Top Ten _____ [books, general fiction]

Over the past 18 years or so, I’ve read somewhere around 800 books. Just for fun, I thought I’d look at some of my favorites, starting with fiction, and see if anything interesting emerged. In this batch of books, I’ve excluded science fiction/fantasy and YA/children’s, which I plan to go through separately. I’m not a huge fan of romance/thrillers/mysteries, so aspects of those genres don’t feature heavily in the list below. Books are listed in reverse alphabetical order by author’s last name.

Our Town, Thornton Wilder – A play about everyday life in a small New England town at the beginning of the 20th century. Its intentional simplicity and sparseness emphasizes the message, and in many ways is the message.

The Color Purple, Alice Walker – An epistolary tale told by Celie, an African American woman living in the south in the 1900s, about the struggles and abuse she faces. At times violent and explicit, it’s nevertheless a powerful story.

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck – On a street lined with sardine canneries, characters go about their lives in Monterey, California during the Great Depression. I chose Cannery Row over something like The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men for being slightly less depressing than Steinbeck’s typical work.

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger – A coming of age story filled with angst and alienation in which nothing much happens. Holden is, objectively, kind of annoying, but with reason, and there’s a particular mood that Salinger effectively captures.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee – Set in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Scout Finch growing up with her brother Jem while her father Atticus defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.

Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan – When Rachel Chu travels to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young, she doesn’t expect to meet a bunch of crazy rich Asians. (Are they crazy rich? Or crazy and rich? Probably both.) It’s a ridiculous and completely fun read.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad), Gabriel García Márquez – Magical realism at its finest; the book follows seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of Macondo, and explores the ideas of fate and inevitability.

City of Tranquil Light, Bo Caldwell – Based on the author’s grandparents’ experiences as missionaries living in China during the first half of the 20th century. The writing treats the characters and setting with care, resulting in a lovely read.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen – Poor Mr. Bennet has five daughters to marry off in early 19th century England. Despite many misunderstandings and preconceived assumptions, will any of the Bennet women find love? Absurd at times, with memorable characters.

If you’re counting, that’s nine books for a top ten list. I couldn’t decide on a tenth, so here are some honorable mentions: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (arguably the first science fiction novel), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë).

The list is pretty balanced in terms of gender – four female authors and five male authors. The oldest book is Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813; the newest is Crazy Rich Asians, published 200 years later in 2013. Most of the rest of the books cluster around the mid-1900s. There’s one book (One Hundred Years of Solitude) not originally published in English. One Hundred Years of Solitude is also the longest book by page court, per Goodreads, and Cannery Row and Our Town tie for the shortest (though by word court I would guess Our Town is shorter because it’s a play). And lastly, like only players with last names beginning with B scoring for the Revolution, five¹ of the nine books have titles that start with C.

¹Six if you use the original Spanish title for One Hundred Years of Solitude.