When I was in High School our English teacher handed out a list of books that we could read for extra credit. We had to read the book, and then take a test covering the content. Mr. Hill taught us in Freshmen and Junior English.

He was also remembered for having us memorize his definitions of the parts of speech and the sentences we had to write if we got into trouble in class. When I write today, I remember Mr. Hill and how much I learned in his classes.

You can see an image of the Parts of Speech in my post: Remembering Mr. Hill

The list is technically not a Novel List, but that is what it was called. In addition to Novels it also has Epic Poems, Non-fiction, Biographies, Autobiographies, Plays, etc…

There are a little over 300 titles on the list. The list is eight pages long.

Over the years, I have consulted the list to find good books to read. I would often read other books by the same author. For instance, I have read most of the works by Jules Verne. I finally decided that I would make it my goal to read all the books on the list.

Of course, I would have periods of time when I would be real diligent about reading books from the list and then long periods where I would not be. Finally, in May 2009 I finished the list.

Of course I then had to start reading books from other lists.

This page is of interest as it has the only book on Mr. Hill’s Novel list that was also a Newbery book. Old Yeller by Fred Gipson was an Honor book in 1957.

Reading all the Newbery Medal and Honor books is another challenge that I am working on. Mr. Hill’s Novel List did not help too much with this challenge.

Here is another section that has several works by Shakespeare. Determining the exact books on the list was sometimes a challenge as the list only had the titles. There were several cases where there were several books that had the same title and I had to work out which book to read.

A list that is often sent around the Internet or Facebook is the BBC Book list. This is the one that usually starts with “Apparently the BBC thinks most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books”.

There are 34 books on the BBC list that are also on Mr. Hill’s Novel List. Of course many of the books on the BBC list had not yet been published when Mr. Hill’s Novel List was put together.

When I first saw the BBC list I had read about 67 of the books on the list, of course I have now read all of them.

The part of the list shown above includes To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.

There are 18 books on Mr. Hill’s Novel List that have won Pulitzer Prizes.

I also challenged myself to read all the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Of course this is an ongoing challenge that I have to re-complete each year in April.

Another list that I am working on that will take many years to complete is the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die which is edited by Peter Boxall.

There are 87 books from Mr. Hill’s Novel List that are on the 1001 list. His list has definitely stood the test of time.

If you want to see the complete list of books on the list you can click on: Mr. Hill’s Novel List

Are you ready to take the challenge?  🙂

Steven