I am, like most readers, constantly searching for the Great Book. Reading is itself a pleasure, but with a Great Book the pleasure is transformed to joy. The experience is somewhat rare; the chance to have it keeps us prowling the booksellers and libraries. Great Books can come in any mode and be of any length, as long as we are willing to enjoy ourselves.

Many lists have claimed to be catalogues of Great Books, usually chosen by popular vote or a board of critics. But anyone can list the Great Books they have found. The wonderful thing is that no two lists need to be alike. So I add my own to the pile.

I’ve made it without respect to genre, form, or language. If I took joy in reading it, it’s here. I make no apologies for my choices or for counting series of books as one entry. I’ve written about some of these and there are links to those posts.

1. The Bible
2. Dante Alighieri…The Divine Comedy
3. St Augustine…Confessions
4. Jon Baird, Kevin Costner, Rick Ross…The Explorers Guild: A Passage To Shambhala
5. Ray Bradbury…The Martian Chronicles
6. Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross…Astro City
7. Truman Capote…In Cold Blood
8. Lewis Carroll…Alice In Wonderland
9. Michael Chabon…The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier And Clay
10. G.K. Chesterton…The Ballad of The White Horse
11. G.K. Chesterton…The Man Who Was Thursday
12. Agatha Christie…Murder On The Orient Express
13. Agatha Christie…And Then There Were None
14. Susanna Clarke…Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
15. Samuel Taylor Coleridge…The Complete Poems
16. Wilkie Collins…The Woman In White
17. Wilkie Collins…The Moonstone
18. Robertson Davies…Fifth Business
19. Charles Dickens…A Christmas Carol
20. Charles Dickens…Bleak House
21. Charles Dickens…A Tale of Two Cities
22. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…The Complete Sherlock Holmes
23. T.S. Eliot…The Waste Land
24. T.S. Eliot…Four Quartets
25. Robert Farrer Capon…The Supper of The Lamb
26. Anne Frank…The Diary of A Young Girl
27. Neil Gaiman…The Sandman
28. Neil Gaiman…Stardust
29. Neil Gaiman…Fragile Things: Short Fictions And Wonders
30. Neil Gaiman…The Graveyard Book
31. Malcolm Guite…Sounding The Seasons
32. Nathaniel Hawthorne…The Scarlet Letter
33. Seamus Heaney…Death of A Naturalist
34. Seamus Heaney…The Cure At Troy
35. Frank Herbert…Dune
36. John Keats…The Poems
37. Stephen King…Different Seasons
38. Stephen King…The Dark Tower
39. Stephen King…The Green Mile
40. Stephen King…On Writing
41. Harper Lee…To Kill A Mockingbird
42. Toby Lester…The Fourth Part of The World
43. C.S. Lewis…The Cosmic Trilogy
44. C.S. Lewis…The Chronicles of Narnia
45. C.S. Lewis…Miracles
46. C.S. Lewis…The Screwtape Letters
47. Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale…Superman For All Seasons
48. Gabriel García Márquez…One Hundred Years of Solitude
49. Stuart McLean…The Vinyl Cafe
50. Herman Melville…Moby-Dick
51. Roger Moorehouse…Berlin At War
52. Patrick O’Brian…The Aubrey-Maturin Novels
53. Flannery O’Connor…Everything That Rises Must Converge
54. Sydney Padua…The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace And Babbage
55. Charles Portis…True Grit
56. J.K. Rowling…Harry Potter
57. Matt Ruff…Lovecraft Country
58. Dorothy L. Sayers…Lord Peter Wimsey
59. Seth…Wimbledon Green
60. Seth…The G.N.B. Double C
61. William Shakespeare…Much Ado About Nothing
62. William Shakespeare…Hamlet
63. William Shakespeare…The Winter’s Tale
64. William Shakespeare…The Tempest
65. Mary Shelley…Frankenstein
66. Eric Siblin…The Cello Suites
67. Jeff Smith…Bone
68. Art Spiegelman…Maus
69. J.R.R. Tolkien…The Hobbit
70. J.R.R. Tolkien…The Lord of The Rings
71. Markus Zusak…The Book Thief