The 10 Greatest Books Ever, According to 125 Top Authors (Download Them for Free)

Why is Gats­by on this list? Why is there noth­ing by Faulkn­er?

Rub­bish! 10 great­est books ‚with­out a sin­gle title out­side Europe-and Amer­i­ca

C’mon. Two Tol­stoy books and no Dos­toyevsky? Chekhov, Flaubert, Nabokov are excel­lent writ­ers but they are pet­ty bour­geois com­pared to authors such as Dos­toyevsky, Homer, Balzac, Macha­do de Assis, Borges, Faulkn­er, Mishi­ma, Goethe, Joyce…

All big, expan­sive reads. Should­n’t Pride & Prej­u­dice be on this list?

Only men, but I sup­pose only men were asked

I agree, no Dos­to­evsky? Then no Faulkn­er? Almost each book by Dos­to­evsky is a real mas­ter­piece: Demons, Idiot, Broth­ers Kara­masov!…

Don Quixote is #1 on many lists, includ­ing mine. And Ham­let isn’t a “book.”

“The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books.“nnnnNot nec­es­sar­i­ly the “great­est” books.

Like any list, it is only a list and can be ignored quite eas­i­ly.

I did­n’t read any of them. Writ­ers about oth­er writ­ers? That sounds like the madame of a broth­el com­ment­ing on the per­for­mance of the employ­ees of the broth­el nextdoor. :-p

Noth­ing by Jack­ie Collins? I’d much rather read her than some of this drudgery.

Unre­li­able. The lack of Don Qui­jote is a joke I guess…

Catch­er in the Rye

If you can put up ‘The Short Sto­ries of Chekhov,’ you can put up ‘The Plays of Shake­speare.’

Nabakov Loli­ta seems like a father daugh­ter trick­le down Oedi­pus reversed love affair. Psy­cholithis­to­ry vs Sci­col­it­fu­ture

Why not Joseph Heller’s Catch-22?
Hon­est­ly, the obses­sion with Russ­ian nov­el­ists is hard to under­stand. And, Madame Bovary? Please.

Such a list sans Dick­ens is not worth its weight in pix­els.

“Mid­dle­march” is soooo great. Every page con­tains a per­fect, orig­i­nal metaphor, expressed as effort­less­ly as if gift­ed from the gods. Fan­tas­ti­cal­ly real­ized char­ac­ters. And long, a long book, the read­er lives in the epony­mous town for a sur­ro­gate life­time. Won­der­ful.

All good books, the idea of pick­ing the best 10 is not so great.

real­ly? no Don Qui­jote?

Why not pre­tend you can’t see their names, read them and see what you think regard­less of gen­der or race? Of course you can always like what you feel is bet­ter — it’s art.

El Feli­bus­ter­is­mo by Jose Rizal made waves in the ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry. And is still being read in Europe and the Amer­i­c­as.

George Eliot was white but she lacked that cer­tain some­thing.

I’d pre­fer a list that does­n’t com­pare apples and oranges — Proust’s entry is actu­al­ly 7 books (!), and short sto­ry col­lec­tions and dra­mat­ic works are not nov­els (obvi­ous­ly). If the rules are this ill-defined, I would put the com­plete “Peanuts” by Charles Schultz as issued by Fan­ta­graph­ics Books on the list!

Great Gats­by is the most over­rat­ed nov­el of all times

I’ve read all of them and many, many, many more. It’s impos­si­ble to put the best in such a small list, there should be at least 100. And it is always a sub­jec­tive list, so bet­ter not do it. The lack­ing writ­ers are so impor­tant! Cul­ture would not be the same with­out them.

No Dos­toyevs­ki? Hahah, shame on you igno­rant bas­tard!

just want­ed to know some works to read but peo­ple’s com­ments say oth­er­wise… now total­ly con­fused

Where the red fern grows beeeeatch

The inse­cure list.

The method­ol­o­gy is faulty. That’s why this list is so bad. This is more like a list of what 125 writ­ers con­sid­er the best sin­gle book. If you went back to the orig­i­nal authors and asked them what impor­tant books are miss­ing, then you’d get a bet­ter list.

