Time Magazine's List of the Ten Greatest Books of all Time

[Red Terror]

I know what you're all thinking, "ARRRRRGGGHHHH!!! Not another list of the greatest so and so ...!!!""

http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1578073,00.html

[prendrelemick]

That's a list of the top 10 books people pretend to have read.

[Ecurb]

I've never read "In Search of Lost Time" (I've read the others) partly because the title is worse than "Remembrance of Things Past" (although the quality of the novel is probably about the same).

[YesNo]

I read Middlemarch, but I can't remember it. I also recently saw Hamlet.

[desiresjab]

I did not enjoy Bovary. I know it is considered an all time classic, and so I guess it is. You can't love 'em all. Even worse for me was Sentimental Education. For one thing it was longer. But Salambo I loved.

On the list I have not read 1, 8 and 10, and probably never will.

[JCamilo]

It is not argh, another list. It is argh, something ridiculous using "of all time" to mention only 3 countries and that 90% of the works listed were produced almost in the same period of 100 years.

[Pompey Bum]

I know what you're all thinking

No, actually you don't know what I'm thinking.

[mortalterror]

I've read all ten books on that list. There are better books, mostly poetry, but they opened that door when they included Hamlet.

1.The Divine Comedy by Dante Alghieri
2.Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3.The Iliad by Homer
4.The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
5.The Mahabharata by Vyasa
6.The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
7.The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
8.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
9.The Aeneid by Virgil
10.Don Quixote by Cervantes

^This is probably closer to the truth.

[prendrelemick]

Well judging from the books on Mortalterror's list that I have read, I presume it is a high quality list. But perhaps an essential requirement of a best book list is that the books on it should be widely read. Then at least there are arguments to be had.

[Clopin]

I've read them all except for In Search of Lost Time, which I own but am scared to open. They're all good, not much else to say. I'm surprised that Gatsby and Lolita made it on a top ten list (of all time) though oddly enough they're two books I just reread almost consecutively and they're both extremely good of course. Chekhov's stories, taken as a whole, is probably my favourite work of fiction... not that I've read every single one.

[EmptySeraph]

I've never read "In Search of Lost Time" (I've read the others) partly because the title is worse than "Remembrance of Things Past" (although the quality of the novel is probably about the same).

Proust's masterpiece is probably the most profound thing on old age to have ever been written. Too bad that Proust himself was a total bore and tried too hard to find himself a place in a cosmopolitan society, a failed dandy, witness his correspondence, if it's readable anymore...
Flaubert, on the other side, has never truly impressed me with his work, which I yet rate highly, but I've read his letters with a fiendish thirst, and I would do it again and again and again, just like with À la recherche du temps perdu.

[Ecurb]

I've read all ten books on that list. There are better books, mostly poetry, but they opened that door when they included Hamlet.

1.The Divine Comedy by Dante Alghieri
2.Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3.The Iliad by Homer
4.The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
5.The Mahabharata by Vyasa
6.The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
7.The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
8.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
9.The Aeneid by Virgil
10.Don Quixote by Cervantes

^This is probably closer to the truth.

I'm about to head off on a camping and backpacking trip. I haven't read 4,5,6 or 7. Which one should I bring with me?

[Pompey Bum]

The Compleat Backpacker. Otherwise, I think the Mahabharata is the lightest to haul around. I'd go with that one. (Safe trip, Ecurb).

[ennison]

The TEN best. Jeez what a reductionist!

[Clopin]

How many desert islands will I get to read all of these though, is the real question.

[Marcus1]

What about my totally non-biased list?

The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata)
The Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil)
The Book of Disquiet (Fernando Pessoa)
Street of Crocodiles (Bruno Schulz)
Pedro Páramo (Juan Rulfo)
Men of Maize (Miguel Ángel Asturias)
The Lost Steps (Alejo Carpentier)
Wizard of the Crow (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o)
Phenomenology of Perception (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)