1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
A father and son trudge across an ashen American landscape in the wake of some unnamed apocalypse, fighting off sexually predatory bandits, scavenging for food, uncovering charnel-house horrors, then moving on, constantly moving on, toward some mirage of a better future. We don't need writers of Cormac McCarthy's caliber to inform us of looming planetary catastrophes; we can read the newspaper for that. We need McCarthy to imagine the fate of the human soul if the worst really does come to pass; what he depicts in The Road is strange, awful, tender, and, in the end, surprising.

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
The first three Harry Potter novels were pure kid stuff until, unexpectedly, Rowling went epic and dark —killing children, resurrecting evil, and sending Harry to war.

3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
''Beloved'' is a slaughtered baby, a belligerent ghost, a single word carved on a headstone, and hands down the greatest novel ever written about American slavery.

4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995) [read this in a book club and liked it, the author also wrote a memoir of her druggie years, guess her crazy childhood panned out]
Mother was much married and ''Nervous.'' Daddy liked to drink. Their home in Leechfield, Tex., was definitely ''Not Right.'' The dysfunctional childhood is now a staple of memoirs, but no one has handled the material with more artistry and wit.

5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
After crazy Portnoy, priapic Sabbath, and manic early Zuckerman, Roth launched a resplendent new chapter of his career with this mature elegy for bourgeois mid-20th-century values, for middle-class industrial Newark, for all the lost promise of the handsome, dreamy Swede. Bonus: It teaches you how to make gloves.

6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
A young girl is murdered; a father seeks revenge; a grimy multigenerational urban tragedy unfolds. Clint Eastwood's film is marvelous, but Lehane's brooding novel is even richer.

7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991) [read parts of this cause it was assigned reading in my kid's 8th grade English class, graphic novel so it gets major points]
In Spiegelman's two-part retelling of his Polish- born father's experience in the Holocaust, the Jews are mice; the Germans, cats; the Americans, dogs. This harrowing masterpiece paved the way for a generation of graphic memoirists.

8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
For 40 years, Munro has steadily churned out stunning short stories that read like compressed novels, conveying the sweep of a lifetime in a paragraph.

9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997) [read this years ago and fumbled my way through it, i found it long and boring, but have yet to see the movie]
A walking tour of the lunacy of war, the power of memory, and the souls of men.

10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
Murakami is a sly novelist for whom good and evil, fate and free will, and past and present are strange bedfellows. Here, Toru Okada's cat disappears — and sets in motion a mystery so surreal it would weird out David Lynch.

11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
On May 10, 1996, Krakauer scaled Mount Everest. Eight other climbers lost their lives that day. Less than one year later, the guilt-ridden author released his searingly honest account, one of the best adventure books ever.

12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998) [I've read Saramago's The Double and loved it!]
An unforgettable fable about a city in the grip of a blindness epidemic. The good news: It's riveting. The bad news: This portrait of how mankind responds to desperate circumstances…well, it ain't togetherness.

13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986–87) [Watchmen! Need I say more?]
The greatest superhero story ever told and proof that comics are capable of smart, emotionally resonant narratives worthy of the label literature.

14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
In just 154 pages, Oates delivers a knockout punch of a novel inspired by Chappaquiddick, the archetypal story of an idealistic woman done in by the carelessness of a powerful man.

15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
The magazines, the literacy centers, the philanthropic efforts for Sudanese refugees: The whole McSweeney's phenomenon started with Eggers' mischievous, affecting memoir about raising his kid brother at age 21 after the sudden death of both their parents.

16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986) [One of the most influential books I've read, this was on The Big Read's list too, as it should be]
After 1984 came and went without ado, we needed a new futuristic dystopia to haunt our sleep. Atwood obliged, dreaming up the Republic of Gilead, a grim theocracy where women are valued solely for their ability to bear children.

17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
Nobelist García Márquez's luxuriant work of magical realism, about star-crossed lovers in an unnamed Caribbean nation, has rightly become a classic.

18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
Popping roasted peanuts and still unable to resist a pretty woman (even one married to his own son), Rabbit drifts to his death — as baffled and rudderless as when he debuted in 1960. A majestic finale to Updike’s quartet.

19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
A rich, old-fashioned novel about contemporary cultural politics, this plummy saga about a mixed- race family in New England is the third — and finest — book by the prodigiously gifted British author.

20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
We love this ditzy Brit diarist for her pratfalls, endearing bad habits, and dead-on characterizations of Singletons and Smug Marrieds (v.v.g.!).

21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
When he wasn't cranking out pop classics like The Shining and Carrie, King was battling alcoholism and the effects of a debilitating 1999 car accident. He recounts both his good times and bad in this memoir, which boasts his tautest writing — and some of the soundest advice to writers set to paper.