Only one female author. I’ve read most of the books on that list and not many are as great as Don­na Tart­t’s The Secret His­to­ry or Atwood’s Oryx & Crake.

thank you for hav­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty

If Don Quixote is not on the list, this is rub­bish. The jury should be ashamed of the result. Like the Times list and oth­ers, too much fash­ion, sno­bism and anglosax­on chau­vin­ism. Also they for­got Dos­toievs­ki, Homer and oth­ers…
This is a list made by writ­ers from ALL the world, not your sad “con­cil­i­ab­u­lo” of suposed top authors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokklubben_World_Library

No Alain Robbe-Gril­let, WIlliam H. Gass or Zamyetin???

Charles Dick­ens.

Books dam auto cor­rect

great­est nov­el ever writ­ten this is Anna Karen­i­na

My favorite ten Books, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

-Illu­mi­na­tions by Arthur Rim­baud
‑The Cat Inside by William Bur­roughs
‑Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
‑For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hem­ing­way
‑The Twelve Cae­sars by Sue­to­nius
‑Brew­er’s Dic­tio­nary of Phrase and Fable
‑A Lover’s Dis­course by Roland Barthes
‑Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
‑Dune by Frank Her­bert
‑The Psy­cho­analy­sis of Fire by Gas­ton Bachelard

I have found that all of these titles reward­ed mul­ti­ple read­ings. Cheers!

Cer­tain­ly, lists are always ques­tion­able for their arbi­trari­ness, but the two books you men­tioned are indis­putable two great mas­ter­pieces.

The lit­er­a­ture means metaphors; it means explo­ration of human beings and it is moti­vat­ed by the writ­ers’ urgency to inves­ti­gate the com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­to­ry human souls’ depth and/or the social rela­tions.

While Tolstoy’s inspi­ra­tion is the empa­thy with the oth­ers to under­stand him­self bet­ter, and so his nov­els are always moral, philo­soph­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal explo­ration, Flaubert’s intent is a social crit­i­cism.

Emma Bovary is a crit­ic of the bour­geoisie whose behav­ior is deter­mined by appear­ance and alien­ation from one­self. Emma mar­ried a physi­cian to upgrade her social sta­tus. Con­verse­ly, she dis­cov­ers that the “right groom” is only a coarse peas­ant with­out either voca­tion or intel­lect. He became physi­cian only for the same desire of social climb­ing that pushed her to mar­ry him. Thus, dis­ap­point­ed not to have found the glit­ter­ing life that she want­ed first she push­es her hus­band to try a risky surgery hop­ing to let him get fame so she could enjoy reflex of his glo­ry, suc­ces­sive­ly, this attempt failed, she vents her dis­con­tent by look­ing for love. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, self­ish, super­fi­cial peo­ple can­not love, and so she falls in an equiv­o­cal and expen­sive love affair that makes her in debts. There­fore, she swal­lows rat poi­son to escape the usurer’s black­mail. Is it a real sui­cide, or an attempt went over due? The author describes an equiv­o­cal sit­u­a­tion. Maybe she sim­u­lat­ed to get the erase of her debt promis­so­ry, or she want­ed to over­turn her unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion, or she did not exact­ly know what she want­ed because she can­not intro­spect. Dur­ing the tri­al for obscen­i­ty, the writer said “Emma Bovary, c’est moi!” a claim that the obscen­i­ty is the appearance’s empti­ness and alien­ation that con­cern all of us.

On the con­trary Tolstoy’s emo­tion­al mas­ter­piece is a com­plex plot of many sto­ries, e.g. Levin’s Bil­dungsro­man (by the way, Levin=diminutive of Lev, the name of the author), the Oblovsky’s adul­tery, Nikolai’s ill­ness, etc.

There is the con­tra­po­si­tion of the puri­ty of the ide­al­ized coun­try­side life and the cor­rupt and the hyp­ocrite life of aris­toc­ra­cy, and a deep analy­sis of social and mat­ri­mo­ni­al usages, the asym­me­try of the hus­bands that can grant the divorce or deny it, and the wives that are at the mer­cy of their “own­ers”. The writer crit­i­cizes the per­ni­cious influ­ence of reli­gious fanati­cism that for­gives lust, but pun­ish­es love, and so on.

