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The following list is from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. A 10th anniversary edition was issued where King added some more (List B below). I numbered them consecutively so we could easily refer to them in this thread (I did not have the energy to provide all the book links). If you're interested in quickly seeing how many you've read you can take the Buzzfeed .

List A (from original copy of King's book):
1) Peter Abrahams, A Perfect Crime
2) Peter Abrahams, Lights Out
3) Peter Abrahams, Pressure Drop
4) Peter Abrahams,Revolution #9
5) James Agee, A Death in the Family
6) Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs
7) Pat Barker, Regeneration
8) Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door
9) Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
10) Richard Bausch, In the Night Season
11) Peter Blauner, The Intruder
12) Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
13) T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain
14) Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
15) Christopher Buckley, Thank You for Smoking
16) Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From
17) Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth
18) Windsor Chorlton, Latitude Zero
19) Michael Connelly, The Poet
20) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
21) K.C. Constantine, Family Values
22) Don DeLillo, Underworld
23) Nelson DeMille, Cathedral
24) Nelson DeMille, The Gold Coast
25) Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Free eBook � Gutenberg / Kindle)
26) Stephen Dobyns, Common Carnage
27) Stephen Dobyns, The Church of Dead Girls
28) Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
29) Stanely Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
30) William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
31) Alex Garland, The Beach
32) Elizabeth George, Deception on His Mind
33) Tess Gerritsen, Gravity
34) William Golding, Lord of the Flies
35) Muriel Gray, Furnace
36) Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire)
37) Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
38) David Halberstam, The Fifties
39) Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters
40) Thomas Harris, Hannibal
41) Kent Haruf, Plainsong
42) Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
43) Stephen Hunter, Dirty White Boys
44) David Ignatius, A Firing Offense
45) John Irving, A Widow for One Year
46) Graham Joyce, The Tooth Fairy
47) Alan Judd, The Devil’s Own Work
48) Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream
49) Mary Karr, The Liars� Club
50) Jack Ketchum, Right to Life
51) Tabitha King, Survivor
52) Tabitha King, The Sky in the Water
53) Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
54) Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
55) Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
56) Bernard Lefkowitz, Our Guys
57) Bentley Little, The Ignored
58) Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
59) W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (Free eBook � Gutenberg)
60) Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
61) Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
62) Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
63) Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
64) Jack McDevitt, Ancient Shores
65) Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
66) Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden
67) Larry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
68) Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned
69) Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
70) Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
71) Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
72) Stewart O’Nan, The Speed Queen
73) Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
74) Richard North Patterson, No Safe Place
75) Richard Price, Freedomland
76) Annie Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories
77) Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78) Anna Quindlen, One True Thing
79) Ruth Rendell, A Sight for Sore Eyes
80) Frank M. Robinson, Waiting
81) J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
82) J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban
83) J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
84) Richard Russo, Mohawk
85) John Burnham Schwartz, Reservation Road
86) Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
87) Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions
88) Richard Slotkin, The Crater
89) Dinitia Smith, The Illusionist
90) Scott Spencer, Men in Black
91) Wallace Stegner, Joe Hill
92) Donna Tartt, The Secret History
93) Anne Tyler, A Patchwork Planet
94) Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
95) Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
96) Donald Westlake, The Ax

