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Forty four read. Not many remembered in any detail and not many of my favourites
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
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
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. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
The Bible!!!! That's just silly.
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Why is placing the Bible on this list... or even at or near the top silly? I would certainly place it within my top ten as well as would a great many other well-read readers.
Some others that I would add as personal favorites from just a perusal of the original list and my library would be:
Anon.- Gilgamesh
Euripides- Medea
Virgil- Aeneid
Anon.- Beowulf
Dante Alighieri- La Vita Nuova
Petrarch- Il Canzoniere
Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel
Cervantes- Don Quixote
Anon.- The Arabian Nights
Spenser- Amoretti and Epithalimion
Donne- poetry
Christopher Marlowe- The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
Shakespeare- King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest
Milton- Paradise Lost
Thomas Traherne- poetry
Robert Herrick- poetry
Molière- Tartuffe and The Misanthrope
Voltaire- Candide
Gibbons- Decline and Fall or the Roman Empire
Thomas De Quincey- Confessions of an English Opium Addict and Selected Prose
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons dangereuses
Goethe- The Sorrows of Young Werther, Faust, Italian Journey, selected poems
Novalis- Hymns to the Night
Hölderlin- Poetry
William Blake- Collected Writings
Byron- Don Juan
Wordsworth- Selected poetry
Coleridge- Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Cristabel
Keats- Collected Poetry
Shelley- Collected Poetry
John Clare- Selected Poetry
Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris, poetry
Théophile Gautier - Mademoiselle de Maupin, tales, poetry
Nathaniel Hawthorne- Tales
Charles Dickens- Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities
Emily Brontë- Wuthering Heights
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
Gerard Nerval- poetry, selected prose
Guy de Maupassant- Tales
E.T.A. Hoffmann- Tales
Thomas Hardy- selected poetry
Tennyson- In Memoriam, selected poetry
Robert Browning- Selected Poetry
Edgar Allen Poe- Tales
Dante Gabriel Rossetti- Selected Poetry
Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest
Walter Pater- The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Lewis Carroll- Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Joris-Karl Huysmans- À rebours
Rimbaud- Le bateau ivre, Une Saison en Enfer, Illuminations
Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
Emily Dickinson- Collected Poems
Émile Zola- Nana
Heinrich von Kleist- The Broken Jug, The Prince of Homburg, Penthesilea, The Marquise of O
Heinrich Heine- Selected Poetry
Paul Verlaine- Poèmes saturniens, Fêtes galantes, seleceted poetry
Stéphane Mallarmé- Selected Poetry
Mark Twain- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer
Henry James- Turn of the Screw
Ambrose Bierce- Short Stories
Leo Tolstoy- Short Stories
Anton Chekhov- Stories
Nikolai Gogol- Stories
Anna Akhmatova- Poetry
Ibsen- An Enemy of the People
Yeats- Poetry
Boris Pasternak- My Sister-Life, poetry
Mikhail Bulgakov- The Master and Margarita
Marina Tsvetaeva- Poetry
Isaak Babel- Stories
Hemingway- Short Stories
Franz Kafka- Tales, Stories, Fables, Aphorisms, The Trial
Rilke- The Book of Images, New Poems, Duino Elegies, Sonnets for Orpheus, Uncollected Poems
Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf, The Glassbead Game
Thomas Mann- The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, A Death in Venice
T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland and other Poems, Four Quartets
Faulkner- As I Lay Dying
Nathaniel West- Miss Lonelyhearts
Paul Valery- Selected Poems/Prose
Bertolt Brecht- Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children
Günter Grass- The Tin Drum
Heinrich Böll- Billiards at Half Past Nine, The Clown
Paul Celan- Poetry
Max Frisch- Firebugs
Friedrich Dürrenmatt- The Physicists, The Meteor, The Visit
Ingeborg Bachmann- Selected Poems
Jean Genet- The Maids
Federico Garcia Lorca- Selected Poems
Antonio Machado- Selected Poems
Raphael Alberti- Selected Poetry, Concerning the Angels
Jorge Guillen- Cantico
Miguel Hernandez- Selected Poems
Pablo Neruda- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, The Captain's Verses, Residence Earth, Selected Poetry
Pessoa- Selected Prose and Poetry
J.L. Borges- Dreamtigers, Selected Non-Fictions, Collected Poetry, Other Inquisitions
Eugenio Montale- Cuttlefish Bones, The Occasions, The Storm
Italo Calvino- Invisible Cities, Baron in the Trees
Julio Cortazar- Hopscotch, Blow-Up and other Stories
Augusto Monterroso- Complete Works and Other Stories
Octavio Paz- Sunstone
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Yves Bonnefoy- The Curved Planks
Virginia Woolf- Orlando
Flannery O'Conner- Stories
Gore Vidal- Myra Breckenridge
Tennessee Williams- Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Eugene O'Niel- The Iceman Cometh, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Elektra, A Long Day's Journey into Night
Arthur Miller- The Crucible
Geoffrey Hill- New and Collected Poems, The Triumph of Love...
