Have you ever wondered what the greatest books of all time were? You’re not alone. Many others have pondered this same question, and some critics have even created their own “greatest” books of all times lists. However, I guess the cliché is true that book lovers can’t pick a favorite book, because these lists never really seem to match.
So what did I do? I took 14 of the most popular “greatest” books lists, and compared them. Some of the lists were created by critics and literary magazines, but I also threw in a couple lists that were created by book ratings and reviews from non-professional readers. What I ended up with was a list of over 600 books, with about half of the books only being mentioned once. Originally, I planned to allow books that had mentions on at least half of the lists entrance to the best of the greatest books of all-time list, but because there were so few books that fit that criteria, I lowered the entrance fee to 4 mentions. Most, but not all, of the rest of the books I compiled are in an honorable mentions list.
Interesting things I noticed while compiling:
- Many of the lists had books by the same renowned authors. However, the lists didn’t pick the same best book from all the authors, so none of their books showed up high on the list.
- Very few books were published in recent years. Are we scared to call new books the best? Do books have to pass a certain longevity test before we grace them with this title? Or, has modern-day literature really declined that much?
- There are very few books that I would recommend to a friend who doesn’t like to read or doesn’t like to read much. Should “greatest” books be easily understood by and help shape all members of society? Or should the best books of all time only be enjoyed by a few select “best” readers?
- No one had the same criteria for judging the “greatest” books. Some judged by literary quality, others by their impact on or message to society, etc. What do you think the criteria for judging the greatest books should be?
The Greatest Books of All Time as Rated by 14 of the Most Popular “Greatest” Books Lists
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (12 Mentions)
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (12 Mentions)
- 1984 by George Orwell (10 Mentions)
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (10 Mentions)
- Midnight’s Children by Sauman Rushdie (10 Mentions)
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (10 Mentions)
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (10 Mentions)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (10 Mentions)
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (9 Mentions)
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (9 Mentions)
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (9 Mentions)
- To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (9 Mentions)
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (8 Mentions)
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (8 Mentions)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (8 Mentions)
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding (8 Mentions)
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (8 Mentions)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (8 Mentions)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (8 Mentions)
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (8 Mentions)
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7 Mentions)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (7 Mentions)
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (7 Mentions)
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (7 Mentions)
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (7 Mentions)
- Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (7 Mentions)
- Animal Farm by George Orwell (6 Mentions)
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (6 Mentions)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (6 Mentions)
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (6 Mentions)
- Middlemarch by George Eliot (6 Mentions)
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (6 Mentions)
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac (6 Mentions)
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (6 Mentions)
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (6 Mentions)
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London (6 Mentions)
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (6 Mentions)
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (6 Mentions)
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (6 Mentions)
- A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce (5 Mentions)
- A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (5 Mentions)
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (5 Mentions)
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (5 Mentions)
- Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes (5 Mentions)
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (5 Mentions)
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (5 Mentions)
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (5 Mentions)
- Native Son by Richard Wright (5 Mentions)
- Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (5 Mentions)
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (5 Mentions)
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (5 Mentions)
- The Complete Works of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka (5 Mentions)
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (5 Mentions)
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (5 Mentions)
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (5 Mentions)
- Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (5 Mentions)
- A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (4 Mentions)
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (4 Mentions)
- An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (4 Mentions)
- Atonement by Ian McEwan (4 Mentions)
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (4 Mentions)
- Deliverance by James Dickey (4 Mentions)
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (4 Mentions)
- Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (4 Mentions)
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (4 Mentions)
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (4 Mentions)
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (4 Mentions)
- I, Claudius by Robert Graves (4 Mentions)
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (4 Mentions)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (4 Mentions)
- Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (4 Mentions)
- Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (4 Mentions)
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (4 Mentions)
- Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (4 Mentions)
- The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (4 Mentions)
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (4 Mentions)
- The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West (4 Mentions)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (4 Mentions)
- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (4 Mentions)
- The Iliad by Homer (4 Mentions)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (4 Mentions)
- The Red and the Black by Stendhal (4 Mentions)
- The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (4 Mentions)
- The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov (4 Mentions)
- The Stranger by Albert Camus (4 Mentions)
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (4 Mentions) (check name)
- Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (4 Mentions)
- Underworld by Don Delillo (4 Mentions)
- Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (4 Mentions)
The Almost “Greatest” Books of All Time (3 Mentions or Fewer)
- A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
- A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
- At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Fahrenheith 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac (Check name)
- Faust: First Part by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Finnegans’ Wake by James Joyce
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- It by Stephen King
- Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling
- Light in August by William Faulkner
- Loving by Henry Green
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
- Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
- Oedipus the King by Sophocles
- Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham
- Rabbit, Run(redux1) by John Updike 1(check title)
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The Ambassadors by Henry James
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
- The Collected Tales of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
- The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
- The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
- Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
- Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
- A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
- A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Absalom, Ablsalom! by William Faulkner
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
- Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire
- Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
- Crash by J. G. Ballard
- Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
- Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
- Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
- Disgrace by JM Coetzee
- Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
- From Here to Eternity by James Jones
- Going Native by Stephen Wright
- Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
- Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
- Howard’s End by E.M. Forster
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- Ironweed by William Kennedy
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Jame Agee and Walker Evans (check authors)
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
- Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
- Money by Martin Amis (A Suicide Note)
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- One Thousand and One Nights by India/Iran/Iraq/Eqypt
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Point, Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
- Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Maquet
- The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
- The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
- The Magnificient Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
- The Magus by John Fowles
- The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- The Old Wive’s Tale by Arnold Bennett
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
- The Recognitions by William Gaddis
- The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
- The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever
- The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
- The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
- The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston
- Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
- A Death in the Family by James Agee
- A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
- A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee
- A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- Affliction by Russell Banks
- Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin
- American Tabloid by James Ellroy
- Amongst Women by John McGahern
- An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Another Country by James Baldwin
- Antigone by Sophocles
- Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
- Blindness by Jose Saramago
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
- Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
- Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
- Collected Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
- Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats
- Collected Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
- Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac
- Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun
- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
- Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
- Dispatches by Michael Herr
- Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman
- Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
- Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Falconer by John Cheever
- Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
- Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
- Germinal by Emile Zola
- Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
- Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe
- Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
- History by Elsa Morante
- Hunger by Knut Hamsun
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
- In Memorium to Identity by Kathy Acker
- In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
- Independent People by Halldor Laxness
- Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
- Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse
- JR by William Gaddis
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
- Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
- Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
- Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- Libra by Don DeLillo
- Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- London Fields by Martin Amis
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- Lookout Cartridge by Joseph McElroy
- Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Man & His Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung
- Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
- Medea by Euripides
- Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
- Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Murphy by Samuel Beckett
- My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
- Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
- Necromancer by William Gibson
- Never Let Me Go by Kazud Ishiguro
- New Grub Street by George Gissing
- Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
- Nightwood by Djuana Barnes
- Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos
- Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
- Oresteia by Aeschylus
- Orientalism by Edward W. Said
- Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
- Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
- Party Going by Henry Green
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
- Plainsong by Kent Haruf
- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
- Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
- Possession by A.S. Byatt
- Ramayana by Valmiki
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- Republic by Plato
- Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
- Savages by Don Winslow
- Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
- Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
- Take It or Leave It by Raymond Federman
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
- The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
- The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
- The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
- The Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
- The Cannibal by John Hawkes
- The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Complete MAUS by Art Spiegelman
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
- The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
- The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
- The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
- The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
- The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
- The Good War by Studs Terkel
- The Great Bridge by David McCullough
- The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
- The History of Mr. Polly by HG Wells
- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones
- The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
- The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- The Long Good-Bye by Raymond Chandler
- The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
- The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
- The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick
- The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
- The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
- The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- The Professional by W.C. Heniz
- The Public Burning by Robert Coover
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Rifles by William T. Vollmann
- The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata
- The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
- The Tunnel by William H. Gass
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
- The Warden by Anthony Trollope
- The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six by Roald Dahl
- Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
- Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
- Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
- Treasure Island by Rober Louis Stevenson
- True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
- Ubik by Philip K. Dick
- Voss by Patrick White
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Watt by Samuel Beckett
- What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer
- White Fang by Jack London
- White Noise by Don Delillo
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
- Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
- Wise Blood by Flannery O’Conner
- Women by Charles Bukowski
- Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo
- Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
So, which books would make it onto your personal list of greatest books? Any of the ones above? Let us know in the comments below!
