Inspired by @amieshmamie but I don’t read contemporary books enough so let’s see how far we can stretch this concept.
1775: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
1976: Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley
1977: A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick
1078: The Proslogion by Anselm
1979: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1980: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1881: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
1982: The BFG by Roald Dahl
1883: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
1984: The Dictionary of Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson
1985: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
1986: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1587: Holinshed’s Chronicles (2nd Edition) by Raphael Holinshed et al
(I haven’t actually read this but it was hugely influential to Shakespeare, the source for most of his histories and the inspiration for several other plays.)
1988: The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
1989: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
1990: Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
1991: The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
1992: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
1993: The Giver by Lois Lowry
1794: The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
1995: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
1996: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
1597: Richard II by William Shakespeare
1998: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
1999: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
300 BCE: Elements by Euclid
2001: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2002: Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer)
1603: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
1904: The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter
2005: The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
2006: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
1607: Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
1908: Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
2009: FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual (Third Edition) by Geoff Coffey and Susan Prosser
(Definitely the most exciting book released this year.)
2010: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
2011: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2012: Lone Survivors: How We Came to be the Only Humans on Earth by Chris Stringer
2013: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2014: Krabat and the Sorcerer’s Mill by Otfried Preussler (Republished)
Fun fact: Cover art by @ChrisK.
1215: The Magna Carta by King John of England et al
1916: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
