The Best Action/Adventure Books of All Time

[mortalterror]

I was looking at these lists of action/adventure/thrillers
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2009/06/02/the-essential-man%E2%80%99s-library-adventure-edition-part-one-fiction/
http://gearpatrol.com/2013/02/04/100-essential-reads-the-definitive-mens-library/
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/128718927/audience-picks-top-100-killer-thrillers

and thinking that so many of the entries were just modern pulp garbage. It occurred to me that I could probably make a better list myself without any Clive Cussler, Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, or Tom Clancy. So here's what I came up with:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aenead by Virgil
The Voyage of the Argo by Apollonius Rhodius
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Works of Ossian by James Macpherson
Chushingura by Takeda Izumo
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The White Devil by John Webster
The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton
Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso
Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
Tirant Lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell and Marti Joan de Galba
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
The Song of Roland by Anonymous
The Bruce by John Barbour
Grettis Saga by Anonymous
Njal's Saga by Anonymous
Egil's Saga by Anonymous
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach
Nibelungenlied by Anonymous
Tain Bo Cuailnge by Anonymous
Beowulf by Anonymous
Thebaid by Statius
Pharsalia by Lucan
Epic of Gilgamesh by anonymous
Ramayana by Valmiki
One Thousand and One Nights by various
Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
The Tale of the Heike by various
Journey To the West by Wu Cheng'en

There's only about 45 there that I could think of. I'm definitely forgetting some great works of action literature. A lot of the great works of literature are about society or psychology, family, and relationships, but some of them are about swashbuckling, fighting, and hair's breadth escapes. So what are your favorites?

[Bill 42]

I just finished The Voyage of the Argo by Apollonius Rhodius. I have the translation entitled Argonautika by Peter Green. I can't recommend this book enough. Some other names of this book are Argonautica, Jason and the Golden Fleece and Jason and the Argonauts.

[MANICHAEAN]

Off the top of my head:
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms.
Chandler: The Big Sleep / The Little Sister.
Le Carre: The Honourable Schoolboy. / The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.
Waugh: Sword of Honour Trilogy.
Greene: The Quiet American.
Clavell: King Rat.
Forsyth: No Comebacks / The Day of the Jackel.
Gogol: Dead Souls.
Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities.
Hammett: The Maltese Falcon.
Heller: Catch 22.
Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita.
Lermontov: A Hero of our Time.
Wells: The Time Machine.

[Dreamwoven]

The list is comprehensive and detailed. I would only add John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath

[Poetaster]

Good list. I might add: Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (it is a risky one).

[wordeater]

Some classic adventure novels in which one or more heroes set out on a dangerous journey to unknown territory:

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days (e.a.)
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn
Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
H. Ryder Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda
Emmuska Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of the Apes
James Hilton - Lost Horizon
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Lost World
Alistair MacLean - The Guns of Navarone
John Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

[kev67]

How about Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, which is on my TBR list?

I think I might go for Watership Down by Richard Adams, and Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry, which is one of his Lonsesome Dove series.

[Lokasenna]

I'm very pleased to see three Icelandic sagas on the list - though might I suggest removing Njáls saga, which is more about legal wrangling than action-adventure, and substituting in Gísla saga instead - which features a wronged outlaw constantly on the run from his would-be executioners.

Might I also recommend William Godwin's Caleb Williams to my surprise, it was an excellent page-turner that kept me riveted in a way I had not expected!

[Frédéric Moreau]

'Mio Cid', 'Don Quijote' and 'Theagenes and Cariclea'.

[Paulclem]

It really does depend on how you regard thrillers. I read thrillers for the story, adventure and not necessarily what may be defined as literary merit on here. Whilst a number on your list I might have read for its quality as a thriller, a number - Heart of Darkness? - I would not. I read that for different reasons.

I had a quick look through the sites you posted and I've read quite a few of the "pulpy" novels on there. They are great as thrillers in a way that books like The Odysseus and Don Quixote and a number of others are not.

[Dreamwoven]

I agree with you on this, Paulclem. My suggestion, above, to add the grapes of wrath by Steinbeck is quite ambiguous in this respect.

[wordeater]

I'm currently reading "20.000 Leagues under the Sea" by Jules Verne. That must be one of the greatest adventure novels!

[Nick Capozzoli]

I vote for The Odyssey.

[The Highwayman]

I apologize if it was already mentioned, I did not see it. Many works by B. Traven, such at The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Death Ship. I haven't read them yet, but would love to start soon.

[JBI]

Journey to the West, Tale of the Heike, Count of Monte Cristo.

Or for a modern genius, the still living though no longer writing Jin Yong, who is probably the most successful Chinese modern novelist of the post civil-war period (he is a Hong Kong resident).

[Jackson Richardson]

I tried reading a Clive Cussler a couple of years ago. Boring drivel.

[ennison]

"Hermanos" by Herrick. The damn predictive text wanted me to write "Her Mangos" but I think that's a book from a very different genre.

[Eiseabhal]

Children's literature contain the best adventure books in fiction. For adults the best adventure books are non-fiction. There are books like "Rogue Male" which are thrillers but could be classed as adventure. Books of high literary seriousness such as "Voss" or "A Fringe of Leaves" are perhaps also adventures. It's strange but I've not really thought about it until this minute but some of us have had more than enough "adventures" and certain kinds of adult adventure stories seem silly. Books about war and the army just don't do it for me unless the author has obviously been there himself.

[Dreamwoven]

This is certainly true of Sweden, as well. Astrid Lindgren is probably the best known, with Pippi Longstocking, Ronja Rövardotter, and Karlsson-on-the-roof.

[Dreamwoven]

...or who has worked hard at setting herself into the situation. It is possible to write about war, without having personal experience of it. I am thinking mostly about Sebastian Faulks Birdsong, and other, related, books he wrote on France: Charlotte Grey and The Girl at the Lion d'or. These are also love stories, and moving ones at that.