Waterstone's 100

I am a sucker for book lists, so when I saw that Waterstone's had released a list of 100 books that its booksellers had nominated as their favourites I couldn't resist checking it out. The list is comprised of titles published since 1982 and was put together to mark the company's 25th birthday.

There's certainly some wonderful titles on it, including a bunch I have read, several that I have reviewed on this site and more than a dozen that I own that are still languishing in my ever-growing To Be Read (TBR) pile.

All the books can be purchased from the Waterstone's website at 40 per cent off. And there's a lively discussion here.

The list in full looks like this:

1. Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor (this is in my TBR pile)


2. Mitch Ablom: The Five People You Meet in Heaven


3. Martin Amis: Money


4. Kate Atkinson: Behind the Scenes at the Museum (read it years ago, and did not like it!)


5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (in my TBR pile)


6. Margaret Atwood: Cat's Eye


7. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin


8. Paul Auster: The New York Trilogy (the first book discussed in Reading Matters' Online Book Group)


9. Iain Banks: The Crow Road (a brilliant family saga with a twist)


10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (an astonishing debut, very dark, macabre and funny!)


11. Pat Barker: Regeneration


12. Antony Beevor: Stalingrad


13. John Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (read it years ago, quite liked it)


14. Louise De Bernieres: Captain Corelli's Mandolin (read it after a visit to Kephalonia -- and hated it)


15. Dan Brown: The Davinci Code (click to read my review)


16. Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island (required reading for anyone who visits the UK; I read it when I first hit these shores from Australia and loved it)


17. Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything


18. A.S. Byatt: Possession (one of the first fully blown "literary" novels I ever read -- I enjoyed it)


19. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay


20. Jung Chang: Wild Swans (never read it, but I certainly sold hundreds of the things when I worked in a bookstore in the early 1990s)


21. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell


22. Jonathan Coe: What a Carve Up!


23. Paul Coelho: The Alchemist


24. J.M. Coetzee: Disgrace (read it in the 1990s and liked it, but not enough to pursue Coetzee's other work)


25. Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl (not read it, but would like to now that I've been to the Hill of Tara in Ireland, which I believe features in this book)


26. Douglas Copeland: Girlfriend in a Coma (any book that takes the title of a Smiths' song has to be good, although I've not ever read this one)


27. Roald Dahl: The BFG (I grew up reading Dahl's books and this is a good 'un)


28. Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion


29. Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler: The Gruffalo (a classic kid's picture story book)


30. Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose (in my TBR)


31. Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (in my TBR pile)


32. Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho (yet another in my TBR pile)


33. James Ellroy: LA Confidential


34. Michael Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White (in my TBR pile)


35. Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong (one of my all-time favourite reads)


36. Raymond E. Feist's Magician - Riftwar saga Book 1


37. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary: A Novel (hilarious!)


38. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth


39. Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain


40. Alex Garland's The Beach (not read the book, but I enjoyed the movie)


41. William Gibson's Neuromancer


42. Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil


43. Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (in my TBR pile)


44. David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (read this back in 1995 and thought it was wonderful)


45. Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (click to read my review)


46. Joanne Harris's Chocolat (an old favourite, though I doubt I'd enjoy it as much if I read it again)


47. Robert Harris's Fatherland (one of the best thrillers I've ever read)


48. Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs


49. S. W. Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes


50. Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal (click to read my review)


51. Susan Hill's Woman in Black


52. Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow


53. Nick Hornby's High Fidelity


54. Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch


55. Khalen Hosseini's The Kite Runner (in my TBR pile)


56. John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany


57. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (in my TBR pile; I adore the film)


58. Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (I read this years ago and remember being slightly disappointed with it)


59. Sophie Kinsella's The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic


60. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian (click to read my review)


61. Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (I really need to read this book)


62. Andrea Levy's Small Island


63. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera


64. Yann Martel's Life of Pi (I may possibly be the only person in the world who has not read this)


65. Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses (not read this, only because I have an aversion to novels featuring horses due, in part, to the fact I worked on a horse magazine for several years)


66. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (a tear jerker of the finest order)


67. Ian McEwan's Atonement (click to read my review)


68. Ian McEwan's Enduring Love (click to read my review)


69. Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (in my TBR pile)


70. Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance


71. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (in my TBR pile)


72. Alan Moore et al's Watchmen


73. Kate Mosse's Labyrinth (terrible, terrible novel -- it was the sixth book discussed in Reading Matters' Online Book Group, and it certainly divided opinion)


74. Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle


75. Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (in my TBR pile)


76. Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (click to read my review)


77. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (I adored the film but struggled to read the book)


78. Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost
    


79. DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little (click to read my review)
    


80. Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic - Discworld S. 1
    


81. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News (I love this book about a small town journalist who thinks in headlines)
    


82. Philip Pullman's Northern Lights - His Dark Materials S. 1
    


83. Ian Rankin's Knots And Crosses (not sure why but I have never been remotely interested in reading any of Rankin's books)
    


84. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (I read this, but it didn't turn me into a Harry Potter fan)
    


85. Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (I have fond memories of this book, because it was the last book I bought in Australia before I emigrated and I toted it around in a backpack for four months. I only recently donated it to a charity shop)
    


86. Louis Sachar's Holes
    


87. Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (click to read my review)
    


88. Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (in 1994 I remember selling a stack of these; this book certainly caused a sensation if only because at more than 1,500 pages it was so thick)


89. Zadie Smith's White Teeth (read it when it first came out in paperback but I can no longer remember anything about it)
    


90. Dava Sobel's Longitude
    


91. Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (read it more than a decade ago and would recommend it)
    


92. Donna Tartt's The Secret History (excellent)
    


93. Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (hilarious -- the TV series that accompanied it was great, too. I still think of Roger Daltry as "Adrian Mole's dad"!)
    


94. Sarah Waters's Fingersmith
    


95. Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (cool film, cool book -- once you get your head around the Scottish dialect)
    


96. Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (in my TBR pile)
    


97. Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (read this years ago -- I think I was probably too young to appreciate it) 


98. Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind (in my TBR pile)


99. Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (I succumbed last month and bought this from Amazon)


100. Jeffrey Eugenide's Middlesex (click to read my review)

What do you think of the list? Have you read many titles that are on it?