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I've read:
1. The Bible (well, about half of it)
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (did not enjoy at all)
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams (I've exchanged letters with Richard Adams.)
35. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
41. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Lydia Davis's 2012 translation)
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
57. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
77. 1984 by George Orwell
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
100. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
20/100. I suppose that's a decent start.
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I've read:
1. The Bible (not the entire book)
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
14. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
33. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
38. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
40. The Trial by Franz Kafka
42. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
62. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
77. 1984 by George Orwell
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
81. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
88. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
92. The Castle by Franz Kafka
28/100.
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I've read:
1. The Bible
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. Don Quixote by Cervantes
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. Paradise Lost by John Milton
14. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
16. Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire
17. The Illiad by Homer
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
19. Essays by Montaigne
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus
21. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
22. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
25. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
28. Emma by Jane Austen
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
30. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
31. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
33. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
35. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
37. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
38. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
39. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
40. The Trial by Franz Kafka
43. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
45. Fictions by J.L. Borges
46. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
48. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. The Magus by John Fowles
50. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
54. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
55. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
57. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
62. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
63. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
64. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
65. Othello by William Shakespeare
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
67. Vanity Fair by William Thackerey
68. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
71. Manfred by Lord Byron
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
73. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
75. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
76. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
77. 1984 by George Orwell
78. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
81. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
82. Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
83. The Tree of Man by Patrick White
84. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
85. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
86. 2666 by Robert Bolano
87. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
88. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
91. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
92. The Castle by Franz Kafka
93. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
94. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
95. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
98. Confessions by Rousseau
99. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
100. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
The list borders half on the preposterous, and the other half is just indecent.
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When is there going to be a revote?
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Even though I am a Christian, the Bible at #1 seems a bit biased considering most people here haven't read it all let alone the other timeless religious texts (Torah, Quran, Book of the Dead, te Ching etc)... but if it is listed in accordance with sales and impact it makes sense.
I have read only 30 of the books but there is not enough non-fiction. Where is Herodotus, Plato, Thucydides, Augustine, Darwin, Euripides etc..?
The following is just my opinion:
Les Miserables is in my top 5, To Kill a Mockingbird should only be at 75+ and even that is being generous, if Slaughterhouse Five is on the list so should Elie Wiesel's 'Night'. Lolita is great but definitely overrated. Jane Eyre should be a little higher. Vanity Fair should be higher.
Crime and Punishment is definitely better than Moby-Dick. Melville's masterpiece although poetic, harrowing and visceral is absolutely no match for Dostoevsky's mental transplant of Raskolinikov's torture into the mind of the reader. The reader BECOMES Raskolinikov, in a very similar way that the reader BECOMES Prince Myshkin (why the heck isn't The Idiot on this list by the way? It's on a par with Crime and Punishment.)
If we are going by impact (as is clearly being done with the first book on the list) ironically the last book on the list along with Romeo & Juliet and King Lear should be higher up.
Oh, and The Grapes of Wrath was way better than Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men is foisted on reluctant high school readers along the lines of The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atlas Shrugged etc..
...and Lord of the Rings? like seriously? That's middle-school reading.
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I have never actually read the Bible; I have listened to the unabridged 60+-CD set of the KJV 2+ dozen times. Narrator: American actor Alexander Scourby*, who made the recording for the American Foundation for the Blind during 4-yr period, ending in 1953. First full recording of the Bible issued on LP records. I recalled a h.s. English teacher playing parts of it for her class. Had the CD set for several years before I slipped disc 1 into the car CD player, listening on my until recently lengthy commutes.
Ditto Joyce's Ulysses. Coincidently, there's a cite early in the novel where Joyce wrote about leaving one's (grandpa's) audio legacy.
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*If you want to see actor Scourby in action, he appeared as Gen. Harper in a Twilight Zone episode called The Last Flight.
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[QUOTE=Adolescent09;1333015]
I have read only 30 of the books but there is not enough non-fiction. Where is Herodotus, Plato, Thucydides, Augustine, Darwin, Euripides etc..?
I've read 32, but I have the same problem, including the "etc."
"Crime and Punishment" and "Moby Dick" both belong on the list. "Atlas Shrugged" is much too long for high school readers.
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I've read:
1. The Bible (well, about half of it)
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (did not enjoy at all)
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams (I've exchanged letters with Richard Adams.)
35. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
41. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Lydia Davis's 2012 translation)
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
57. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
17/100.
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I think it was as good a list as any. Nobody would be ashamed of reading most of these and being able to think and speak about them. But it has been here a few years. Maybe it needs refreshed.
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Not sure if the Bible can be ranked as one? It very rarely influences modern Christian society, is not practiced and has not had the cultural, societal and legal impact of other religious texts, in particular something like the Quran, which has a far greater historical and current impact.
I have looked down the rest of the list and found some really good choices and some that I personally disagree with...then again that is the problem with being subjective.
I do like the inclusion of "The murder of Roger Akroyd", as Christie is such an underrated writer.
So this has been my first contribution to the site :)
Hi everyone haha
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There is "Emma" by Jane Austen here but not "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens.
It is a lovely list though :)
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The list looks quite reasonable, except some of the american writers. It would never have occurred to me to put them there. I just wonder has anyone who's not american voted for Scott Fitzgerald, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurty?
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Well I voted for one of these anyway - but what would being American have to do with it. I doubt if many Americans read after leaving school.
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This is a really interesting list. I don't agree with some of it and have recently developed an actual hatred for F. Scott Fitzgerald and don't understand what got him into 4th place.
I would have had Solzhenitsyn there somewhere and agree with someone earlier who would have included A fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Perhaps The Fountainhead rather than Atlas Shrugged.
I'm keeping a copy of this list for future reading. My thanks to the person who compiled it.
How did Watership Down get that many votes? I really want to know.
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
28. Emma by Jane Austen
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
30. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
38. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
39. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
41. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
43. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
53. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
55. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
57. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
65. Othello by William Shakespeare
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
67. Vanity Fair by William Thackerey
69. Voss by Patrick White
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
73. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
77. 1984 by George Orwell
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
97. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
100. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
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spike---I love watership down! one of the few fiction books ive read twice, and id be willing to read a third time.
moby dick is one of the all-time worst books and i'll fight anyone who says otherwise! laughs...
or at least be willing to listen to someone who can convince me its the "great American novel."
war and peace was torturous and i don't think that belongs on any lists of top 100 books.
same with vanity fair, one of an unfortunately increasing amount of books i tried to read but just couldn't get through. im going along saying to myself, what the heck am i reading here?
i sometimes wonder how much pretension goes into such lists.
