The Hundred Best Books Ever Written

[Don Beegles]

I realize it's not perfect, and I don't know who compiled it, but for some time now I've been reading this:

The Hundred Best books ever written in Alphabetical Order

1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -Twain
2. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -Conan Doyle
3. The Aeneid -Virgil
4. Aesop’s Fables -Aesop
5. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland -Carroll
6. The Analects of Confucius -Confucius
7. Animal Farm -Orwell
8. Anna Karenina -Tolstoy
9. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -Franklin
10. Beowulf -Unknown
11. Billy Budd -Melville
12. Brave New World -Huxley
13. The Brothers Karamazov -Dostoyevsky
14. Robert Browning – Collected poems -Browning
15. Candide -Voltaire
16. The Canterbury Tales -Chaucer
17. The Cherry Orchard/The Three Sisters -Chekhov
18. The Confessions of St. Augustine -St. Augustine
19. The Count of Monte Cristo -Dumas
20. Crime and Punishment -Dostoyevsky
21. Cyrano de Bergerac -Rostand
22. David Copperfield -Dickens
23. The Decameron -Boccaccio
24. Emily Dickinson – Collected Poems -Dickinson
25. The Divine Comedy -Dante
26. Don Quixote -Cervantes
27. Dracula -Stoker
28. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -Stevenson
29. The Essays -Emerson
30. A Farewell to Arms -Hemingway
31. Fathers and Sons -Turgenev
32. Faust -Goethe
33. The Federalist Papers -Hamilton, et. al.
34. Frankenstein -Shelley
35. Robert Frost – Collected Poems -Frost
36. Great Expectations -Dickens
37. Grimm’s Fairy Tales -Grimm
38. Gulliver’s Travels -Swift
39. Hamlet -Shakespeare
40. Heart of Darkness -Conrad
41. The History of Early Rome -Livy
42. The Hunchback of Notre Dame -Hugo
43. The Iliad -Homer
44. Ivanhoe -Scott
45. Jane Eyre -Bronte, C.
46. The Jungle Books -Kipling
47. John Keats – Collected Poems -Keats
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover -Lawrence
49. The Last of the Mohicans -Cooper
50. Leaves of Grass ` -Whitman
51. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories -Irving
52. Les Miserables -Hugo
53. Little Women -Alcott
54. Lord Jim -Conrad
55. Madame Bovary -Flaubert
56. A Midsummer Night’s Dream -Shakespeare
57. Moby **** -Melville
58. The Necklace and Other Tales -Maupassant
59. The Odyssey -Homer
60. Oedipus Rex -Sophocles
61. Of Mice and Men -Steinbeck
62. On the Origin of Species -Darwin
63. Paradise Lost -Milton
64. The Picture of Dorian Gray -Wilde
65. The Pilgrim’s Progress -Bunyan
66. Politics/ The Poetics -Aristotle
67. The Portrait of a Lady -James
68. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -Joyce
69. Pride and Prejudice -Austen
70. The Prince -Machiavelli
71. Pygmalion/Candida -Shaw
72. The Red and the Black -Stendhal
73. The Red Badge of Courage -Crane
74. The Republic -Plato
75. The Rights of Man -Paine
76. Robinson Crusoe -Defoe
77. Romeo and Juliet -Shakespeare
78. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam -Khayyam
79. The Scarlet Letter -Hawthorne
80. The Sea Wolf -London
81. She Stoops to Conquer -Goldsmith
82. Silas Marner -Eliot
83. The Sound and the Fury -Faulkner
84. A Tale of Two Cities -Dickens
85. Tales from the Arabian Nights -Burton
86. Tales of Mystery and Imagination -Poe
87. The Talisman -Scott
88. Tess of d’Urbervilles -Hardy
89. The Three Musketeers -Dumas
90. The Time Machine -Wells
91. Tom Jones -Fielding
92. Treasure Island -Stevenson
93. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -Verne
94. Uncle Tom’s Cabin -Stowe
95. Vanity Fair -Thackeray
96. Walden -Thoreau
97. War and Peace -Tolstoy
98. The Way of All Flesh -Butler
99. Wuthering Heights -Bronte, E.
100. William Butler Yeats – Collected Poems -Yeats

I've read about 55, and I just wanted to put it out there for discussion. Which books do you think should not be on the list, and which books aren't on the list but should be? What is your favorite book on the list? My largest nominee for ht efirst category is definitely Moby ****, which was the worst piece of drivel I have ever read. It was that bad, and worse. I think The Once and Futue King should be there, because it was enlightening and had a strong lesson, which seems to be a major factor in choice here. My favorite book so far was Cyrano de Bergerac, which was just excellent in every way.

