- Oct 18, 2020

Finding Time's Top 100 Fantasy Novels at The Windsor Public Library

On October 15th, Time Magazine released a list of The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time, compiled by Time staff in collaboration with heavyweight authors Tomi Adeyemi, Cassandra Clare, Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, N.K. Jemisin, George R.R. Martin and Sabaa Tahir.

(It’s worth noting that every one of these authors appears on this list at least once, although the accompanying piece How We Chose The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time claims that “panelists did not nominate their own works.”)

With titles ranging from children’s (Through the Looking-Glass) to young adult (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) to Rated R (Outlander), this all-encompassing list features a diverse cast of characters, authors, and release dates. Starting at The Arabian Nights, released circa 1315, the ranking moves chronologically through childhood favourites, source material for Hollywood blockbusters, and little-known hidden gems to culminate with two very recent releases - Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger) and Woven in Moonlight (Isabel Ibanez), both of which were released this year.

But this blog isn’t about judging the merit of the list.

After skimming through it, I became interested in how many of these I’ve already read, and how many I own (11 and 14 respectively). The next logical step was to figure out how to get my hands on the rest. Checking out the library seemed like a good starting point, but I would need to record what I found in my research. And so began the spreadsheet.

Using The Windsor Public Library’s (WPL) Online Catalogue, I searched for each title, and made note of which formats (if any) each book is available in, saving the links to each for later reference.

While many, many of these books are the first in their series, there are also a number of entries which will make the most sense if read after their predecessors, so I had to take note of these as well. Including prerequisites, the list then expands to about 148 books total (although 29 of those are in the Discworld series, which were released before The Wee Free Men, but aren’t necessarily ‘prequels’).

Out of mere curiosity, I also wanted to take note of the length of each book. While this doesn’t really have any bearing on anything, I wanted to see the range in book length. The shortest entry, for those also curious, is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with a total of 96 pages, according to Goodreads. The longest is George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords, coming in at 1177 pages. In total the 100 best fantasy books of all time feature 40,191 pages of magical fun (not including prequels).

But back to the main point of this exercise - how many of these 100 novels can I find at WPL in either ebook, audio book, or physical book formats? 83

A respectable number! Means there are only 17 books I’ll need to purchase myself (or request that WPL purchase) in order to get through the whole collection.

Scroll through the complete list below for links and information related to each book, and download the free spreadsheet version to track your own progress.

📱= eBook | 🎧 = Audio Book | 📖 = Physical Book

The Arabian Nights (1315)

Anonymous

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Finding Time's Top 100 Fantasy Novels at The Windsor Public Library

Scroll through the complete list below for links and information related to each book, and download the free spreadsheet version to track your own progress.

The Arabian Nights (1315)

Le Morte D'Arthur (1485)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

Five Children and It (1902)

Ozma of Oz (1907)

Mary Poppins (1934)

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950)

The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954)

The Two Towers (1954)

The Return of the King (1955)

A Hero Born (1957)

The Once and Future King (1958)

James and the Giant Peach (1961)

The Phantom Tollbooth (1961)

A Wrinkle in Time (1962)

The Wandering Unicorn (1965)

Dragonflight (1968)

The Last Unicorn (1968)

A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

The Crystal Cave (1970)

The Tombs of Atuan (1970)

Watership Down (1972)

The Dark is Rising (1973)

The Princess Bride (1973)

Tuck Everlasting (1975)

A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978)

The Bloody Chamber (1979)

The BFG (1982)

Alanna: The First Adventure (1983)

Howl's Moving Castle (1986)

Redwall (1986)

Swordspoint (1987)

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

The Eye of the World (1990)

Good Omens (1990)

Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)

Outlander (1991)

Tigana (1990)

The Golden Compass (1995)

Neverwhere (1996)

Ella Enchanted (1997)

The Subtle Knife (1997)

Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)

Spindle's End (2000)

A Storm of Swords (2000)

American Gods (2001)

The Wee Free Men (2004)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2006)

Mistborn: The Final Empire (2006)

The Name of the Wind (2007)

City of Glass (2009)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010)

Who Fears Death (2010)

Akata Witch (2011)

The Night Circus (2011)

The Song of Achilles (2011)

Angelfall (2012)

A Stranger in Olondria (2013)

The Bone Clocks (2014)

The Buried Giant (2015)

An Ember in the Ashes (2015)

The Fifth Season (2015)

Get in Trouble (2015)

The Grace of Kings (2015)

Shadowshaper (2015)

Six of Crows (2015)

The Wrath & The Dawn (2015)

All the Birds in the Sky (2016)

A Torch Against the Night (2016)

The Wall of Storms (2016)

Beasts Made of Night (2017)

The Black Tides of Heaven (2017)