Happy reading,
Sources: List 1, List 2, http://thegreatestbooks.org/?page=2 (no longer available), List 4, List 5, List 6, List 7, List 8, List 9, List 10, List 11, List 12, List 13, List 14.
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I couldn’t put this book down! Took only two days for me to read. I just love with all the other works from this author and knew I shouldnt skip this book. Love the author who has a great way of making the reader sympathize with the storyline and a need to know how everything ends up..I am now a fan! I also suggest to read The Girl Before by Cathie Monroe. Thank you so much PS: I love your blog.
Carmina
Awesome list. So many i have heard of but never read. I think I have job cut out for me.
Thanks so much.
So many books to read, so little time.
I did not see “Where the red fern grows’
It is my all-time favorite and helped shape a teenager with compassion and empathy. Both qualities we need to instill in our children.
For me there is one glaring omission:
The Bible, surely the greatest book ever written and the world’s best seller.
Absolutely! Apart from the fact that it was the first book ever printed by Gutenberg, it is the most read worldwide.
90% of those books I’ve never even heard of and I’m an avid reader. I’m a book a week kinda person. That being said, I’m picky about what I read, meaning I don’t read anything just because someone else says it’s cool. And just because it’s a best-seller or a classic. Eh, no. It’s gotta be worth my reading meaning the topic/subject matter has to interest me. Combed through that entire list and I’ve only read three of those books. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian and The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Loved all of them and got my own copies of ’em even. Many of those other ones I’ve heard of and seen movie adaptations of and those I’d like to read include:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes
Surprised that Redwall, Mossflower, Martin the Warrior, or any of Brian Jacques other books didn’t make the list. Seriously? Or did I somehow miss something? Used to watch the tv series every week and rent the books from the library. I never have read them all, but I need to! And what about The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew Mystery series? They should definitely be on that list too! And what about The Adventures of Robin Hood?
Other books that should also be added to that list include:
Ragweed, Poppy, and the rest of the Mouse series by Avi
The Great Cheese Conspiracy by Jean Van Leeuwen (and all the latter sequels in the mouse gang series)
The Cricket In Times Square by George Selden (and the other follow-up novels of Chester Cricket and his friends)
Incognito Mosquito series by E. A. Hass
Madeline series by Ludwig Bemelmans
Legacy of The King’s Pirates Series by MaryLu Tyndall
The Charles Towne Bells Series by MaryLu Tyndall
Age of Faith Series by Tamara Leigh
The Noble Knights series by Jody Hedlund
The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest by Melanie Dickerson (Or any of her classic fairy-tale re-tellings.) Which reminds me of the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson. Suppose that was sort of covered in the Complete works of Hans Christian Anderson. But it’s only one of a few of his stories I’ve actually read since the popularity of Disney’s Frozen is what inspired Barnes and Noble to release a special winter fairy-tales volume. Which brings up the question why other classic fairy tales weren’t listed?
I love mysteries so my favorite classics would include Agatha Christie and the Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I enjoy other classic mysteries written in Victorian times or the 1930’s, etc. Other classics I like would be the more thrilling type – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Three Musketeers, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. Also Jane Eyre, P. G. Wodehouse, Wilkie Collins, Harry Potter, and Jane Austen. Some I have only watched as movies, such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Remains of the Day, but it’s a good way to learn about the story. Also, it’s quicker to watch it than to read it. A good immersion into the classics. There are a lot of movies I’d watch but I wouldn’t read the book, especially recent ones.
I believe that a great book and writer should be timeless. No matter how things change as humans the bottom line stays the same. We all can relate to emotions. A good book should make us feel something. I know a lot of people will disagree but some of the books that are considered classics are very hard for some people to get through. Thankfully the list of classics are varied and vast so everyone can find a book to truly inspire and move them.
Only the greatest “Grand Masters of Science Fiction” made it to my list. Authors like Heinlein, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffery, Elizabeth Moon, David Weber, Pat Frank, David Graham, W.E.B. Griffin, Clive Cussler, most authors of Star Trek novels, David Feinstein, William R. Forstchen, and so many others from the 30’s to the 80’s.
New Authors, some are very good, some are fair, some stink until they actually learn to write like the Grand Masters. I have read the classics shown in the photo, some by choice, some because they were required reading in High School. The classics survived because they were GOOD reading. I’m 62, so I have had a lifetime to read these books as they came to my attention. Some books cannot be read past the first chapter, some books, the first time a writer tries are so good you cannot lay them down despite the mistakes they made. Right now, I have a plethora of books on my Kindle ( a new technology to me), and try to read and review in the time allotted. Sometimes, I fail, but not for lack of trying. In my world, books are better than TV because they do not try to squeeze plot, character development, and story into 90 minutes or less. I’m surprised that the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” movies broke the mould on that time frame and are loved for what J.R.R. Tolkein wrote. Is Tolkein on your list? Should be as his books were printed in the 50’s (I think).
The books that stink get bad reviews with suggestions that might make them better. I mean no insult to the Author, but the words have to be said. The rest are on a case by case basis. I’m between books now, but want to see how this new author worked out. I learned long ago that I am not a writer, but I can be a good critic.
I just passed my 66th year, and I’ve been thinking back rather than forward. Last night we took our family to dinner. I wondered what they will look at as their “greatest books”. It seems once “us” baby boomers are gone, will anyone think back more than 20 years? Once I was forced to retire I thought of all the wonderful books I had bought but never had time to read. We had boxed up books going back to 1975. I dragged 1 heavy box from Illinois to Miami Beach. Books I had not had a chance to read while in Nursing School… funny, nurses still think of the old way. At least us older ones do. I earned my AD in 74. Now it is mostly BS. Things change… people have not. I was still called a “male” nurse. Not an RN, AD BSN CCRN etc, etc. (talk about gender discrimination?).
When I think of The Greatest Books I immediately think of four…. Don Quixote by Cervantes, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, The Three Musketeers by Dumas, Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, All Quiet On the Western Front by Remarque, The Art of War by Sun Tsu, The Prince by Machiavelli, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran….The Rubaiyat by Omar Kamal….notice only one English and no American writers….yet? But I could add a good dozen Russian and French. But there are very few really old works. Caesar’ Gaelic wars…had to translate that in Latin class. Oedipus Rex, Aeneid, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Aesop Fables, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Let me throw in a few genre creating books….Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, Edgar Rice Burroughs The Princess of Mars, any of Jules Verne’s works, E E Doc Smith’s Lensman Series.
Once I eventually learned about the Book Cave, Goodreads, Bookbub etc, I was shocked so how few reviews were for classics from the golden age of sci-fi. Maybe I have lived too long. Our generation X’ers and Millennials are something I cannot figure out. I wonder if anyone remembers what TANSTAAFL means…
I do! There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch! And you are right. Too many of the new generation do expect that. And to have what their parents have after fifty years of work. One of the reasons I like the classics is because they explore serious issues without becoming crass or disgusting. But having said that, there are so many great books being published as well these days, and some seriously could be called the greatest books of all time. Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen for example and The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver are great women’s fiction books that are beautifully written and powerful. I can think of a few sci-fi books, but I’m drawing a blank on the titles and they’re in the other room (and I’m too lazy to search for them).