[bosssmiley]

"Brave New World" (atrocious Bloomsbury drivel) features, but "1984" doesn't. Instant fail!

IMO the below don't belong on the "100 Greatest Books" list at all:


11. Billy Budd -Melville
12. Brave New World -Huxley
14. Robert Browning – Collected poems -Browning
22. David Copperfield -Dickens
24. Emily Dickinson – Collected Poems -Dickinson
29. The Essays -Emerson
35. Robert Frost – Collected Poems -Frost
45. Jane Eyre -Bronte, C.
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover -Lawrence
49. The Last of the Mohicans -Cooper
53. Little Women -Alcott
61. Of Mice and Men -Steinbeck
68. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -Joyce
69. Pride and Prejudice -Austen
82. Silas Marner -Eliot
99. Wuthering Heights -Bronte, E.
100. William Butler Yeats – Collected Poems -Yeats


Browning, Dickenson and Yeats but no Byron, Blake or Wordsworth? *pffft*
"Emma" is a better book than "Pride and Prejudice"
"Jane Eyre" is just Mills and Boone-meets-slasher flick
"Wuthering Heights" is gothic fanfic bilge
"Of Mice and Men" is inferior to "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Grapes of Wrath"
"Last of the Mohicans" is outclassed as a boys own action tale by most of Sir Walter Scott ("Rob Roy"), Stephenson's "Kidnapped" or "The Black Arrow", Rider Haggard's "KSM" or "She", or Hope's "The Prisoner of Zenda"
Joyce couldn't write sense to save his life
"Little Women" and "Sillage Marner" ???

And where are Montaigne's essays?
More's "Utopia"?
Saki?
G.K.Chesterton?
"Oliver Twist"? "Pickwick Papers"?
Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" or "Woman in White"?
Graves' "Goodbye to All That"? "All Quiet on the Western Front"?
Plutarch's "Lives"?

That's the problem of greatest books lists: if you include certain 'influential' books (particularly those found on Eng. or World Lit. syllabi) you can't really - in fairness to their merit - exclude numerous others. :-/

[Casualgamer]

Hmm, I'd have to agree. Not about the drivel part. About the 1984 part. It was my favorite book.

[Beleriphon]

That's the problem of greatest books lists: if you include certain 'influential' books (particularly those found on Eng. or World Lit. syllabi) you can't really - in fairness to their merit - exclude numerous others. :-/

I'm with you there. Virgil is included, but Tacticus is not. Tacticus effectively created the modern method of writing biographies, and they're damn good ones as well.

I'm also noticing a distinct lack of anything east of the Urals. I think one would be hard pressed to not include The Art of War or other south east Asian stories and books in a list of the Top 100 books. In that vein I think that

I also think the list is wrong in a variety of other ways. Hamlet for example is not a book, its a play. Regardless of any literature classes insistence to read the play it is not meant to be read, but rather performed.

I'd personally like to see the qualifications for the list. Is it determined by literary value, influence on literature, or other factors? Without knowing that its hard to gauge the list. At least with the AFI's Top 100 movies we only have the last 80 years or so, but books we're going back some 2000 years of written word at a minimum. If you go back far enough one might be inclined to include ancient Hebrew texts.

[LordOfNarf]

2 Problems with that list, IMO, first, Dune is not on it. Second, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are good, but I am reading it right now, and it has desended from exiting story to continuous form writng, the cases have started to blend into eachother.

Edit: And War and Peace is the Driest peace of drivel I have ever toucvhed, i am an avind reader, and only got through 100 pages in a month before giving up.

