7. "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." - Epictetus, Greek philosopher

Happy TTT!

I saw this over at Helen's Book Blog and thought I would join in the fun. She saw it on Readerbuzz and My Head Is Full of Books. Thanks for letting me play along, ladies!

This is what Goodreads had to say:

"This is a fun one: For the collection below, we decided to take a long-arc overview and try to identify the most popular books published over the past 100 years, as determined by Goodreads members' digital shelves. To do this, we went year by year and picked one title from among the top of each pile.

However, we didn’t always just grab the very top book for several reasons. Repeats, for instance (some entire eras are Very Stephen King). And some years saw multiple Very, Very Important Works published. Ah, the backstage agony of debating the relative merits of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka!

Mostly we wanted to curate a list that would cover a range of genres and suggest the breadth of reading interests over time. And OK, full confession, it tickled our fancy to be able to put Ulysses and Malibu Rising on the same list."

I'm going to use the same key Ann and Helen did by highlighting the books I've read in yellow, the books on my TBR shelf in aqua, and the books I attempted but didn't finish in green. Let's see how this goes!

1922: Ulysses by James Joyce

1923: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

1924: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

1925: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1926: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

1927: To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1928: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

1929: Passing by Nella Larsen

1930: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

1931: The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer

1932: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1933: In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

1934: Murder On the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

1935: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

1936: Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1940: Native Son by Richard Wright

1941: The Library Of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

1942: The Stranger by Albert Camus

1943: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

1944: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

1945: The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

1946: The Member Of The Wedding by Carson McCullers

1947: No Exit by Jean Paul-Sartre

1948: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

1949: 1984 by George Orwell

1950: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

1951: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

1952: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

1953: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

1954: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

1955: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

1956: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

1957: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

1958: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

1959: The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

1960: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I've read this one multiple times. It's my favorite book of all time!)

1961: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

1962: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

1963: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

1964: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

1965: Dune by Frank Herbert

1966: Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

1967: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

1968: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

1969: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

1970: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1971: Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

1972: Ways Of Seeing by John Berger

1973: The Princess Bride by William Goldman

1974: Carrie by Stephen King

1975: Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

1976: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

1977: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

1978: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

1979: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

1980: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

1981: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

1982: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1983: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

1984: The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

1985: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (I've tried a few times with this one and I just can't ever get into it.)

1986: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

1987: Watchmen by Alan Moore

1988: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

1989: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

1990: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

1991: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

1992: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

1993: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

1994: The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

1995: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

1996: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

1997: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

1998: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

1999: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

2000: House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwski

2001: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2002: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

2003: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

2004: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

2005: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2006: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2007: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2008: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

2009: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2010: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2011: The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller

2012: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

2013: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

2014: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

2015: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2016: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

2017: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

2018: Educated by Tara Westover

2019: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

2020: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

2021: Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Interesting. If I counted right, I've only read 24 of these. I'm surprised and not surprised, both. 

How many of these have you read? Which do you want to read? In which do you have no interest at all? Ha ha.