And I'll leave off here. Mortalterror will likely show up to fill in all the gaps with regard to Roman writers and JBI with the Chinese. While my library and reading has been quite multicultural/multinational, I must admit a bias for Anglo-American literature (as an English language reader), and for Western literature as one raised in a Western culture. I have a fascination for Japanese, Indian, Persian and Arabic especially... but must admit to being limited by that which is available in quality translations. Of the non-English language writers I have read, I will also admit to a bias for French, German, Italian... and more recently Spanish. Again, these are literary traditions that have been well served in translation into English. They are also nations that have a history intimately tied to that of England and America... at least more so than Poland, Hungary, or even Russia... and thus I have a greater grasp of these cultures and histories beyond the literature alone. Beyond that... I will admit that the OP offered far too little in terms of plays, short stories, and poetry... especially poetry... another personal bias... or rather passion.
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Well, being a list-maniac that has created a book list site ... here is a list with religious and literature texts across the globe ... of course many good / great works are left out ... but hopefully in some balanced way. There are some canonical anthologies here too. Details in my site. 67 texts here. Full list includes history and philosophy works making a total list of 150.
Rg Veda*
Iliad Homer
Lyrical Poems* Sapphos
Early Upanisads
Theban Plays Sophocles
Samyutta Nikaya
Mahabharata
Ramayana
On Duties Cicero
Aeneid Virgil
Metamorphoses Ovid
Asvaghosa's Buddhacarita*
Bible Multiple
Vimalakirtinirdesasutra
Wang Bi Ji* Wang Bi
Kalidasa's Works
Pancatantra
Bhartrhari's Satakatraya*
Avesta* Anonymous*
"Hala's" Sattasai
Wenxuan Xiao Tong
Quran Muhammad (reciter)
Maoshi Zhengyi Kong Yingda
Bana's Kadambari
Muallaqat
Diwan Abu Nuwas
Sahih al-Bukhari al-Bukhari
Bhagavata Purana
Manikkavachakar's Tiruvacakam
Shahnama* Ferdowsi
Genji Monogatari Murasaki Shikibu
Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara
Dongpo Quanji Su Shi
Maqamat al-Hariri al-Hariri
Chongyang Quanzhen Ji Wang Zhe
Hemacandra's Trisastisalakapurusacaritra/ Parisistaparvan
Kaviraja's Raghavapandaviya
Arthurian Romances Chretien de Troyes
Jayadeva's Gita Govinda
Huaan Cixuan Huang Sheng
Gulistan Sadi
Masnavi Rumi
Xixiang Ji Wang Shifu
Commedia* Dante
Amir Khusrau's Works
Canzoniere Petrarch
Shuihu Zhuan Shi Naian
Divan Hafez
Tangshi Pinhui Gao Bing
Cantebury Tales Chaucer
Epic of Layla and Majnun Fuzuli*
Lusiads Luis de Camoens
Essays Montaigne
Adi Granth
First Folio Shakespeare
Don Quixote Cervantes
Paradise Lost Milton
Works Matsuo Basho
****ou Ji Cao Xueqin
Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth / Coleridge
Pride and Prejudice Austen
Faust Goethe
Pan Tadeusz (in Polish) Mickiewicz
Les Miserables Hugo
War and Peace Tolstoy
Ghalib's Divan
Leaves of Grass Whitman
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All right, I give in. Here is mine:
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
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
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. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
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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
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
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. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
I need to read more.