List B (from 10th anniversary edition of King's book)
97) Peter Abrahams, End of Story
98) Peter Abrahams, The Tutor
99) Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
100) Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
101) Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
102) Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
103) Benjamin Black [pseudo.], Christine Falls
104) Peter Blauner, The Last Good Day
105) Roberto Bolaño, 2666
106) David Carr, The Night of the Gun
107) John Casey, Spartina
108) Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
109) Lee Child, The Jack Reacher novels, starting with Killing Floor
110) Michael Connelly, The Narrows
111) Mark Costello, Big If
112) Michael Cunningham, The Hours
113) Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
114) Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
115) Richard Dooling, White Man’s Grave
116) David Downing, Zoo Station
117) Andre Dubus, The Garden of Last Days
118) Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
119) Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
120) Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
121) Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion
122) Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
123) Neil Gaiman, American Gods
124) Meg Gardiner, Crosscut
125) Meg Gardiner, The Dirty Secrets Club
126) William Gay, The Long Home
127) Robert Goddard, Painting the Darkness
128) Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
129) Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
130) Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
131) Charlie Huston, The Hank Thompson Trilogy
132) Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
133) Garrison Keillor (ed), Good Poems
134) Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
135) Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
136) Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
137) John le Carré, Absolute Friends
138) Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
139) Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
140) Jonathan Letham, The Fortress of Solitude
141) Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
142) Bentley Little, Dispatch
143) Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
144) Yann Martel, Life of Pi
145) Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
146) Ian McEwan, Atonement
147) James Meek, The People’s Act of Love
148) Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
149) Patrick O’Brian, The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
150) Stewart O’Nan, The Good Wife
151) Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
152) George Pelecanos, Hard Revolution
153) George Pelecanos, The Turnaround
154) Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher
155) Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
156) DBC Pierre, Vernon Little God
157) Annie Proulx, Fine Just the Way It Is
158) Michael Robotham, Shatter
159) Philip Roth, American Pastoral
160) Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
161) Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
162) Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs
163) Richard Russo, Empire Falls
164) Dan Simmons, Drood
165) Dan Simmons, The Terror
166) Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
167) Tom Rob Smith, Child 44
168) Scott Snyder, Voodoo Heart
169) Neil Stephenson, Quicksilver
170) Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
171) Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
172) Joseph Wambaugh, Hollywood Station
173) Robert Warren Penn, All the King’s Men
174) Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger
175) Mark Winegardner, Crooked River Burning
176) Mark Winegardner, The Godfather Review
177) David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
178) Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

he lists his wifes books in there? man i tried to read her years ago, she's very hard ploddish work and doesn't merit being on the list with some of those writers

and any list with The Raw Shark Texts really needs to be questioned, that was a terrible book (in my opinion yadda yadda)

Richard wrote: "he lists his wifes books in there? man i tried to read her years ago, she's very hard ploddish work and doesn't merit being on the list with some of those writers

and any list with The Raw Shark T..."

It's such an odd list to me that I thought it worth sharing. Never read Tabitha King but I was also surprised to see The Raw Shark Texts on this list. It's also got some of my favorites (House of Leaves, The Poisonwood Bible, American Pastoral). Of course, it may only be something very particular from each of these books that he thinks other writers might benefit from...

The Tabitha King recommendation may have been necessary for continued matrimonial harmony.

The mentioned oddness of this list inspired me to find what exactly King had said about these books. He says they are the best ones he read in the last 3-4 years, so not his All-Time Greats list.

here's the quote from On Writing:

"These are the best books I’ve read over the last three or four years, the period during which I wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, On Writing, and the as-yet-unpublished From a Buick Eight. In some way or other, I suspect each book in the list had an influence on the books I wrote.

As you scan this list, please remember that I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all. But you could do worse, and a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work. Even if they don’t, they’re apt to entertain you. They certainly entertained me."

Thanks for the context, Whitney!

I love lists though I'm useless at making them but yeah, including tabitha and the raw shark on there is like listing great restaurants and including McDonalds and pie face

Number 7 was one of the very first books anyone ever recommended to me on GR, back when I first joined. I bought a couple of Pat Barker books, but have yet to read them.

Regeneration contains the most amazing sequence towards the end. Genuine chills and fury. It's quite a piece of work. It should be mandatory in every school that foists the war poets on its kids

So I've read a grand total of 8 of these books. There are lots on here that I don't have, but I own different books by the same author and have yet to read them.

Conclusion: Buy more books. Read more books.
(To be fair, that's always the conclusion)

Ruby wrote: "Buy more books. Read more books ..."

Now there's a t-shirt I'd like to own!