An Aficionado’s Guide to the top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time: Final

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

Here it is folks! The final list

Want to see the poll: http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/55...


Note: The positions of the books on this list are based on member votes. In the event that a book did not receive a vote - it's position was determined by the votes it received during the nomination stage.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

An Aficionado’s Guide to the top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time

1 The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
2 A Game of Thrones
3 The Harry Potter Collection
4 The Name of the Wind
5 Mistborn: The Final Empire
6 The Eye of the World
7 Robin Hobb Collection: Farseer Trilog - Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest
8 The Dark Tower Series Collection: Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, the Dark Tower
9 Gardens of the Moon
10 The Belgariad, Vol. 1: Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit
11 Daughter of the Empire
12 Wizard's First Rule
13 The Color of Magic
14 The Sword of Shannara Trilogy
15 Good Omens
16 Elric of Melniboné
17 The Great Book of Amber
18 Magic Bites
19 The Dark Elf Trilogy Collector's Edition
20 The Dragonlance Chronicles/Dragons of Autumn Twilight/Dragons of Winter Night/Dragons of Spring Dawning
21 A Wizard of Earthsea
22 Howl's Moving Castle
23 The Last Unicorn
24 The Fionavar Tapestry
25 Kushiel's Dart
26 Chronicles of The Black Company
27 The Malloreon, Vol. 1: Guardians of the West, King of the Murgos, Demon Lord of Karanda
28 Magician
29 His Dark Materials
30 The Mists of Avalon
31 Daughter of the Forest
32 Daughter of the Blood
33 The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition
34 Legend
35 Perdido Street Station
36 The Way of Kings
37 Dead Witch Walking
38 The Chronicles of Narnia
39 The Lions of al-Rassan
40 The Dark Is Rising Sequence
41 Moon Called
42 Darkfever
43 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
44 The Princess Bride
45 Storm Front
46 The Night Angel Trilogy
47 The Blade Itself
48 The Neverending Story
49 Sabriel
50 The Iliad
51 The Deed of Paksenarrion
52 Night Watch
53 Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy
54 American Gods / Anansi Boys: Coffret 2 volumes
55 Queen's Own
56 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
57 Interview with the Vampire
58 The Curse of Chalion
59 The Once and Future King
60 The Talisman
61 The Lies of Locke Lamora
62 A Spell for Chameleon
63 Hounded
64 Percy Jackson and the Olympians Boxed Set
65 Watership Down
66 His Majesty's Dragon
67 The Black Prism
68 The Odyssey
69 Mary Poppins
70 Neverwhere
71 Stardust
72 Tigana
73 The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
74 The Warded Man, Demon Cycle #1
75 Fool's Errand
76 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
77 The Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic + Mad Ship + Ship of Destiny.
78 Elantris
79 Eragon, Eldest & Brisingr
80 Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
81 Furies of Calderon
82 The Children of Húrin
83 The Eyes of the Dragon
84 Redwall
85 The Dragonbone Chair
86 The Magic Kingdom of Landover: Volume 1
87 Best Served Cold
88 Dead Until Dark
89 Alanna: The First Adventure
90 On a Pale Horse
91 The Last Herald-Mage
92 Charlotte's Web
93 The Divine Comedy
94 Graceling
95 Black Sun Rising
96 Dragon Wing
97 Priestess of the White
98 Swords and Deviltry
99 The Book of Three
100 Dreams Underfoot

[[deleted user]]

I've got a lot of reading to do...

[Elaine]

lol you just beat me to saying hat! there are many of these I havn't read. I'm going to be a busy lettle bee :)

[Traci]

How many have you read? 67/100. Need to fill in the gaps...

[Leighann]

Thank you Mrs. J that was a ton of work! can't wait to read all of these! Well the one's I haven't at least!

[Amanda]

I've read roughly 23 of those listed. :( All though I do have a bunch of these on my tbr.

[Laurel]

I think I'm at 43...

And thanks to MrsJ for the tremendous effort!

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

I think I hit 33 or so - but only if we count trilogies where I've only read the first book. And, honestly, I doubt I'd get much higher than 40 ever.

[Cheryl]

Thanks for this, MrsJ! I see a lot of books on there that I haven't read yet. Oh, boy, my poor bank account and bookshelves! :)

[[deleted user]]

31 for me. Sheesh

[Mick]

I'm impressed by what a good list this is. I think it's truly representative of the excellent stories, storytellers, and genres of Fantasy.

MrsJ, thanks for all your hard work!

[Kevin]

I have read about 65 books on the list.

[Kevin]

I'm just happy to see that Drizzt is better than Dragonlance, but sadly only by one.

[Kevin]

I just never considered Charlotte's Web as fantasy of any kind.

[Traci]

It has talking animals......

Lol. I'm assuming you consider it children's lit.

[Kevin]

Traci wrote: "It has talking animals......

Lol. I'm assuming you consider it children's lit."

Yes, I do!

[Kevin]

Traci wrote: "It has talking animals......

Lol. I'm assuming you consider it children's lit."

If going on the point that it has talking animals, there are a lot of better books that could fit that category.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

I'm so glad you all like the list! :-D

[[deleted user]]

Kevin wrote: "If going on the point that it has talking animals, there are a lot of better books that could fit t..."


Y'know what we should do? We should come up with a list of fantasy books we all think are great, maybe number them 1 to 100. We can have a couple threads discussing which are good, which aren't, which ones belong and which don't.

Then we can vote on them!

Hell, we can vote on them multiple times!

And then...wait, this sounds familiar.

hrm.

[Traci]

MrsJoseph wrote: "I'm so glad you all like the list! :-D"

I love the list. I already gave a copy to a young(ish) reader who is just starting to read out of young adult. He's only read a few listed here.

