“Books are a portal to our personal histories.” writes Stephanie Merry, editor of Book World at The Washington Post, “Pick up a worn copy of a childhood favorite and you might be transported to the warmth of a parent’s arms or a beanbag chair in a first-grade classroom or a library in your hometown. Avid readers could build autobiographies around their favorite books and come to the realization that what they have read is almost as meaningful as when they read it.” Within that context, the editors rolled up their sleeves and began deliberating and debating which book could be assigned to each year, from age one to 100. And every book lover loves a book list since it invites spirited discussion over what was included or excluded. Obviously with a list this comprehensive, it seems some books were assigned somewhat arbitrarily to a particular age. Nevertheless, the editors deserve kudos for their ambitious goal. Without further ado, here is the list of “The Best Books to Read at Every Age:”
Age 1: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle
Age 2: “Llama Llama Red Pajama” by Anna Dewdney
Age 3: “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak
Age 4: “Charlie Parker Played Be Bop” by Chris Raschka
Age 5: “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein
Age 6: “Ramona the Pest” by Beverly Cleary
Age 7: “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson
Age 8: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.k. Rowling
Age 9: “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume
Age 10: “Smile” by Raina Telgemeier
Age 11: “Ghost” by Jason Reynolds
Age 12: “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred D. Taylor
Age 13: “I Am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai
Age 14: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
Age 15: “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
Age 16: “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
Age 17: “Once Upon a River” by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Age 18: “A Gate At the Stairs” by Lorrie Moore
Age 19: “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
Age 20: “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz
Age 21: “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
Age 22: “Democracy In America” by Alexis De Tocqueville
Age 23: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Age 24: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
Age 25: “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith
Age 26: “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age 27: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
Age 28: “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde
Age 29: “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan
Age 30: “The Joy of Sex” by Alex Comfort
Age 31: “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child
Age 32: “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
Age 33: “Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story” by Paul Monette
Age 34: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
Age 35: “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Age 36: “Life Among the Savages” by Shirley Jackson
Age 37: “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan
Age 38: “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford
Age 39: “What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty
Age 40: “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Age 41: “Rabbit, Run” by John Updike
Age 42: “The Woman Upstairs” by Claire Messud
Age 43: “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
Age 44: “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
Age 45: “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple
Age 46: “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward
Age 47: “Stretching” by Bob anderson
Age 48: “Bossypants” by Tina Fey
Age 49: “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau
Age 50: “Fifty Shades of Grey” by El James
Age 51: “Who Do You Think You Are?” by Alice Munro
Age 52: “Men Without Women” by Haruki Murakami
Age 53: “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman
Age 54: “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker
Age 55: “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout
Age 56: “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön
Age 57: “Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro
Age 58: “The Plague of Doves” by Louise Erdrich
Age 59: “Dynamic Aging” by Katy Bowman
Age 60: “The Five Years Before You Retire” by Emily Guy Birken
Age 61: “Fear of Dying” by Erica Jong
Age 62: “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” by Helen Simonson
Age 63: “Our Souls At Night” by Kent Haruf
Age 64: “Old In Art School” by Nell Painter
Age 65: “65 Things To Do When You Retire” by Mark Evan Chimsky
Age 66: “The “Outlander” Series by Diana Gabaldon
Age 67: “Don Quixote” by Miguel De Cervantes
Age 68: “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion
Age 69: “I Remember Nothing” by Nora Ephron
Age 70: “Master Class: Living Longer, Stronger, and Happier” by Peter Spiers
Age 71: “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie
Age 72: “Love In the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez
Age 73: “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” by Robert Caro
Age 74: “Paris In the Present Tense” by Mark Helprin
Age 75: “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss
Age 76: “Women Rowing North” by Mary Pipher
Age 77: “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson
Age 78: “Charlotte’s Web” by E.b. White
Age 79: “The Coming of Age” by Simone De Beauvoir
Age 80: “Coming Into Eighty: Poems” by May Sarton
Age 81: “Devotions” by Mary Oliver
Age 82: “The Summer of a Dormouse” by John Mortimer
Age 83: Thrillers by Walter Mosley, Dorothy Gilman, and Jacqueline Winspearr
Age 84: “The Last Unknowns” by John Brockman
Age 85: “Ravelstein” by Saul Bellow
Age 86: “Old Filth” by Jane Gardam
Age 87: “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
Age 88: “Nearing Ninety: and Other Comedies of Late Life” by Judith Viorst
Age 89: “A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing 90” by Donald Hall
Age 90: “Beachcombing For a Shipwrecked God” by Joe Coomer
Age 91: “Selected Poems: 1988-2013” by Seamus Heaney
Age 92: “Nothing To Be Frightened of” by Julian Barnes
Age 93: “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari
Age 94: “This Chair Rocks: a Manifesto Against Ageism” by Ashton Applewhite
Age 95: the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
Age 96: “Somewhere Towards the End” by Diana Athill
Age 97: “My Own Two Feet” by Beverly Cleary
Age 98: “Life Is So Good” by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman
Age 99: “Little Boy” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Age 100: “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author” by Herman Wouk
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For further reading: http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/entertainment/books/100-books-for-the-ages/?utm_term=.9361128b564d