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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
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
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. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
Thanks for making this list. I found a few interesting looking books that I hadn't heard of before.
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For whomever wanted to compare the new list with the old one.
For the sake of comparison and because I'm bored here is the top 10 of the new list with a number in parenthesis indicating where it placed in the old list:
1. The Bible (10)
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (4)
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (23)
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (7)
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (3)
6. Ulysses by James Joyce (42)
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (68)
8. Don Quixote by Cervantes (12)
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (9)
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1)
- At least four works in the new top 10 didn't place in the top 10 on the old list (Dante, Joyce, Cervantes, and Melville). Three of those four didn't even place in the top 20 last time.
- The Bible and Crime and Punishment switched spots on the two lists (#1 and #10).
- Hamlet moved up to the coveted 2nd spot replacing 1984 on the old list, which dropped all the way down to # 77 on the new list.
- War and Peace, which some people complained should've been up higher, had the # 9 spot on both lists.
- The only author with two titles in the top 10 is Dostoevsky, however, both of his works dropped down in ranking from the original list.
- On the old list the first novel by Dickens appears at # 14: A Tale of Two Cities, which now dropped down to # 72 on the new list. The first novel by Dickens to appear on the new list is a Christmas Carol at #46.
- On the new list, Montaigne’s essays hold the 19th spot, breaking the top 20. Montaigne’s essays were only # 92 on the old list.
- Four books that were in the top ten on the old list didn’t even make the top 20 on the new list: 1984 (went from # 2 to 77), Les Miserables (went from # 5 to 33), To Kill A Mockingbird (went from # 6 to 25), Pride and Prejudice (went from # 8 to 37).
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Very interesting, Darkshadow. I think on the whole our tastes have improved. :)
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1) How many people submitted to the new list, and does anyone know how many did to the old list?
2) If whoever compiled the old list is still around, are the point totals still available, so the two lists can be merged?
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The list has been revised very slightly to fix the mix-up with the Cao Xueqin book. Sorry it took so long. Everything after (I think) #24 has been moved up one place, and Julius Caesar by Shakespeare has been added.
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Noone did mention Christopher Marlowe?
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Thanks for the link darkshadow!
I honestly prefer the old one...
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1. The Bible
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (although, never finished Paradise)
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 (currently reading)
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
24. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
25. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
27. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
28. Emma by Jane Austen
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
30. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
31. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams
33. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (although I skipped a lot of the historical stuff)
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
41. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
42. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
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
51. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
52. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
53. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin (only read the first three books so far)
54. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
55. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
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
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramagos
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
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
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
96. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
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
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Let's see, how many of these have I read? Probably not near enough. Ok, my list.
1. The Bible (the whole thing, took me way more than a year, but I did it!)
2. Hamlet by Shakespeare
12. The Odessy by Homer
17. The Iliad by Homer
38. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
40. The Trial by franz kafka
the other shakespeare's listed.
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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
24. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
25. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
27. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
28. Emma by Jane Austen
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
30. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
31. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams
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
41. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
42. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
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
51. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
52. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
53. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
54. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
55. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
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
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
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
69. Voss by Patrick White
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
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramagos
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
89. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
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
96. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
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
I'd say 50 read, but a couple of these I've only started and have not got through yet, like Infinite Jest and the Recognitions