[wellington]

Okay, yes, Wuthering Heights had that odd "Gothic romantic fanfic bilge" feel to it sometimes, but it was the prototypical Gothic fanfic bilge. It was awesome, genre-defining Gothic fanfic bilge.

Well, the first half, anyway. Heathcliff: The Next Generation didn't pull me in at ALL.


Browning, Dickenson and Yeats but no Byron, Blake or Wordsworth?

Okay, Byron I can see, maybe. Blake's Songs of Experience, or, even better, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, yes - though his more insane stuff is a pain to read. This is what we have antipsychotics for.

But Wordsworth? The insipidest poet who ever made a name for himself? The man whose poetry we use to teach the young how to hate poetry? He who tells when he should show, and shows when he should just stop?

This list should have been titled, "Books You Ought to Read in High School." Some of them are definitely among the greats, like The Origin of Species and Hamlet. But others sound like teaching books, books that students are made to read because they wear their symbolism on their sleeves and tie nicely into a lecture. Obvious case: The Scarlet Letter.

(Also, I think A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man makes perfect sense. Finnegans Wake, on the other hand, doesn't appear to have been written by a human being, but rather by a reader-shafting automaton, tasked with the slow obliteration of the egos of English students.)

[Logic]

I would recommend The Last of the Mohicans to anyone, but if you have not read it before the age of twelve, you are not likely to enjoy it as much.

[ElfLad]

Lord of the Rings?

Screwtape Letters?

[Silly_Bean]

"Emma" is a better book than "Pride and Prejudice"

No. No it is not.

And as for the whole Lord of the Rings book......I'd just put the Fellowship down. That was the superior of the three.

I would be tempted to put Lovecraft in there myself. But at this present moment, I can't think of anything else I'd change.....

[Blood]

"The Hundred Best Books Ever Written" is a very fluid, general concept because everyone likes different books. You can't really make a top 100, unless you're just saying your personal favorite 100.

[Sneak]

Well, of course, this list is comprised of mostly 'classics.'

Which is why I'm not a good job, because about the only 'classics' I've read are Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, 1984, and Animal Farm.

All of which are pretty depressing books.

[ElfLad]

Flowers for Algernon is more of a short story than book. A very good short story, though.

And I just realized there's no Fahrenheit 451. :o

[Chappers]

Emma is better than Pride and Prejudice

???

No Way!

Books you need:-

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep P K ****
Titus Groan Mervyn Peake
Alice In Wonderland Carroll
Myra Beckenridge {can't seem to remember}
A day in the Life of Goran Ivanovch {memory blank}
and the funniest book ever written

Tristram Shandy by L Sterne

If you have top 100 books you must read before you die leave in Wordsworth but otherwise take him out.

[Don Beegles]

I agree with you wellington. Most of the books there are clearly didactic and there to teach something, and those are generally the ones that are not as good.

I also don't think the compiler was completely nonbiased, and he probably aimed an author's most well-known work when picking one, as in teh case of Pride adn Prejudice. I think Brave New World was in over 1984 because tehy only wanted one dystopia, and Orwell already had a book on teh list.

[Mistborn]

I agree with the post that mentioned this being too subjective a task. I prefer lists that focus. 100 greatest books for what reason? For inspiring social change? For enjoyment? For making people think? Narrow it a bit, and I think we can have a better discussion.

That said, I'll second the argument that Fellowship needs to be on there. However, I'm glad Billy Budd made it, since I personally find it superior to Moby ****.

[Chunklets]

Nice to see the ancients getting some props on that list. I'd find a way to get some Euripides (either Medea or The Trojan Women) on there, with apologies if you did and I missed it.

On the Emma vs. Pride and Prejudice, I actually did enjoy Emma more, although I don't know if that actually makes it better...

I do agree that Tolkien needs to be on there - I'd humbly suggest The Hobbit, myself.

[Closet_Skeleton]

And I just realized there's no Fahrenheit 451. :o

Yeah, I'd say that's the best dystopian book I ever read, but I haven't read 1984. The best bit about Fahrenheit 451 was how instead of blaiming dystopia on government it blamed it on people. Bradbery also lets his characters admit that "even when we had books, the world still wasn't perfect" and I found making a single country a dystopia at the expense of others far more topical than the "evil world state" in other dystopian books.

