Periodically, my book club will have members submit their top 10 all time favorite books. We did this recently, and as a result of the exercise, we have a top 100 books as determined by the SOC Sistas.
There are 11 of us, and together we represent well over 500 years of collective reading. That said, several of us thought it unfair to be restricted to just 10 books with so many years to have contributed selections, so we opted to take license with the number and submit more.
What is below is our collective list. The books at the top represent those that received multiple votes; other than that, they are in no particular order. How many of these have you read?
| Cutting for Stone | Abraham Verghese |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| East of Eden | John Steinbeck |
| The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath |
| Unbroken | Laura Hillenbrand |
| One Thousand White Women | Jim Fergus |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany | John Irving |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| The Red Tent | Anita Diamant |
| In Cold Blood | Truman Capote |
| The Narrow Road to the Deep North | Richard Flanagan |
| A Thousand Splendid Suns | Khaled Hosseini |
| The Help | Kathryn Stockett |
| Memoirs of a Geisha | Arthur Golden |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| Cane River | Lalita Tademy |
| A Girl named Zippy | Haven Kimmel |
| The 19h Wife | David Ebershoff |
| The Prince of Tides | Pat Conroy |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte |
| The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver |
| Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker |
| The Space Between Us | Thrity Umrigar |
| As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| Night | Elie Wiesel |
| Peace Like a River | Leif Enger |
| Skeletons at the Feast | Chris Bohjalian |
| The Glass Castle | Jeannette Walls |
| 1776 | David McCullough |
| Flags of our Father | James Bradley |
| Native Son | Richard Wright |
| The Water is Wide | Pat Conroy |
| The Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood | Rebecca Wells |
| Atonement | Ian McEwan |
| Cold Mountain | Charles Frazier |
| The Other Boleyn Girl | Philippa Gregory |
| Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls |
| A Good Man is Hard to Find | Flannery O’Connor |
| A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens |
| Alias Grace | Margaret Atwood |
| I Know This Much Is True | Wally Lamb |
| Open Secrets | Alice Munro |
| The Secret History | Donna Tartt |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides |
| Midwives | Chris Bohjalian |
| Possession | AS Byatt |
| Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier |
| Serena | Ron Rash |
| The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Muriel Barbery |
| New Testament scriptures | various |
| The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco |
| The Tin Drum | Gunter Grass |
| Trilogy by Ferol Sams | Ferrol Sams |
| First Family | Joseph Ellis |
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou |
| Life of Pi | Yann Martel |
| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot |
| A Widow for One Year | John Irving |
| Angela’s Ashes | Frank McCourt |
| I, Elizabeth | Rosalind Miles |
| Little Women | Louisa May Alcott |
| Number the Stars | Lois Lowry |
| Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett |
| The Great Santini | Pat Conroy |
| The Harry Potter series | JK Rowling |
| The Sun Also Rises | Earnest Hemingway |
| Girl with a Pearl Earring | Tracy Chevalier |
| Leaves of Grass | Walt Whitman |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexander Dumas |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | Betty Smith |
| Canterbury Tales | Geoffrey Chaucer |
| Perfume | Patrick Suskin |
| The Giver | Lois Lowry |
| Complete Edgar Allen Poe | Edgar Allen Poe |
| Winnie the Pooh | AA Milne |
| Cold Sassy Tree | Olive Ann Burns |
| Flavia de Luce series | Alan Bradley |
| Harry Potter Series | JK Rowling |
| The Secret Wisdom of the Earth | Christopher Scotton |
| Wise Blood | Flannery O’Connor |
| A Land More Kind than Home | Wiley Cash |
| The Boy in the Striped Pajamas | John Boyne |
| City of Tranquil Light | Bo Caldwll |
| Maude | Donna Foley Mabry |
| Redeeming Love | Francine Rivers |
| Rose of Sarajevo | Ayse Kulin |
| Southern Sisters Mysteries Series | Anne George |
| The Florbama Ladies’ Auxiliary and Sewing Circle | Lois Battle |
| The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini |
| All The Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr |
| Dear Life: Stories | Alice Munro |
| Signature of All Things | Elizabeth Gilbert |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood |
| Andersonville | MacKinlay Kantor |
| Rabbit, Run | John Updike |
| Room | Emma Donghue |
| The Glass Room | Simon Mawer |
| The Miniaturist | Jessie Burton |
| The Weight of Heaven | Thrity Umrigar |
If you’re wondering why the 100 has an * next to it, there are actually 101 books on this list. Hope we’ve helped you pick your next selection!
Also, I made the word cloud above using Tagul. It is awesome! Go check it out!
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