22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
Díaz creates his own language — a vigorous high-low street Spanglish — to write about Oscar, the tubby sci-fi geek hero from a Dominican immigrant family.

23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
In the final, gripping book of her WWI trilogy — possibly the best books written about those dreadful years — Barker brings back Billy Prior, sent again to the trenches in France after recovering from shell shock.

24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
The heart sinks at page 50 of this loamy novel about genial cowpoke Gus, good-natured whore Lorena, cruel Blue Duck, and a very long cattle drive. Not because there are 800 pages left, but because there are only 800 pages left.

25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989) [read this years ago as well, and yeah, it deserves to be on a list]
Four elderly Chinese women with iron wills forged in the old country act out family dramas with their American-born daughters in ways that resonate for anyone with a mother.

26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984) [I just read this recently and am beyond ecstatic that its listed here]
This sci-fi novel brought the hacker ethos, artificial reality, and cyberspace to the mainstream — and boldly anticipated the wired way we live today.

27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990) [I always think no one is even aware of this book, but here it is on two lists and it deserves to be]
This fat prize- winning novel is impossible to classify — a ribald academic comedy, a love story, a cerebral literary mystery, a voluptuous page-turner.

28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
Last year, The New Republic accused Sedaris of ''flubberizing the truth for comic effect.'' Well, duh. Anyone who fell off their Barcalounger laughing at ''Dinah the Christmas Whore'' already knew that — and didn't care.

29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001) [I've read this but don't remember being affected much]
A South American embassy throws a birthday bash for a Japanese electronics mogul. A famed opera singer is on the guest list. The terrorists who swarm in through the air-conditioning vents are not. The diva's performance works miracles even with the terrorists, but it's Patchett who really sings.

30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
A case study in ingenious genre- bending, this sublime character- driven mystery includes troubled sisters, sex crimes, and a Cambridge-based PI.

31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
James Frey could have learned from O'Brien, who openly marries fiction with autobiographical fact in his inspired stab at deeper truths about the Vietnam War.

32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
The first installment of a richly detailed three-volume history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
In a single year, Didion lost her husband and watched her only daughter battle a grave illness (to which she would eventually succumb). Here, she diagrams her soul- crushing pain with characteristically cool precision.

34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002) [oh yes, LOVE this book, should be required reading]
A dead teen named Susie Salmon (''I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973'') narrates Sebold's supple and unnerving first novel.

35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
This glorious social novel is set in Thatcher’s Britain, when AIDS was just starting to spoil all the freewheeling fun.

36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996) [damn,this list is good!]
''When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived it all.'' After reading your ravishing memoir, Frank, so do we.

37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003) [3rd graphic novel, not that I'm counting or anything...]
Another sign that comics have matured: this wry illustrated memoir about growing up in Iran during the violent upheavals of the 1970s and '80s.

38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
The standout in Moore's brilliant collection: ''People Like That Are the Only People Here,'' a briskly tragic tale about a mother and her gravely ill child.

39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
We've now been spoiled by two more books from Lahiri, but neither surpasses her luminous debut.

40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995–2000)
Pullman's acclaimed fantasy trilogy is a grand, intellectually daring adventure through the cosmos.

41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
In delicate vignettes, Cisneros depicts a girl growing up poor with six siblings in '80s Chicago.

42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
Why LaBrava and not Get Shorty? Or Killshot? Good question — they're all terrific. But we like LaBrava for its almost- smart-enough hero, the louche Miami Beach setting, and the saucy love interest.

43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
The late Monette's pain-drenched memoir about the death of his partner, Roger Horwitz, is a timeless reminder of a time when AIDS was untreatable

44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
A Faulknerian nonfiction portrait of the racial complexities of the South, focusing on one Georgia county in the 1970s and '80s.

45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
A beautiful servant with a magical gift for storytelling, Eva enjoys ever more enchanted journeys until she meets the man of her destiny.

46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988–1996) [OMG, can I love this list any more?]
Channeling Tolkien and superhero innovator Jack Kirby, Gaiman creates a romantic, tragic dream king who straddles mythology and imagination, battling Lucifer and serving as muse to Shakespeare. A classic work of fantasy lit in comics form.

47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
In this autobiographical novel, 1930s New York City comes vividly to life through the eyes of a 9-year-old Bronx boy.

48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
An epic about a zealous missionary who drags his wife and daughters to the Belgian Congo in 1959 — and to a hell largely of his own making.

49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
This compassionate, tough-minded novel about a young black drug dealer anticipated HBO’s The Wire.

50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
Before the kerfuffle with Oprah: his splendid, talky family saga. —Jennifer Reese, Jeff Jensen, Tina Jordan, and Kate Ward