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Book Lovers,Literature
02/27/2018 06:49 am PST
Updated 2 years ago

The "Greatest" Books of All Time 2018 (Do You Agree?)

By Sarah Mecham

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Over 600 of the greatest books of all time

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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?
  3. 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?
  4. 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

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (12 Mentions)
  2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (12 Mentions)
  3. 1984 by George Orwell (10 Mentions)
  4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (10 Mentions)
  5. Midnight's Children by Sauman Rushdie (10 Mentions)
  6. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (10 Mentions)
  7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (10 Mentions)
  8. Ulysses by James Joyce (10 Mentions)
  9. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (9 Mentions)
  10. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (9 Mentions)
  11. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (9 Mentions)
  12. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (9 Mentions)
  13. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (8 Mentions)
  14. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (8 Mentions)
  15. Beloved by Toni Morrison (8 Mentions)
  16. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (8 Mentions)
  17. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (8 Mentions)
  18. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (8 Mentions)
  19. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (8 Mentions)
  20. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (8 Mentions)
  21. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7 Mentions)
  22. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (7 Mentions)
  23. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (7 Mentions)
  24. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (7 Mentions)
  25. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (7 Mentions)
  26. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (7 Mentions)
  27. Animal Farm by George Orwell (6 Mentions)
  28. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (6 Mentions)
  29. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (6 Mentions)
  30. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (6 Mentions)
  31. Middlemarch by George Eliot (6 Mentions)
  32. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (6 Mentions)
  33. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (6 Mentions)
  34. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (6 Mentions)
  35. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (6 Mentions)
  36. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (6 Mentions)
  37. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (6 Mentions)
  38. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (6 Mentions)
  39. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (6 Mentions)
  40. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce (5 Mentions)
  41. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (5 Mentions)
  42. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (5 Mentions)
  43. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (5 Mentions)
  44. Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes (5 Mentions)
  45. Dracula by Bram Stoker (5 Mentions)
  46. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (5 Mentions)
  47. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (5 Mentions)
  48. Native Son by Richard Wright (5 Mentions)
  49. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (5 Mentions)
  50. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (5 Mentions)
  51. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (5 Mentions)
  52. The Complete Works of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka (5 Mentions)
  53. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (5 Mentions)
  54. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (5 Mentions)
  55. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (5 Mentions)
  56. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (5 Mentions)
  57. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (4 Mentions)
  58. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (4 Mentions)
  59. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (4 Mentions)
  60. Atonement by Ian McEwan (4 Mentions)
  61. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (4 Mentions)
  62. Deliverance by James Dickey (4 Mentions)
  63. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (4 Mentions)
  64. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (4 Mentions)
  65. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (4 Mentions)
  66. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (4 Mentions)
  67. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (4 Mentions)
  68. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (4 Mentions)
  69. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (4 Mentions)
  70. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (4 Mentions)
  71. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (4 Mentions)
  72. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (4 Mentions)
  73. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (4 Mentions)
  74. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (4 Mentions)
  75. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (4 Mentions)
  76. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (4 Mentions)
  77. The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West (4 Mentions)
  78. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (4 Mentions)
  79. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (4 Mentions)
  80. The Iliad by Homer (4 Mentions)
  81. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (4 Mentions)
  82. The Red and the Black by Stendhal (4 Mentions)
  83. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (4 Mentions)
  84. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov (4 Mentions)
  85. The Stranger by Albert Camus (4 Mentions)
  86. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (4 Mentions) (check name)
  87. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (4 Mentions)
  88. Underworld by Don Delillo (4 Mentions)
  89. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (4 Mentions)

The Almost "Greatest" Books of All Time (3 Mentions or Fewer)

  1. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
  2. A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
  3. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  4. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
  5. Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
  6. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
  7. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  8. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  9. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  10. Dubliners by James Joyce
  11. Emma by Jane Austen
  12. Fahrenheith 451 by Ray Bradbury
  13. Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac  (Check name)
  14. Faust: First Part by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  15. Finnegans' Wake by James Joyce
  16. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  17. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
  18. It by Stephen King
  19. Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
  20. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
  21. Light in August by William Faulkner
  22. Loving by Henry Green
  23. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
  24. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
  25. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
  26. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham
  27. Rabbit, Run(redux1) by John Updike 1(check title)
  28. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  29. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
  30. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  31. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  32. The Ambassadors by Henry James
  33. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
  34. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
  35. The Collected Tales of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
  36. The Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
  37. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
  38. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
  39. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
  40. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
  41. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  42. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  43. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
  44. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
  45. The Odyssey by Homer
  46. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  47. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
  48. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
  49. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  50. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
  51. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
  52. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
  53. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
  54. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
  55. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  56. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  57. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
  58. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
  59. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
  60. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  61. Absalom, Ablsalom! by William Faulkner
  62. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
  63. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
  64. Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire
  65. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
  66. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  67. Crash by J. G. Ballard
  68. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
  69. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
  70. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
  71. Disgrace by JM Coetzee
  72. Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
  73. From Here to Eternity by James Jones
  74. Going Native by Stephen Wright
  75. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
  76. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  77. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
  78. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
  79. Howard's End by E.M. Forster
  80. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  81. Ironweed by William Kennedy
  82. King Lear by William Shakespeare
  83. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  84. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Jame Agee and Walker Evans  (check authors)
  85. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
  87. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
  88. Money by Martin Amis (A Suicide Note)
  89. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  90. One Thousand and One Nights by India/Iran/Iraq/Eqypt
  91. Othello by William Shakespeare
  92. Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
  93. Paradise Lost by John Milton
  94. Point, Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
  95. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
  96. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
  97. The Aeneid by Virgil
  98. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell
  99. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  100. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  101. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Maquet
  102. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
  103. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
  104. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  105. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
  106. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
  107. The Magnificient Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
  108. The Magus by John Fowles
  109. The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
  110. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  111. The Old Wive's Tale by Arnold Bennett
  112. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
  113. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
  114. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
  115. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
  116. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
  117. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
  118. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  119. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  120. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  121. The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever
  122. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
  123. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
  124. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  125. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  126. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston
  127. Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
  128. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
  129. Watchmen by Alan Moore
  130. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
  131. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
  132. A Death in the Family by James Agee
  133. A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
  134. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  135. A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
  136. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  137. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
  138. A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee
  139. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
  140. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
  141. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  142. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
  143. Affliction by Russell Banks
  144. Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin
  145. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
  146. Amongst Women by John McGahern
  147. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
  148. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
  149. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
  150. Another Country by James Baldwin
  151. Antigone by Sophocles
  152. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
  153. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
  154. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
  155. Blindness by Jose Saramago
  156. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
  157. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
  158. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  159. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
  160. Collected Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
  161. Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats
  162. Collected Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
  163. Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac
  164. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
  165. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  166. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun
  167. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
  168. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
  169. Dispatches by Michael Herr
  170. Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman
  171. Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
  172. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
  173. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
  174. Falconer by John Cheever
  175. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
  176. Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
  177. Germinal by Emile Zola
  178. Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
  179. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe
  180. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
  181. History by Elsa Morante
  182. Hunger by Knut Hamsun
  183. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  184. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
  185. In Memorium to Identity by Kathy Acker
  186. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
  187. Independent People by Halldor Laxness
  188. Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
  189. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse
  190. JR by William Gaddis
  191. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
  192. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
  193. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
  194. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
  195. Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
  196. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
  197. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
  198. Libra by Don DeLillo
  199. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
  200. London Fields by Martin Amis
  201. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
  202. Lookout Cartridge by Joseph McElroy
  203. Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
  204. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  205. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
  206. Man & His Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung
  207. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
  208. Medea by Euripides
  209. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
  210. Metamorphoses by Ovid
  211. More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
  212. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
  213. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
  214. Murphy by Samuel Beckett
  215. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
  216. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
  217. Necromancer by William Gibson
  218. Never Let Me Go by Kazud Ishiguro
  219. New Grub Street by George Gissing
  220. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
  221. Nightwood by Djuana Barnes
  222. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos
  223. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
  224. Oresteia by Aeschylus
  225. Orientalism by Edward W. Said
  226. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
  227. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  228. Party Going by Henry Green
  229. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
  230. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
  231. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
  232. Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
  233. Possession by A.S. Byatt
  234. Ramayana by Valmiki
  235. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  236. Republic by Plato
  237. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
  238. Savages by Don Winslow
  239. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
  240. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  241. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
  242. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
  243. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  244. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
  245. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  246. Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
  247. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
  248. Take It or Leave It by Raymond Federman
  249. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
  250. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  251. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  252. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
  253. The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus
  254. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  255. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  256. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
  257. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
  258. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  259. The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
  260. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
  261. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
  262. The Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
  263. The Cannibal by John Hawkes
  264. The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
  265. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  266. The Complete MAUS by Art Spiegelman
  267. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
  268. The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
  269. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  270. The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  271. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
  272. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
  273. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
  274. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
  275. The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
  276. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
  277. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
  278. The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous
  279. The Giver by Lois Lowry
  280. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
  281. The Good War by Studs Terkel
  282. The Great Bridge by David McCullough
  283. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
  284. The History of Mr. Polly by HG Wells
  285. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
  286. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
  287. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
  288. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
  289. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  290. The Long Good-Bye by Raymond Chandler
  291. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
  292. The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
  293. The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick
  294. The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
  295. The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
  296. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
  297. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
  298. The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
  299. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
  300. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  301. The Professional by W.C. Heniz
  302. The Public Burning by Robert Coover
  303. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
  304. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  305. The Rifles by William T. Vollmann
  306. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
  307. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  308. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
  309. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  310. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  311. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
  312. The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata
  313. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
  314. The Tunnel by William H. Gass
  315. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  316. The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
  317. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
  318. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
  319. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  320. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six by Roald Dahl
  321. Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
  322. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
  323. Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
  324. Treasure Island by Rober Louis Stevenson
  325. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
  326. Ubik by Philip K. Dick
  327. Voss by Patrick White
  328. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
  329. Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan
  330. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  331. Watt by Samuel Beckett
  332. What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer
  333. White Fang by Jack London
  334. White Noise by Don Delillo
  335. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  336. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
  337. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
  338. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Conner
  339. Women by Charles Bukowski
  340. Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo
  341. 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, List 3, 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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  1. Loduca
    Loduca • 2 years ago

    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 http://www.goreadabook.org/book/1104747190/the-girl-before Cathie Monroe . Thank you so much PS: I love your blog.

    Carmina

    Reply
  2. Shari Wilkerson
    Shari Wilkerson • 2 years ago

    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.

    Reply
  3. Cynanner
    Cynanner • 2 years ago

    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.

    Reply
  4. Linda
    Linda • 2 years ago

    For me there is one glaring omission:
    The Bible, surely the greatest book ever written and the world's best seller.

    Reply
    • Wendy
      Wendy Linda • 2 years ago

      Absolutely! Apart from the fact that it was the first book ever printed by Gutenberg, it is the most read worldwide.

      Reply
  5. Smittyfan
    Smittyfan • 2 years ago

    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?

    Reply
  6. Michelle Fidler
    Michelle Fidler • 2 years ago

    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.

    Reply

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  7. Kathie Amelianovich
    Kathie Amelianovich • 2 years ago

    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.

    Reply
  8. Fred Fuhrer
    Fred Fuhrer • 2 years ago

    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.

    Reply
  9. Olddog
    Olddog • 2 years ago

    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...

    Reply
    • Rachel Ann Nunes
      Rachel Ann Nunes Olddog • 2 years ago

      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).

      Reply
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