Romeo and Juliet is not a book. Half Life is nominally considered to be a good computer game. You could not print out the entire code for half life, bind it and then call it a book. You can't do it to a play either.

That list is very Eurocentric as well. Omay Kaiyam and Confusious seem to be the only asians on that list

Lists like these are always have problems. Much like "the seven wonders of the world" they have the problem of limiting "the best books" to a set number. They also have the problem of containing some books simply because they're influential whilst other books on how enjoyable they are.

Here's an alternative list of 100 great books. This is from a humourous book called "100 Great books in Haiku". Why spend weeks reading War and Peace when you can read the Haiku. It puts a lot of plays in as well.

The Canterbury tales - Chaucer
The Iliad - Homer
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
Phaedo - Plato
The Odyssey - Homer
De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium - Nicolaus Copernicus
Beowulf
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
The Inferno (Divine Comedy actually, but that's not what Haiku book called it) - Dante
Moby-**** -Herman Meville
The Confessions - St. Augustine
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Bleak House - Dickens
The Prince - Machiavelli
Discourse on Method - Rene Descartes
Clarissa, or, the history or a young lady: comprehending the most important concerns of private life and particularly showing the distress that may attend the misconduct both of parents and children, in relation to marriage - Samuel Richardson
The Epic of Gilgamesh
As I lay dying - William Faulkner
Robinson Cruesoe - Daniel Defoe
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubet
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
Das Kapital - Karl Marx
The Histories - Herodotus
Gulliver's Travels - Jonothan Swift
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Lord of the - William Golding
The Count of Montecristo - Alexandre Dumas
Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Metaphysics - Aristotle
Candide, or, Optimism - Voltaire
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica - Isaac Newton
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
The History of the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon
Old Goriot - Honore de Balzac
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The life and opinions of Tristriam Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
The Cherry Orchard - Anton Chekhov
Dicipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault
Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
1984 - George Orwell
Phenomenology of Spirit - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Tale of Genju - Lady Murasaki Shikibu
The life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Two Treatises of Government - John Locke
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tatuffe, or, the imposter - Moliere
An essay on the principle of population - Thomas Malthus
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Being and nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu
Ulysses - James Joyce
Relativity: The Special and General Theory - Albert Einstein
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Kama Sutra - Vatsayana
Walden, or, life in the woods - Henry David Thoreau
Saint Joan - George Bernard Shaw
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Origen of Species - Charles Darwin
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
Nana - Emilie Zola
Also Sprach Zarathustra - Friedrish Wilhelm Nietzsche
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
Vanity Fair: A novel without a hero - William Makepeace Thackeray
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Varieties of Religious Experience - William James
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Wild Duck - Henrik Ibsen
Utopia - Thomas More
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Brave New World - Aldosu Huxly
The Grapes of Wrath - Jogn Steinbeck
Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goeth - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Carl Gustav Jung
The Wasteland - T.S. Eliot
Essays - Michel de Montiagne
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Sun also rises - Ernest Hemingway

Now, this list was composed partly of books the a poet found to be dull or amusing but it has some advantages over the other list. It claims to be "one hundred great books" rather than "the hundred best books". It also has some books that are quite influential and famous but don't pop into your head imediately when you think "books they made me read in school".

Good books I have personally read and liked:

Foucoult's Pendulem - Some Italian I forget
The Hobbit - Tolkien
Fahrenheight 451 - Ray Bradbury
Edda - Snorri Sturglinson (spelling?)

Not so good books I have personally read and liked:

Stormbringer - Michael Morcock
At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
Carmilla - J. Sheridan le Fanu
The Dark is Rising - Forget, Susan something I believe
The Niebelunglied
The Sword in the Stone

Hmm... I need to read a lot more books

[Chappers]

The Dark is Rising Quintet is by Susan Cooper and is in my opinion a brilliant book for children of about 10-14.

Another great series is the Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin.
Also the Boris Akunin books about the Russian diplomat/detective.

I agree that the list should be narrowed.

On the P&P vs Emma argument I'd say that P&P is a superior book. It is very funny, Austenesque and a complete classic.