At the end, the Anna‘s sui­cide is the con­se­quence of her and Vroskij’s exile in his estate because of the ostracism for their “Werther­ian pas­sion” (Vronskij’s mother’s quote). Her iso­la­tion push­es her to doubt of her lover’s feel­ings and sus­pect that it was only an infat­u­a­tion. She asks her­self if she sac­ri­ficed all of her life, her son, her hon­ored posi­tion, her social rela­tions for an illu­sion. As in the pre­des­ti­na­tion fig­ured in the sce­nario of her meet­ing with Vron­skij, she throws her­self on the tracks, but she does not die imme­di­ate­ly. Vron­skij gets to the sta­tion and founds her on the table of tick­et office. She is ago­niz­ing, deformed by the bro­ken spine, gib­ber­ing in a painful mask. He is upset, and he declares he is going to leave for Crimea’s war, and his moth­er agrees because she thought he lost his hon­or. His train trip towards the front is one of the most pow­er­ful anti­mil­i­tarist man­i­festo indeed the descrip­tion of play­ers who flee gam­bling debts, peas­ants who wish to offer a chance to their fam­i­lies, and so on, shows war as an escape for losers.

It is impos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize the rich­ness and the beau­ty of these works and explore all their mul­ti­fac­eted, deep metaphors. Any­way, I had to tes­ti­fy their val­ue.

Such a poor list, with very low cri­te­ria.

I want to see the list of Indi­a’s top author book. Your web­site is very infor­ma­tive I just search about lat­est jobs in jobisearch.com. I found your web­site is very use­ful for lat­est updates about edu­ca­tion and stu­dents. Who want to know about edu­ca­tion I book­mark your site and also recruit­ment to all of my friends.

Had a ball read­ing all the com­ments. Just like com­par­isons, lists are odi­ous. I’m sug­gest­ing a much more recent book, Free­dom by Jonathon Franzen. Don’t any­one throw stones. I absolute­ly loved it. Wal­ter Berg­land is my fave. Oh and I agree about Cor­mac McCarthy. He should be on the odi­ous list as well.

Loli­ta belongs on most any­one’s top ten list. The Grapes of Wrath should be too. I’ve read many books in my life and sev­er­al on this list. Here’s a book that few have heard of but should read. The Stones of Sum­mer. It reach­es inside of you with the best of them. And I might add Hek­tor Atre­des sen­ti­ments about lists was right on the mon­ey.

1. Catch­er in the Rye
2. Crime and Pun­ish­ment
3. Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man
4. Black Boy
5. War and Peace
6. A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court
7. Palace Walk
8. The Stranger
9. The Black Prince
10. Tie — Rab­bit Run and All the Pret­ty Hors­es

Just my take.

125 of the most promi­nent liv­ing writ­ers sub­mit­ted their indi­vid­ual Top Tens from which this cumu­la­tive list was com­piled, using the stan­dard points for­mu­la. did you not read the method­ol­o­gy of this list? take up your griev­ances with the likes of Nor­man Mail­er, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Mes­sud, and Michael Chabon since they are the com­pil­ers.

It is impos­si­ble to pick 10 and even if you list­ed 100 you would still leave out some­one’s favorite.

But, nice try.

Catch­er in the Rye, yes. Thank you.

Dick­ens is hard­ly low­brow!

Astound­ing! I must say that it is a very com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion! I like every­thing! Thank­ful for shar­ing. If you want to get more about this top­ic then vis­it here:

Oh, FFS — George Eliot was a woman — Mary Anne Evans. Not that I’m defend­ing this idi­ot­ic list in the least. Prob­lem #1 — two by Tol­stoi? #2 Ham­let is a play, not a book. #3 As point­ed out above, the the­mat­ic dupli­ca­tion of Anna Karen­i­na and Madame Bovary. #4 Much as I like Chekhov, an anthol­o­gy does­n’t count. #5 The Great Gats­by?!? Real­ly? #6 Loli­ta? Meh.
#7 No Ulysses? #8 No Ili­ad? #9 No Quixote? #10 I could go on, but I’ve made my point

It’s a ridicu­lous list.

Why no Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Dos­tovesky???

As a Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major in col­lege, I would go with either:
1. Momen­tum, Heat and Mass Trans­fer, McCabe & Smith, or
2. Bossy­pants, Tina Fey

1984 and Drac­u­la should be in any top ten. 1984 as a warn­ing and Drac­u­la because it brought hor­ror into the modern(ish) era and spawned a mas­sive genre.

African lit­er­a­ture is a fas­ci­nat­ing untapped resource. I have only recent­ly start­ed explor­ing it and already added Ahmadou Kourouma, Pie Tshiban­da and Maria­ma Bâ to my per­son­al pan­theon.