100 Favorite Books of All Time (2020 Edition)

Way back in 2009 I published a series of posts counting down my 100 Favorite Books of All Time. I figure the list is way overdue for an update.  This time I won’t be counting it down, just one big list in alphabetical order.  Some of the books are classic works of literature and others just have a personal connection or influenced me in some way.  But I love every one of them.

I’m going to start a tradition of revising this list every year on my birthday (yes, today I turn 47), so keep an eye out every November 18th to see how this list changes.

Note: Books that are new to the 2020 list are marked in bold. Series of books are counted as one.

• 1939: Lost World of Fair by David Gelernter
• A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century by Witold Rybczynski
• Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
• The Appalachian Trail Reader by David Emblidge
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson
• Ball Four by Jim Bouton
• The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
• Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Book of Ages : The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Code name Verity (Young Pilots Series) by Elizabeth Wein
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
• The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Day I Swapped My Father for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaimon
• The Devil in the White City : Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel Series)by Connie Willis
• The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists by Taras Grescoe
• The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next series)by Jasper Fforde
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
• Five Points by Tyler Anbinder
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Gregor the Overlander (Underland Chronicles series)by Suzanne Collins
• A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts by Joseph M. Bagley, Jr.
• Holy spokes : The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels by Laura Everett
• Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
• How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built by Stewart Brand
• How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll : An Alternative History of American Popular Music by Elijah Wald
• How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
• In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepard
• In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life by James Deetz
• In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
• Irish America: Coming Into Clover by Maureen Dezell
• Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
• Joshua: A Parable for Today by Joseph F. Girzone
• Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie
• Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk
• Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Lord of the Rings (Series)by  J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Lost Continent : Travels in Small-Town America (Travel book series) by Bill Bryson
• Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike by Angus K. Gillespie
• A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
• Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg by Richard Handler
• The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
• A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn
• Persepolis (Series) by Marjane Satrapi
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• The Portable Door (J. W. Wells & Co. series)by Tom Holt
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
• Reign of Error : The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• Rise Up Singing by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson
• The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834 by Paul A. Gilje
• Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks
• Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney
• Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Sophies Choice by William Styron
• Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens
• Tales of the City (Series)by Armistead Maupin
• Talking to Girls about Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield
• Tattoos on the Heart by Greg Boyle
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• This is an Uprising : How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler
• Through a Window by Jane Goodall
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
• The Warmth of Other Suns  by Isabel Wilkerson
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
• We Can’t Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard  by John Hoerr
• Winnie The Pooh (Series)by A.A. Milne
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting
• The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs

What are your favorite books? Do you have a list? Please share in the comments!