[Don Beegles]

The list does need to be narrowed down, I do agree, so I think we should make our own lists of seperate categories, because we certainly have the litereary knowledge among us to be able to.

We should do:

The Hundred Best Fantasy

The Hundred Best Comedy

The Hundred Best with a moral that can be stated in three sentences or less ( A bit broad I know, but it's what the original list tried to do, so I think it's worth a shot.)

If you have ideas list them and number than and we'll compile them when we're down. I'd start, but I'm busy at the moment, so I'll post my ideas momentarily.

[bosssmiley]

Yeah, I'd say that's the best dystopian book I ever read, but I haven't read 1984. The best bit about Fahrenheit 451 was how instead of blaiming dystopia on government it blamed it on people. Bradbery also lets his characters admit that "even when we had books, the world still wasn't perfect" and I found making a single country a dystopia at the expense of others far more topical than the "evil world state" in other dystopian books.

"Fahrenheit 451" is a wonderful evocation of the contemporary 'culture of distraction', but for me it lacked some of the depth and resonance of "1984". Different strokes I suppose.


Here's an alternative list of 100 great books. This is from a humourous book called "100 Great books in Haiku". Why spend weeks reading War and Peace when you can read the Haiku. It puts a lot of plays in as well.

My gf got me that book a couple of Xmases ago. I love it! Definite 'gift for a bookish friend' book. ;D


Good books I have personally read and liked:

Foucoult's Pendulem - Some Italian I forget
*tsk* Umberto Eco. The guy who did "Name of the Rose".
He does some really good stuff. "Baudolino" is great if you can find it. The story is about this medieval con artist who goes on a quest to discover the kingdom of Prester John but has all these demented picaresque adventures and ends up telling his tale to Marco Polo while they're in prison together. Mad stuff. ;D


The Hobbit - Tolkien
Fahrenheight 451 - Ray Bradbury
Edda - Snorri Sturglinson (spelling?)

If you liked the Edda you'll *love* "Saga of the Jomsvikings". The plot? Classic saga material: Steyrbjorn the Frothing Headcase and his merry band of psychopaths float around the northlands picking fights with all and sundry before dying heroically. It's basically the preincarnation of the film "Eric the Viking". :D

[God_of_Luck]

The best book you have not read:

The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/introduction.html

[Chappers]

The list does need to be narrowed down, I do agree, so I think we should make our own lists of seperate categories, because we certainly have the litereary knowledge among us to be able to.

We should do:

The Hundred Best Fantasy

The Hundred Best Comedy

The Hundred Best with a moral that can be stated in three sentences or less ( A bit broad I know, but it's what the original list tried to do, so I think it's worth a shot.)

If you have ideas list them and number than and we'll compile them when we're down. I'd start, but I'm busy at the moment, so I'll post my ideas momentarily.


Start a new thread and I'll keep it going single-handed if i have too.

I have read several thousand Fantasy, Sci Fi and Heroic Fiction novels so I think coming up with a hundred should be easy.

[funkymonkey558]

I have read probably fifteen or twenty of these books for high school, and I can sincerly say I did not like the vast majority of them. That's the problem with lists like these. Why are these people qualified to make a list of the best books ever written. How can any group of people know something like this.

[Piotr_Zak]

If we're talking book lists, the only one I've seen that I particularly liked was this one, which was compiled by Norwegian Book Clubs through a poll of authors:

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart
Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories
Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice
Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot
Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions
Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights
Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger
Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970), Poems.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the Night
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote
Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales
Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories
Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo
Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations
Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz
Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov
George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch
Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man
Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea
William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury
Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera
Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust
Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls
Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum
Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger.
Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea
Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey
Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House
The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC).
James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses
Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle Bohemia
Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain
Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek
DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers
Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People
Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems
Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook
Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking
Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).
Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi
Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain
Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby ****
Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592), Essays.
Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985), History
Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved
Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji
Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities
Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977), Lolita
Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).
George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984
Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses
Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet
Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales
Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past
Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo
Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273), Mathnawi
Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children
Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292), The Orchard
Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North
Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness
William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello
Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
Stendhal, France, (1783-1842), The Red and the Black
Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno
Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels
Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).
Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana
Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid
Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass
Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse
Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian
I don't agree with all of these, obviously. (I think Dostoevsky and Camus, are overrated, and I don't know why they included both Sophocles and Euripides but *not* Aeschylus, who is much better than either of the others.) But I did learn about several books through this list that proved to be very good, including The Magic Mountain and the Tayeb Salih book.

