The Harvard Bookstore Top 100 Books Challenge

at The Story Graph, created by your favorite list nerd

I was amusing myself with a list of lists of best-of book lists, and happened upon the Harvard Coop’s Best Books list. As you may know, I miss Boston terribly, I still have it in my blood; as I may not have mentioned, I not only received my master’s from BU, I attended Harvard as a post-grad, and loved it. And yes, I bought many books from the Harvard Coop (aka the Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society; it’s the oldest and largest university bookstore in the US, and it is luscious) at this branch: 1400 Mass Ave.

So. This particular recommendation list lit me up like a wicked good chicken parm (pronounced pahm).

And I recreated it as a challenge on The Story Graph, which is Goodreads but with, as its name suggests, sweet, sweet data. So much data, and self-tracking, and it is delicious.

Here’s the link to join the challenge, and here’s my profile link if you want to follow my reading shenanigans.

You’ll note on site and in the screengrabs below that there are way more than 100 books in the challenge. The explanation is in the challenge description, but I will copy it here for accessibility:

I have tweaked it a little, in that I don’t understand why the entire Harry Potter series was included, but the entire Time quintent was not, only Wrinkle, so I included it as a bonus after A Wrinkle in Time. Also, given the controversy around JKR, I included Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series (which came before Potter) as an alternative bonus for that series. I also added others’ series as bonus prompts. Otherwise, the series is exactly as given.

If a book or series was mentioned on my podcast, There Might Be Cupcakes, I will include a link to that episode in the prompt’s notes.

Plus, if a book is part of a series, I included the entire series. Some of the books included on the list were not the first in the series, so, for clarity, I, as my great-grandfather used to say, went to town.

That’s what my counter looks like.

Join me? Let’s geek out together. If you would like, you can let me know in the comments here that you did so I know I have a new book buddy.

Other reading challenges I have joined (but did not create):

• Read the African-American Literary Canon

• Sylvia Plath’s work

• James Baldwin’s work

• Joan Didion’s work

• Joan Didion’s top 10 suggestions

• Virginia Woolf’s work

• John Steinbeck’s work

• Stephen King’s work

• Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Extended Reading Order

• Horror Subgenres

• 12 Classics in 12 Months

• Nobel Laureates in Literature

• National Book Award Winners for Fiction

• Kings and Queens of England (history and historical fiction)

I told you my life is a reading list. Hence, the podcast. Join me! It’s fun.