200 Books by 2030

The Great Books

I’m 41 years old and I’d like to read through 200 of The Great Books by the time I’m 50 (by the year 2030). I’m starting the list below and reading the books in order beginning in 2022.

My Proposed Reading List

I have generated this list from a variety of sources that are listed below. My plan is to read the books in the order you see them from oldest to newest. A negative number before a year signifies B.C.E. and the others are for C.E.

Suggest a Book

#	Book	Author	Est. Year	Pages
1	The Epic of Gilgamesh		-2100	199
2	Writings from Ancient Egypt		-2000	384
3	The Rigveda		-1500	352
4	Enuma Elish	Babylonian	-1100	120
5	Iliad	Homer	-730	608
6	Odyssey	Homer	-700	525
7	Theogony & Works and Days	Hesiod	-700	112
8	Aesop’s Fables	Aesop	-580	352
9	Aeschylus – Complete Works	Aeschylus	-458	336
10	Sophocles – Complete Works	Sophocles	-442	430
11	The Histories	Herodotus	-430	664
12	Lysistrata	Aristophanes	-411	241
13	History of the Peloponnesian War	Thucydides	-405	656
14	Euripides – Complete Works	Euripides	-405	432
15	Apology, Symposium, The Republic	Plato	-399	600
16	Comedies	Aristophanes	-386	352
17	Rhetoric, Physics, Politics, Nichomachean Ethics, Poetics	Aristotle	-350	600
18	Elements	Euclid	-300	481
19	Analects	Confucius	-300	221
20	The Art of Happiness	Epicurus	-280	251
21	The Book of Chuang Tzu	Chuang Tzu	-250	352
22	Works	Archimedes	-220	576
23	Terence The Comedies	Terence	-165	368
24	On the Nature of Things	Lucretius	-70	363
25	The Republic and The Laws	Cicero	-51	288
26	Aeneid	Virgil	-20	386
27	The History of Rome: Books 1 – 10	Livy	-9	880
28	The Bible		0	1,816
29	Metamorphoses	Ovid	8	636
30	Letters from a Stoic	Seneca	65	254
31	The Jewish War	Josephus	90	528
32	Institutes of Oratory	Quintilian	95	730
33	Lives	Plutarch	100	462
34	Arithmetic	Nicomachus	100
35	Almagest	Ptolemy	100	712
36	Discourses / Enchiridion	Epictetus	108	304
37	Annals	Tacitus	110	576
38	Meditations	Marcus Aurelius	180	93
39	The Enneads	Plotinus	270	688
40	The Bhagavad-Gita in the Mahabharata		300	224
41	Confessions	St. Augustine	397	338
42	Selected Letters	St. Jerome	400	528
43	The Talmud		400	896
44	The City of God	St. Augustine	426	867
45	The Consolation of Philosophy	Boethius	523	114
46	The Koran		632	464
47	Beowulf	Tolkien Translation	1000	105
48	Arabian Knights		1000	674
49	The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden		1000	384
50	The Pillow Book	Shōnagon	1002	416
51	Proslogium	S. Anselm	1078	88
52	The Song of Roland		1100	208
53	The Guide for the Perplexed	Maimonides	1190	484
54	The Saga of the Volsungs		1200	160
55	Njal’s Saga		1200	384
56	Magna Carta		1215	54
57	The Essential Rumi	Rumi	1260	281
58	The Tale of the Heike		1330	784
59	The Decameron	Boccacio	1350	1,072
60	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight		1390	214
61	Canterbury Tales	Chaucer	1392	627
62	The Imitation of Christ	Thomas à Kempis	1420	100
63	Divine Comedy	Dante	1472	541
64	Summa Theologica	Thomas Aquinas	1485	1,116
65	In Praise of Folly	Erasmus	1511	256
66	Utopia	Thomas More	1516	152
67	The 95 Theses	Martin Luther	1520	272
68	The Babylonian Captivity of the Church	Martin Luther	1520	108
69	Discourses	Machiavelli	1531	544
70	The Prince	Machiavelli	1532	173
71	Gargantua and Pantagruel	Rabelais	1532	312
72	Institutes on the Christian Religion	John Calvin	1536	540
73	On the Revolution of the Spheres	Copernicus	1543	352
74	The Story of Hong Gildong		1550	128
75	Essays	Michael de Montaigne	1580	476
76	The Dark Night of the Soul	St. John of the Cross	1580	146
77	Essays	Francis Bacon	1597	242
78	Shakespeare’s Comedies	William Shakespeare	1600	1,000
79	Shakespeare’s Tragedies	William Shakespeare	1600	1,000
80	Shakespeare’s Histories	William Shakespeare	1600	600
81	Sonnets	William Shakespeare	1609	154
82	Epitome IV	Kepler	1618	254
83	Novum Organum	Francis Bacon	1620	124
84	Poems	John Donne	1620	736
85	Motion of the Heart and Blood	William Harvey	1628	116
86	The Temple	George Herbert	1633	336
87	Two New Sciences	Galileo Galilei	1638	200
88	Meditations	René Descartes	1641	256
89	Leviathan	Thomas Hobbes	1651	410
90	Maxims	La Rochefoucauld	1665	400
91	The Misanthrope	Molière	1666	400
92	Paradise Lost	John Milton	1667	624
93	Fables	La Fontaine	1668	504
94	Pensées	Blaise Pascal	1670	368
95	Theological-Political Treatise	Benedict de Spinoza	1670	329
96	Phaedra	John Baptiste Racine	1677	50
97	Pilgrim’s Progress & The Holy War	John Bunyan	1678	320
98	Oroonoko	Aphra Behn	1680	272
99	Rules for the Direction of the Mind	Descartes	1684	24
100	Principia Mathematica	Isaac Newton	1685	992
101	Second Treatise on Government	John Locke	1689	104
102	Treatise on Light	Christiaan Huygens	1690	134
103	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding	Locke	1690	416
104	Monadology	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	1714	304
105	Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	1719	258
106	Gulliver’s Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	304
107	Treatise on Human Nature	David Hume	1740	444
108	Candide	Voltaire	1759	108
109	The Spirit of Laws	Montesquieu	1755	315
110	On the Origin of Inequality, Political Economy, The Social Contract	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	1762	116
111	The Wealth of Nations	Adam Smith	1776	416
112	Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution	Founding Fathers	1776	338
113	The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire	Edward Gibbon	1776	2,765
114	Confessions	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	1782	615
