Taken from

These are the 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-​​rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, under­line the ones you read for school, ital­i­cize the ones you started but didn’t fin­ish.

Here’s the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or rec­om­mend. Even if you read them for school in the first place.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Nor­rell
Anna Karen­ina
Crime and Pun­ish­ment
Catch-​​22
One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude
Wuther­ing Heights
The Sil­mar­il­lion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby-​​Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prej­u­dice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Soci­eties*
War and Peace
Van­ity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assas­sin
The Kite Run­ner
Mrs. Dal­loway
Great Expec­ta­tions
Amer­i­can Gods
A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Read­ing Lolita in Tehran: A Mem­oir in Books
Mem­oirs of a Geisha
Mid­dle­sex
Quick­sil­ver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Can­ter­bury Tales
The His­to­rianl
A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Foun­tain­head
Foucault’s Pen­du­lum
Mid­dle­march
Franken­stein*
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Drac­ula*
A Clock­work Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King*
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poi­son­wood Bible: A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Divine Com­edy (The Inferno, The Pur­ga­to­rio, and The Par­adiso)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sen­si­bil­ity
The Pic­ture of Dorian Gray
Mans­field Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Light­house
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Trav­els*
Les Misérables
The Cor­rec­tions
The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay
The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night-​​Time
Dune* (and the rest of the series, except the most recent one by his son, I think)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Mem­oir
The God of Small Things
A People’s His­tory of the United States : 1492-​​present*
Crypto­nom­i­con*
Nev­er­where
A Con­fed­er­acy of Dunces
A Short His­tory of Nearly Every­thing*
Dublin­ers
The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-​​Five
The Scar­let Let­ter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tol­er­ance Approach to Punc­tu­a­tion*
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake
Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed
Cloud Atlas
The Con­fu­sion
Lolita
Per­sua­sion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunch­back of Notre-​​Dame
Freako­nom­ics: A Rogue Econ­o­mist Explores the Hid­den Side of Every­thing
Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance: An Inquiry Into Val­ues*
The Aeneid
Water­ship Down
Gravity’s Rain­bow
The Hob­bitt*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Trea­sure Island
David Cop­per­field
The Three Mus­ke­teers*

For what it’s worth, I haven’t even heard of a few of these. Oth­ers, I’ve pur­posely avoided (like Moby Dick–I was very happy that the advanced Eng­lish classes in my high school didn’t have to do that one!). The ones I liked, we prob­a­bly own. We have A People’s His­tory of the United States and used it a bit for home­school­ing, but I haven’t read it front to back. I keep mean­ing to.