[Chunklets]

I don't agree with all of these, obviously. (I think Dostoevsky and Camus, are overrated, and I don't know why they included both Sophocles and Euripides but *not* Aeschylus, who is much better than either of the others.) But I did learn about several books through this list that proved to be very good, including The Magic Mountain and the Tayeb Salih book.

Hmmm. I would put Euripides as the best of those three playwrights, but it is a matter of minute degrees, in my opinion. I agree that Aeschylus should be in there somewhere, and I'd select Prometheus Bound if I had to choose just one.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The best book you have not read:

The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

My French teacher tried to get the whole class to read that. We didn't get passed the first chapter.

So I may not have finished it, by I do know of it and have read some of it.

[Beleriphon]

And as for the whole Lord of the Rings book......I'd just put the Fellowship down. That was the superior of the three.

This a common mistake, Lord of the Rings is actually one book presented in three volumes. This was done initially mainly due to the length before the idea of 1200 page fantasy novels was accepted.

[ARMOURERERIC]

Gee, where's the number 2 selling book of all time:

Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand, a personal favorite.

And a FYI-They've started to make the movie finally, for real,it will be done as a trilogy, first on out April 2008. Angelina Jolie has signed the contract to be Dagny Taggart.

Eric

[Gorbash Kazdar]

The best book you have not read:

The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/introduction.html
I've read it ;)

EDIT: *Hit the bloody "post" button too soon on accident.

Anyways, my problem with the starting list is that it's all over the place - not in time period or geography, but in that it includes a mixture of poetry, novels, and non-fictional works of importance. *To my mind, that really creates a problem. *This list to me seems a mash-up between "the Most Important/Influential Books Ever Written" and "the Best Fiction Ever Written." *Not that it really is definitive on either count. *It also seems to lean towards 19th century works, with some Classical works mixed in and a few early/mid 20th century books that couldn't be ignored, but misses a number of more recent works that really should at least get consideration.

All in all, I definitely have to agree with the assessment that it looks like a High School reading list.

Of course, I also have subjective irritations with the list - too much Dickens, for one. *If you've read one Dickens novel, you've got the gist of the rest, so I'd pick the best of those and only include that one. *And the lack of The Stranger on that list irks me. *I do like that Of Mice and Men made it. *Grapes of Wrath usually does instead, and to me that's the weakest of the three Steinbeck works that get consideration - it's much too slow, and to me lacks a coherent plot (some works can get away with that, but Grapes of Wrath seems like it's supposed to have one).

As for Ayn Rand, I might be talked into including one of her works near the bottom of a top 100 list, but all they've ever inspired in me is a desire to jab a pencil in my eye. :P

[Telonius]

I have a few problems with the list. Are we talking about just regular old books, or any work of literature? If "Romeo and Juliet" is on there, there should be some films as well. R&J and the other plays on there aren't meant to be read, they're meant to be performed. (Aside from Shaw, who was weird and a deliberate pain in the rear ;))

Jungle Books, David Copperfield, The Time Machine, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Picture of Dorian Gray, Last of the Mohicans, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Red Badge of Courage don't belong on this list. I haven't read Great Expectations, but I suspect it shouldn't be there either. (Note that I really, really dislike Dickens.)

I've tried to read Don Quixote, and just could not get into it; but I've been assured by native Spanish speakers that it's much better in the original language. I'd leave that one on just for the benefit of the doubt.

Aside from religious texts (The Bible, the Qu'ran, and the Bhagavad Gita are immediate qualifiers): "The Diary of Anne Frank" jumps to my mind as something that should definitely be there. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu is missing. It's an absolute travesty that "The Little Prince" isn't on there. "Lord of the Rings" deserves a place.

This might be out of left field, but there probably ought to be something by Dr. Seuss on the list.

