Reading Through Time
“To read old books is to get an education in possibility for next to nothing.”
― Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind
books read by publication date
400 BC
Theban Plays
1500 - 1599
1595 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1600 - 1699
1605 / 1615 - Don Quixote (published in two parts)
ca 1611 - The Tempest
1700 - 1799
1719 - Robinson Crusoe
1810 - 1819
1811 - Sense and Sensibility
1813 - Pride and Prejudice
1814 - Mansfield Park
1815 - Emma
1817 - Northanger Abbey
1818 - Persuasion
Frankenstein
1819 - Ivanhoe
1820 - 1829
1823 - The Basket of Flowers
1830 - 1839
1831 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1836 - Nature
1840 - 1949
1840 - The Old Curiosity Shop
1844 - The Count of Monte Cristo
Three Musketeers
1847 - Jane Eyre
1850 - 1859
1850 - The Black Tulip
1858 - Phantastes
1859 - A Tale of Two Cities
1860 - 1869
1860's - 8 Tales of Terror
1861 - Walking
Silas Marner
1862 - Les Miserables
1866 - Crime and Punishment
1869 - Little Women
1870 - 1879
1872 - Around the World in Eighty Days
1878 - Anna Karenina
1880 - 1889
1880 - Stepping Heavenward
Ben-Hur
1881- Heidi
1890 - 1899
1897 - Dracula
1900 - 1909
1900 - Wizard of Oz
1901 - The Hound of the Baskerville
1904 - Peter Pan
1905 - House of Mirth
1908 - Anne of Green Gables
1909 - A Girl of the Limberlost
1910 - 1919
1910 - The Secret Garden
1917 - Parnassus on Wheels
1918 - The Magnificent Ambersons
My Antonia.
1920 - 1929
1920 - Kristin Lavransdatter #1 The Wreath
1921 - The Sunny Side
Kristin Lavransdatter #2 The Wife
1922 - Kristin Lavransdatter #3 The Cross
1922 - An Enchanted April
1923 - Whose Body?
1926 - The Great Gatsby
1930 - 1939
1930 - Murder at the Vicarage
1931 - The Good Earth
Police at the Funeral
1934 - Murder on the Orient Express
1936 - Gone with the Wind
1937 - The Hobbit
1938 - The Code of the Woosters
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Rebecca
Out of the Silent Planet
1939 - And Then There Were None
1940 - 1949
1942 - West with the Night
1943 - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
1945 - That Hideous Strength
1946 - Pavilion of Women
1948 - Cry, the Beloved Country
1949 - Shane
1950 - 1959
1950 - A Town Like Alice
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
1951 - The Daughter of Time
1953 - Fahrenheit 451
1955 - Surprised by Joy
1960 - 1969
1961 - An Experiment in Criticism
1962 - A Wrinkle in Time
1964 - A Moveable Feast
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late
This Rough Magic
1967 - The Chosen
1968 - True Grit
1969 - The Promise
1970 - 1979
1970 - 84, Charing Cross Road
1971 - The Hiding Place
1972 - My Name is Asher Lev
Monday the Rabbi Took Off
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
The Great Bridge
1973 - The Princess Bride
1977 - A Morbid Taste for Bones
1980 - 1989
1982 - Happy to Be Here
1987 - Crossing to Safety
1988 - Sorcery and Cecelia
1989 - The Road from Coorain
A Year in Provence
A Prayer for Owen Meaney
1990 - 1999
1990 - Possession
1992 - Susanna Wesley
1995 - Longitude
Assassin's Apprentice
1996 - The World at Night
1997 - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (#1)
Into Thin Air
A Walk in the Woods
Miniskirts, Mother’s & Muslims
1998 - The Professor and the Madman
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (#2)
1999 - Seabiscuit
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3)
2000 - 2009
2000 - Velma Still Cooks in Leeway
The Tipping Point
Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (#4)
Jayber Crow
Storm Front
2001 - A Girl Named Zippy
The Eyre Affair
2002 - The War of Art
2003 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (#5)
It’s Not About the Tapas
Maisie Dobbs
Moloka'i
2004 - Hannah Coulter
Sky Burial
The Coroner’s Lunch
2005 - Still Life
Garlic and Sapphires
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (#6)
The Book Thief
The Devotion of Suspect X
2006 - My Life in France
Raven Black
A Fatal Grace
The Rest of God
Three Cups of Tea
2007 - Animal Vegetable Miracle
The Uncommon Reader
Four Seasons in Rome
Garden Spells
The Cruelest Month
The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry
A Year of Living Biblically
The Shack
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (#7)
2008 - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
A Rule Against Murder
Muslims Christians & Jesus
Finding Nouf
2009 - The Help
A Homemade Life
What Alice Forgot
Eiffel’s Tower
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
When You Reach Me
The Case of the Missing Servant
Baking Cakes in Kigali
The Brutal Telling
Wife of the Gods
2010 - 2019
2010 - Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
Bury Your Dead
2011 - The Night Circus
Do the Work
The Paris Wife
Rules of Civility
Ready Player One
Lost in Shangri-La
State of Wonder
A Train in Winter
Radio Shangra-La
A Trick of the Light
House of Silk
The Scorpio Races
2012 - Snow Child
The Secret Keeper
The Martian
Code Name Verity
My Berlin Kitchen
The Beautiful Mystery
All Roads Lead to Austen
2013 - Burial Rites
Bread and Wine
The Missing Italian Girl
The Boys in the Boat
A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Alone in Antarctica
How the Light Gets In
Ordinary Grace
Ocean at the of the Lane
2014 - Big Little Lies
All the Light We Cannot See
Underground Girls of Kabul
Elephant Company
Station Eleven
The Long Way Home
Greenglass House
2015 - The Lake House
Better Than Before
The Year of Living Danishly
The Nature of the Beast
Six of Crows
2016 - A Gentleman in Moscow
The Madwoman Upstairs
Born a Crime
Mother Tongue
Dark Matter
The Great Reckoning
Hero of the Empire
Magpie Murders
2017 - Endurance
At Home in the World
Glass Houses
Mythos
2018 -Circe
The Clockmaker’s Daughter
Next Year in Havana
Maxilla of Green Gables
The Feather Thief
Spinning Silver
The Map of Salt and Stars
Kingdom of the Blind
2019 - The Lost Man
Unmarriageable
What the Wind Knows
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe
A Better Man
Lovely War
2020 - 2029
2020 - The Feather Thief
The Lazy Genius Way
All The Devils Are Here
The Splendid and the Vile
Breaking Bread with the Dead
The Girl with the Louding Voice
A Deadly Education
2021 - The Madness of Crowds
Project Hail Mary
The Anthropocene Reviewed
Whispered on the Night Wind
2022 - Nettle and Bone