I'm reading 100 books in 2026. Here's my list for Phase 1.

Phase 1 --- Titles 1 - 25

1. The Alchemist -- Paulo Coelho (completed 4 january 2026 -- read review)

2. Paradise Lost -- John Milton¹

3. Dracula -- Bram Stoker 

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Oscar Wilde¹

5. Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays -- David Sedaris 

6. If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All -- Eliezer Yudkowsky

7. In The Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture -- Alister McGrath¹

8. This Is How You Lose The Time War -- Amal El-Mohtar

9. The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne

10. The Stranger -- Albert Camus

11. The Metamorphosis -- Franz Kafka

12. The Myth of Sisyphus -- Albert Camus

13. The Divine Comedy -- Dante Alighieri

14. Piranesi -- Susanna Clarke¹

15. Hopscotch -- Julio Cortazar

16. S. -- J.J. Abrams, Doug Dorst

17. The Thursday Murder Club -- Richard Osman

18. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Agatha Christie

19. Death on the Nile -- Agatha Christie

20. Between the Sheets: Jilly Cooper on Sex, Socialising and Survival -- Jilly Cooper

21. Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection -- John Green¹

22. Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism -- Slavoj Zizek 

23. Why Literature Still Matters -- Jason M. Baxter

24. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism -- Sarah Wynn-Williams

25. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) -- Dennis E. Taylor¹

¹ First edits to order---Paradise Lost moved to position #2. The Picture of Dorian Gray moved to position #4. Everything Is Tuberculosis moved to position #21. Das Kapital removed from Phase 1 to be read later. Piranesi moved to position #14. Infinite Jest removed from Phase 1 to be read later. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) moved to position #25. In The Beginning added at position #7. Changes made 4 January 2026.