The list below contains some of my favorite works of fiction; they aren’t necessarily the books I consider to be the ‘best’ literature has to offer, but they all have a permanent place on my bookshelf (for various reasons).  There are other works that made the long-list, but I trimmed it to twelve, and I only allowed myself one book per author. I’m a little ashamed at the poor selection of female authors (only one), but it’s an honest list. It is organized chronologically, based on the order I read them.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Earnest Hemingway.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carré

Collected Fiction, Jorge Luis Borges

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner