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

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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