115	Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals	Immanuel Kant	1785	128
116	The Federalist Papers	Hamilton, Jay, Madison	1788	172
117	Elements of Chemistry	Lavoisier	1790	640
118	The Interesting Narrative	Olaudah Equiano	1790	156
119	Life of Johnson	Boswell	1791	343
120	The Two Part Prelude	William Wordsworth	1799	82
121	Logic	Hegel	1807	386
122	Sense and Sensibility	Jane Austen	1811	505
123	Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen	1813	368
124	On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation	David Ricardo	1817	167
125	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	1818	252
126	The Great Odes	John Keats	1819	540
127	Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience	William Blake	1789	60
128	Ivanhoe	Sir Walter Scott	1819	569
129	Democracy in America	De Tocqueville	1835	452
130	Theory of Parallels	Lobachevsky	1840	52
131	Fear and Trembling	Kierkegaard	1843	160
132	The Communist Manifesto, Capital	Karl Marx	1844	243
133	The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas	1844	1,179
134	Stories	Edgar Allen Poe	1845	955
135	Economic Sophisms	Frederic Bastiat	1847	180
136	Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë	1847	290
137	Jane Eyre	Charlotte Brontë	1847	760
138	Concluding Unscientific Postscript	Kierkegaard	1849	192
139	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens	1850	923
140	The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1850	258
141	Essays and Aphorisms	Schopenhauer	1851	240
142	Moby Dick	Herman Melville	1851	647
143	Uncle Tom’s Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe	1852	637
144	Benito Cereno	Herman Melville	1855	108
145	Madame Bovary	Gustave Flaubert	1856	190
146	Origin of Species	Charles Darwin	1859	505
147	A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens	1859	390
148	Great Expectations	Charles Dickens	1860	491
149	Complete Poems	Emily Dickinson	1870	770
150	Middlemarch	George Eliot	1871	799
151	Autobiography, On Liberty	John Stuart Mill	1873	203
152	Anna Karenina	Tolstoy	1877	736
153	The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1880	729
154	Complete Poems	Tennyson	1880	948
155	The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass	Frederick Douglass	1881	496
156	The Portrait of a Lady	Henry James	1881	362
157	Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	1884	559
158	Beyond Good and Evil	Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche	1886	240
159	Philosophical Investigations	Wittgenstein	1887	167
160	Twilight of the Idols	Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche	1888	208
161	Briefer Course	William James	1892	368
162	The Red Badge of Courage	Crane	1895	112
163	Dracula	Bram Stoker	1897	418
164	The Interpretation of Dreams	Sigmund Freud	1899	688
165	Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad	1899	106
166	The Everyman Chesterton	G.K. Chesterton	1900	899
167	Essays on the Theory of Numbers	Richard Dedekind	1901	128
168	The Souls of Black Folk	Du Bois	1903	268
169	In Search of Lost Time	Marcel Proust	1909	4,211
170	Selected Writings	Booker T. Washington	1910	356
171	General Introduction to Psychoanalysis	Freud	1916	178
172	The Electron	Millikan	1917	298
173	Ulysses	James Joyce	1920	768
174	Poems	William Butler Yeats	1920	214
175	Mrs. Dalloway	Virginia Woolf	1925	190
176	The Trial	Franz Kafka	1925	304
177	Special & General Relativity	Einstein	1926	192
178	Civilization and its Discontents	Freud	1929	192
179	The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner	1929	309
180	The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory	Heisenberg	1930	194
181	The General Theory	Keynes	1936	403
182	Their Eyes Were Watching God	Zora Neale Hurston	1937	219
183	Rebecca	Daphne Du Maurier	1938	416
184	The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909 – 1950	T.S. Elliot	1941	64
185	Go Down, Moses	William Faulkner	1942	365
186	The Road to Serfdom	Hayek	1944	262
187	1984	George Orwell	1949	298
188	The Second Sex	de Beauvoir	1949	978
189	Letters and Papers from Prison	Dietrich Bonhoeffer	1951	309
190	East of Eden	John Steinbeck	1952	601
191	The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays	Heidegger	1956	104
192	Things Fall Apart	Chinua Achebe	1958	209
193	To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	1960	270
194	The Moviegoer	Walker Percy	1961	212
195	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Harvard Address	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	1962	159
196	The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	Thomas S. Kuhn	1962	264
197	The Master and Margarita	Mikhail Bulgakov	1966	448
198	The New Industrial State	Galbraith	1967	438
199	A Theory of Justice	John Rawls	1971	560
200	Selected Stories	Flannery O’Connor	1971	576

*As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing

**Romeo and Juliet, Julius Ceasar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus

***Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, King Lear

The Plan

Year	# of Books
2022	6
2023	26
2024	28
2025	28
2026	38
2027	28
2028	21
2029	25
Total	200

Suggestions?

I’m sharing my proposed list to gather feedback. Any books I’m missing? Please make suggestions and I’ll consider them for the project.

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Sources

I pulled from the sources below to compile this Great Books list. Efforts were made to expand outside of the Western Canon. No books will be added that were written within the last 50 years.