The Ultimate Reading List

Title - Author (#of books on list), Awards/Lists

Number in parenthesis beside author’s name indicates number of author's books on list.
An asterisk* beside the author’s name indicates Nobel Prize winner.

Paco's Story - Larry Heinemann  2

Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle(2) 7

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov(2) 8

Pale Horse, Pale Rider - Katherine Anne Porter(2) 10

Parade’s End - Madox Ford(2) 8

Paris Trout - Pete Dexter 2

Peace Like A River - Leif Enger 6

Pearl, The - John Steinbeck(4) 10

Philadelphia Fire - John Edgar Wideman(2) 3

Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver(3) 5

Plague, The - Albert Camus(3) 10, 12

Plains Song - Wright Morris(2) 2

Plot Against America, The - Philip Roth(8) 13

Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley(2) 8

Poisonwood Bible, The - Barbara Kingsolver(3) 6, 13

Portable Faulkner, The - William Faulkner(8) 11                

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth(8) 8, 10, 11

Portrait of a Lady - Henry James(5) 9

Possession: A Romance - A.S. Byatt 7,10

Postcards - E. Annie Proulx(3) 3

Postman Always Rings Twice - James N. Cain 8

Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld 13

Preston Falls - David Gates 13

Price of a Ticket - James Baldwin(3) 12

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 12

Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The - Muriel Spark 8, 10

Puttermesser Papers, The - Cynthia Ozick 13

Rabbit at Rest - John Updike(6) 1, 4

Rabbit Is Rich - John Updike(6) 1, 2, 4

Rabbit, Run - John Updike(6) 9, 10

Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow(3) 8, 10

Rainbow, The - DH Lawrence(4) 8

Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters - JD Salinger(4) 12

Razors Edge, The - Sommerset Maugham(2) 10

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 9, 10

Rebel, The - Albert Camus(3) 10

Red Tent, The - Anita Diamant 6

Reivers, The - William Faulkner(8) 1

Remains of the Day, The - Kazuo Ishiquro 7

Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust 10, 11

Remembering Babylon - David Malouf 5

Renascence and Other Poems - Edna St.Vincent Millay 11     

Rings of Saturn, The - Winfried Georg Sebald(2) 5

Rites of Passage - William Golding(2) 7

Road, The - Cormac McCarthy 1

Roots - Alex Haley 10

Roscoe - William Kennedy(2) 13

Runaway - Alice Munro 13

1-Pulitzer Prize
2-National Book Award
3-Pen/Faulkner Award
4-National Book Critic’s Circle Award for Fiction
5-Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
6-Book Sense Book Award
7-Man Booker Prize
8-American Library’s Top 100 Novels
9-Modern Library 100 Best Books
10-Library Journal’s Most Influential Fiction of the 20th Century
11-New York Library’s Books of the Century
12-Harvard Bookstore’s 100 Best Books
13-New York Times Editor’s Choice