[Danielle The Book Huntress]

I really like the final list. I'm going to start a checklist under my profile for future reading.

Thanks so much for all the hard work!

[Anne]

Hmm, I've only read 33. Most of the rest were already on my TBR list, but I see a few I should probably add. I've got a lot of reading to do.

[Valerie]

I'm at 32-ish - some of these I started to read when I was really young, but can't remember anything about them/not sure if I ever finished (Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte's Web). Might have to revisit those. :D

[Linette]

I was doing great for the first 8, then things got spotty - I've read 31 of them. Which means about 70 books/series to look forward to - great list, thank you for your effort putting it together!

[Kim Marie]

Thanks again for all the effort that went into making up that great list. There were a few surprises for me in the placings but overall it showed me that I need to read more Fantasy next year. I'll be looking forward to joining the Challenge to do just that!

[Dana]

Great list. I'm at 45/100, but there are some that I only read the first couple of books (or even just the first book) of the series. Saw quite a few that I've been meaning to read... plenty of options to look for next time I get in the bookstore. :)

[Sharon]

Looks like 36/100 for me, some a long time ago and also a lot of titles I don't even recognize, as well as some that I started and gave up on.

[Betsy]

I've only read 20...but that's okay with me, I'm looking forward to 'catching up'!

[Shauna]

I'm only at 23..I really have to stop wasting my time reading reading utter crap.

[Jonathan]

I personally think you could easily read about 150 books from this list with all the series listed.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings = 2
Harry Potter = 7
There's almost ten with the first two selections on the list.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

Jonathan wrote: "I personally think you could easily read about 150 books from this list with all the series listed.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings = 2
Harry Potter = 7
There's almost ten with the first two sele..."


:-D

That should keep you busy for at least 6 months!

[Martin]

Jonathan wrote: "I personally think you could easily read about 150 books from this list with all the series listed."
I got it to 151 after having set up a new shelf (and I'm not sure Conan is one book) of which I've read 45 (+a couple Conan books).

I'm very appreciative of all the work that has gone into creating the list and I've found a few new ones I didn't already had on my TBR-list.

[Jonathan]

That should keep you busy for at least 6 months!

True it should. I was planning on re-reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in the next year anyway. I may as well re-read Shannara too and Narnia. And then read all the Eragon books again...

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I've read 59 (though a couple of those are series I didn't like and didn't stay with...). Still "a bunch" to go.

[Trevor]

I'm around 34/100 read. There isn't enough time to read all the books I want to read.

I'm kind of late posting this but thanks for putting this list together. Voting in all the different polls was a lot of fun.

[Kara]

Shauna wrote: "I'm only at 23..I really have to stop wasting my time reading reading utter crap."

There's still plenty of amazing books not listed here...

I'm at 30/100, with some series in the mix not yet finished.

[Amelia]

Jonathan wrote: "I personally think you could easily read about 150 books from this list with all the series listed.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings = 2
Harry Potter = 7
There's almost ten with the first two sele..."

I was bored yesterday and counted up how many books there were if you included the different books in the different series. The exact number would vary depending on how you count the books, such as is LOTR 1 book or 3? Anyway, in my count I got 564 books in the list of top 100. I also included some yet to be published books in some series still being published. I figured they will be part of the series once they do get published if they ever do.

I've read 152 out of the 564. If I just went for the list of 100, I've read 35.

I've got a whole bunch of reading to do if I read just the ones that I'm interested in.

[Traci]

564!!!!!!
How daunting. And I feel good about reading 120 (guessing) books this year.

I imagine Discworld was the highest. ;)

[Amelia]

Discworld has 39, but Xanth has quite a few too - 34. The Redwall series have 22 and the Newford Series by de Lint has 24. Those were the big contenders.

[Kevin]

Amelia wrote: "Discworld has 39, but Xanth has quite a few too - 34. The Redwall series have 22 and the Newford Series by de Lint has 24. Those were the big contenders."

What about Drizzt, which has about 22 books right now, and growing with one book a year.

[Amelia]

Some of the series are loosely connected and some might not be part of the actual series that was meant in the list. For the ones I haven't read, which is a lot, I tried my best to get the ones that I thought were part of the series. I may actually have counted extra because I am somewhat of a completist. If it looked like it belonged, I added it. I pulled my info from the series pages that Goodreads has, so if that's wrong, so will my numbers be wrong.

[Bridget]

This should be a great challenge. I've read about 30 of those books already, and many I've been thinking I should give a try. This is a great excuse to do it!

[Rob]

I have read 91 of them.

[Amelia]

Kevin wrote: "Amelia wrote: "Discworld has 39, but Xanth has quite a few too - 34. The Redwall series have 22 and the Newford Series by de Lint has 24. Those were the big contenders."

What about Drizzt, whi..."

I only counted the Dark Elf trilogy. If you add in all of the related series, the number would be a lot higher.

[Lis]

30 down, 70 to go. I'd better get reading.

[Arshad]

I've read 44/100, counting at least one book in each series, and not counting the classical works that I studied excerpts of in school (Illiad, Odyssey, Divine Comedy).

Thanks for the recommendations, and thank you to MrsJ for the immense amount of work that went into this.

[Pauline]

Hrm...good to see that I've at least read a good amount of the books mentioned on this list :D

Off to read the books that I haven't gotten to :D

[Dana]

Did I miss the Dragonriders of Pern series on the list??? I would have to say that deserves to be on there.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

It's not here because it's basis is science fiction. There was a discussion over that when the list was being compiled and voted on. The posts are probably still around somewhere, but that's the gist.