseph Krumgold
1959: The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare
1958: Rifles for Watie - Harold Keith
1957: Miracles on Maple Hill - Virginia Sorenson
1956: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch - Jean Lee Latham
1955: The Wheel on the School - Meindert DeJong
1954: ...And Now Miguel - Josephe Krumgold
1953: Secret of the Andes - Ann Nolan Clark
1952: Ginger Pye - Eleanor Estes
1951: Amos Fortune, Free Man - Elizabeth Yates
1950: The Door in the Wall - Marguerite de Angeli
1949: King of the Wind - Marguerite Henry
1948: The Twenty-One Balloons - William Pène du Bois
1947: Miss Hickory - Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
1945: Rabbit Hill - Robert Lawson
1944: Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes
1943: Adam of the Road - Elizabeth Gray Vining
1942: The Matchlock Gun - Walter D. Edmonds
1941: Call it Courage - Armstrong Perry
1940: Daniel Boone - James Daugherty
1939: Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright
1938: The White Stag - Kate Seredy
1937: Roller Skates - Ruth Sawyer
1935: Dobry - Monica Shannon
1934: Invincible Louisa - Cornelia Meigs
1933: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze - Elizabeth Foreman Lewis
1932: Waterless Mountain - Laura Adams Armer
1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow - Eric P. Kelly
1928: Gay Neck: The Story of a Pidgeon - Dhan Gopal Mukerji
1927: Smoky the Cow Horse - Will James
1926: Shen of the Sea - Arthur Bowie Chrisman
1925: Tales from Silver Lands - Charles Finger
1924: The Dark Frigate - Charles Hawes
1923: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle - Hugh Lofting
1922: The Story of Mankind - Hendrik Willem van Loon
Top Series
Anne of Green Gables (2 of 8)
Lord of the Rings (0 of 3)
Harry Potter (3 of 8)
Chronicles of Narnia (1 of 7)
Divergent (0 of 3)
Game of Thrones (0 of 8)
Twilight (0 of 4)
Little House (0 of 9)