EDIT: The biggest gaping hole in that list?
Le Morte d'Arthur, by Thomas Malory.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Though quite a few of my favorite books are here, the list is nuts. I read practically everything and I've never HEARD of a quarter of those.

And some of the books there... gimme a break. War and Peace?! Gahhhhh...

Animal Farm? Why? WHY? Its... interesting, but top 100 best? Also, why is it the majority of the oldest books in the world are in there? Just because they are several thousand years old doesn't mean they are good.

Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit needs added, as does Fahrenheit 451 and, oh, I dunno, the Bible maybe?

[Don Beegles]

I do agree with GOrbash and everyone who says it is a high-school reading list, but nonetheless, it is, in my opinion, a good place to start if oyu want to get into some literature, rather than the majority of trashy fiction that gets churned out today.

On Dickens, I agree his books are very similar, except for Tale of Two Cities, which is one of my favorites on the list.

And there shouldn't be as many epics on teh list because they really aren't all that good. if I had to choose out of the really ancient stuff, I'd say Beowulf, The Iliad, and Oedipus Rex would have been sufficient.

As for the BIble, VT, I assume you can see why the Bible shouldn't be up there. For one, you can't just put one religion's text up there and not include the Qu'ran and Bhagavad Gita, as Telonius mentioned. For another, the Bible's just too big. It can fill about 1300 pages, two-columned, in fairly small print, which is more than just about any of these books, excpet maybe Les Mis, MOnte Cristo, or War and PEace.

[Akiosama]

This a common mistake, Lord of the Rings is actually one book presented in three volumes. This was done initially mainly due to the length before the idea of 1200 page fantasy novels was accepted.



Actually, wasn't The Lord of the Rings divided into SIX books, not three? I seem to see when it is quoted it's LotR Book I-VI, etc...

And yeah, anyone who says 'Best Books" is being pretty subjective. I think it's a conspiracy by all the English teachers out there who want us to have to read boring, old stuff, to make their English degrees useful. ;)

Just say "No!" - My motto for books like The Scarlet Letter. (Ugh.)

My 2 yen,

Akio

[McBish]

The Ultimate Hitchhikeres Guide? No one else thought to mention it? I mainly read Sci-Fi and Fantasy but Hitchhikers is my #1 book of all time and deserves to be on this here list.
A Magician wandered along the beach, but no one needed him.

[Beleriphon]

Actually, wasn't The Lord of the Rings divided into SIX books, not three? I seem to see when it is quoted it's LotR Book I-VI, etc...


Technically the fictous source The Red Book of Westmarch is divided in to six books. Which is way that Bilbo, Frodo and Sam record their adventures. Tolkien's "translation" of the Red Book into The Lord of the Rings is a novel is published in three volumes.

[Democratus]

Also, why is it the majority of the oldest books in the world are in there? Just because they are several thousand years old doesn't mean they are good.


Books that survive the test of time have proven that they have some merit. There are many different criteria about what makes a book great. If one of those criterea is "affected the lives of many people" then older books would have a distinct advantage. People have been reading War and Peace for a long time. It's a great book of epic conflict and its affects on the lives of people.

Homer's Illiad is a story that is still enjoyed after 30 centuries! In this book, and The Odyssey, are the roots of nearly every adventure story told ever since.

Other books on the list (Virgil, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Cooper, etc.) have been part of standardized education for decades or even centuries. Thus these books have been hugely important in that they have influenced the major players in world history.

Just wanted to put a different perspective on things. Your milage may vary.

[Telonius]

Well, there are quite a few of the absolutely oldest books that aren't on there. The Book of the Dead and Gilgamesh aren't there. Some other notable ancient works like The Mabinogion, the Nibelungenlied, Confessions (by Marcus Aurelius), the Kalevala, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, the I Ching, and Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul aren't there either.

[Steward]

8. Anna Karenina -Tolstoy
11. Billy Budd -Melville
79. The Scarlet Letter -Hawthorne
84. A Tale of Two Cities -Dickens

I think that most of those books are very good, except for the four above, which I think are not so good and remain, in my opinion, "classics" that don't deserve to be famous.

And I can't believe they didn't even consider the Tale of Genji.