50 Years of Books that Shaped Our Lives

From the books that defined a decade to the books we just enjoyed reading, here is a list of 50 books that have shaped our lives in the last 50 years.  


  1. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach
  2. Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  3. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
  4. Centennial, by James A. Michener
  5. Trinity, by Leon Uris
  6. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
  7. Mommie Dearest, by Christina Crawford
  8. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
  9. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
  10. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
  11. Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler
  12. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
  13. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
  14. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
  15. IT, by Stephen King
  16. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
  17. The Swimming-Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst
  18. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
  19. Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson
  20. The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan
  21. The Pelican Brief, by John Grisham
  22. The Bridges of Madison County, by Robert James Waller
  23. The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield
  24. Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
  25. Primary Colors, by Anonymous
  26. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
  27. Paradise, by Toni Morrison
  28. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
  29. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
  30. A Day Late and a Dollar Short, by Terry McMillian
  31. Journey Through Heartsongs, by Mattie Stepanek
  32. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
  33. The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
  34. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
  35. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
  36. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
  37. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
  38. Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
  39. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson
  40. The Help, by Katheryn Stockett
  41. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
  42. The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride
  43. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
  44. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
  45. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
  46. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
  47. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
  48. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
  49. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
  50. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner

How many of these books have you read? You can find these books and more at your local HPB or HPB.com. Happy reading!