Rankings Based on Personal Satisfaction

 
1. Darkness at Noon                              Arthur Koestler
    
2. Catch-22                                      Joseph Heller
    
3. Life, the Universe and Everything             Douglas Adams
    
4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead         Tom Stoppard
    
5. To Kill a Mockingbird                         Harper Lee
    
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude                 Gabriel G. Marquez
    
7. Code of the Woosters, The                     P. G. Wodehouse
    
8. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The         Douglas Adams
    
9. Slaughterhouse 5                              Kurt Vonnegut
    
10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The           Mark Twain
     
11. Mathematician's Apology, A                    G. H. Hardy
     
12. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A      James Joyce
     
13. Through the Looking Glass                     Lewis Carroll
     
14. Piccadilly Jim                                P. G. Wodehouse
     
15. Catcher in the Rye, The                       J. D. Salinger
     
16. Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow               Jerome K. Jerome
     
17. Wind in the Willows, The                      Kenneth Grahame
     
18. Nineteen Eighty-four                          George Orwell
     
19. Little Prince, The                            Antoine de Saint-Exupery
     
20. Unbearable Lightness of Being, The            Milan Kundera
     
21. Eats, Shoots & Leaves                         Lynne Truss
     
22. Siddhartha                                    Herman Hesse
     
23. Saint Joan                                    George Bernard Shaw
     
24. Lord of the Flies                             William Golding
     
25. Macbeth                                       William Shakespeare
     
26. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland              Lewis Carroll
     
27. Our Town                                      Thornton Wilder
     
28. Bluest Eye, The                               Toni Morrison
     
29. Lord of the Rings, The                        J. R. R. Tolkien
     
30. Lolita                                        Vladimir Nabokov
     
31. Brief History of Time, A                      Stephen W. Hawking
     
32. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban      J. K. Rowling
     
33. Reverence                                     Paul Woodruff
     
34. Winnie-the-Pooh                               A. A. Milne
     
35. Timequake                                     Kurt Vonnegut
     
36. Fooled by Randomness                          Nassim Nicholas Taleb
     
37. Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The            John le Carre
     
38. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency       Douglas Adams
     
39. To the Lighthouse                             Virginia Woolf
     
40. Hamlet                                        William Shakespeare
     
41. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater                  Kurt Vonnegut
     
42. Wyrd Sisters                                  Terry Pratchett
     
43. Cherry Orchard, The                           Anton Chekhov
     
44. Disgrace                                      J. M. Coetzee
     
45. Counsels and Maxims                           Arthur Schopenhauer
     
46. Godfather, The                                Mario Puzo
     
47. Gallipoli to the Somme                        A. C. Aitken
     
48. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus                Ludwig Wittgenstein
     
49. Dilbert Principle, The                        Scott Adams
     
50. Real Thing, The                               Tom Stoppard
     
51. Three Men in a Boat                           Jerome K. Jerome
     
52. One Two Three ... Infinity                    George Gamow
     
53. Illusions                                     Richard Bach
     
54. Lost Horizon                                  James Hilton
     
55. Antichrist, The                               Friedrich Nietzsche
     
56. God of Small Things, The                      Arundhati Roy
     
57. Fairy Tale                                    Erich Segal
     
58. Sea Gull, The                                 Anton Chekhov
     
59. My Petition for More Space                    John Hersey
     
60. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance     Robert M. Pirsig
     
61. Six Characters in Search of an Author         Luigi Pirandello
     
62. All Quiet on the Western Front                Erich Maria Remarque
     
63. Goodbye, Mr. Chips                            James Hilton
     
64. Talk to the Hand                              Lynne Truss
     
65. Real Inspector Hound, The                     Tom Stoppard
     
66. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire           J. K. Rowling
     
67. Double Helix, The                             James D. Watson
     
68. Games People Play                             Eric Berne
     
69. Lost World, The                               Arthur Conan Doyle
     
70. Man Who Loved Only Numbers, The               Paul Hoffman
     
71. Christmas Carol, A                            Charles Dickens
     
72. Clockwork Orange, A                           Anthony Burgess
     
73. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?               Edward Albee
     
74. Animal Farm                                   George Orwell
     
75. Day of the Jackal, The                        Frederick Forsyth
     
76. Restaurant at the End of the Universe, The    Douglas Adams
     
77. Human Factor, The                             Graham Greene
     
78. Guns of Navarone, The                         Alistair Maclean
     
79. Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, The            Douglas Adams
     
80. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy                  John le Carre
     
81. Amadeus                                       Peter Shaffer
     
82. Peter Pan                                     James Barrie
     
83. Love Story                                    Erich Segal
     
84. Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth               Tom Stoppard
     
85. Hobbit, The                                   J. R. R. Tolkien
     
86. Iacocca                                       Lee Iacocca
     
87. Pygmalion                                     George Bernard Shaw
     
88. Kite Runner, The                              Khaled Hosseini
     
89. To Sir, With Love                             E. R. Braithwaite
     
90. Fahrenheit 451                                Ray Bradbury
     
91. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone      J. K. Rowling
     
92. Thirty-nine Steps, The                        John Buchan
     
93. Bald Soprano, The                             Eugene Ionesco
     
94. Night                                         Elie Wiesel
     
95. Streetcar Named Desire, A                     Tennessee Williams
     
96. Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The         C. S. Lewis
     
97. Death of a Salesman                           Arthur Miller
     
98. Hound of the Baskervilles, The                Arthur Conan Doyle
     
99. Endgame                                       Samuel Beckett
     
100. Great Gatsby, The                             F. Scott Fitzgerald
      

          If your favourite book is missing from this list, (comics, poems, short stories, very short plays, anthologies and religious texts excluded) the most likely explanation is that I haven't read it yet. Please send an email to sujith@math.rutgers.edu , and there's a good chance you'll find it here in a few weeks. By the way, if your favourite author is Dan Brown or Ayn Rand, you are politely urged to get a life.