Classic Novels Book Club: The Top 200 Works of Fiction

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When I launched the Classic Novels Book Club read more here) in July 2018, it was based on a list of the top 100 works of fiction of all-time. You can see that original list here. In January 2026, however, the list was revised as the group neared completion of the top 100 books. Below is the revised list of the top 200 works of fiction of all time as of 1/31/2026. Those books which the group has already read or are scheduled to read have been highlighted. 2026 rank / 2018 rank / Author / Book Title / Year of Publication (4) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) (1) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) (2) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) (3) George Orwell 1984 (1949) (11) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) (9) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) (19) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) (7) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) (5) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) (6) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) (16) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) (8) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) (25) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) (20) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) (30) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) (12) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) (17) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) (14) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) (77) J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) (1997) (10) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) (43) J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) (28) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) (15) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) (21) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) (18) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) (56) C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) (32) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) (31) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) (23) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) (38) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) (13) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) (27) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) (29) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) (52) Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) (26) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) (24) George Orwell Animal Farm (1945) (22) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) (44) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) (82) Marcel Proust Swann’s Way (1913), part one of In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) (series: 1913-1927) (57) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) (39) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) (35) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) (54) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) (53) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) (64) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943) (40) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) (36) Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.) (34) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) (49) Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953) (37) George Eliot Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1872) (73) Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938) (47) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) (33) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) (78) Frank Herbert Dune (1965) (58) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) (61) Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) (1320) (55) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) (42) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) (46) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) (79) Richard Adams Watership Down (1972) (85) Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862) (45) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) (69) Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952) (50) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937) (72) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) (71) Albert Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger, aka The Outsider) (1942) (48) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) (41) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) (66) Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957) (--) Philip Pullman The Golden Compass (1995) (51) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) (60) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) (63) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) (84) L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908) (68) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) (67) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) (83) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) (65) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) (--) Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (2008) (86) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) (--) Makus Zusak The Book Thief (2005) (99) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1887) (74) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) (59) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) (76) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) (91) Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (O Alquimista) (1988) (96) Franz Kafka The Trial (1925) (--) Madeline L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time (1962) (--) Lois Lowry The Giver (1993) (62) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) (--) Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales (1387) (--) Bram Stoker Dracula (1897) (81) John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) (70) Richard Wright Native Son (1940) (--) Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code (2003) (92) Stephen King The Stand (1978) (75) Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929) (--) Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) (80) Jane Austen Emma (1816) (--) S.E. Hinton The Outsiders (1967) (98) Thomas Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) (90) William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) (--) Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) (87) Francois-Marie de Voltaire Candide (1759) (--) Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner (2003) (93) John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) (--) Gabriel Garcia Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) (--) Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose (1980) (--) Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers (1844) (89) Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar (1963) (--) Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game (1968) (--) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) (--) George R.R. Martin A Game of Thrones (1996) (--) Cormac McCarthy The Road (2007) (--) John Green The Fault in Our Stars (2012) (100) Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1767) (--) Stephanie Meyer Twilight (2005) (--) Stieg Larsson The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005) (--) John Milton Paradise Lost (1667) (--) Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden (1987) (--) anonymous Arabian Nights (aka “One Thousand and One Nights”) (800 A.D.) (--) Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) (--) Franz Kafka The Metamorphosis (1915) (--) Agathie Christie And Then There Were None (1939) (--) Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) (94) Henry James The Portrait of a Lady (1881) (--) Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (1843) (--) Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep (1939) (--) Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (--) Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men (1946) (--) Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita (1967) (88) Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945) (--) Gillian Flynn Gone Girl (2012) (--) Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) (--) John Irving The World According to Garp (1978) (--) Upton Sinclair The Jungle (1906) (--) Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier (1915) (--) Stendhal The Red and the Black (1830) (--) Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon (1929) (--) Fyodor Dostoyevski The Idiot (1869) (--) Charles Dickens Bleak House (1853) (--) Kathryn Stockett The Help (2009) (95) James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) (--) Henry Fielding Tom Jones (aka “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”) (1749) (--) Ian McEwan Atonement (2001) (--) John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) (--) Willa Cather My Antonia (1918) (--) Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) (--) Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible (1998) (--) Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire (1962) (--) Carson McCullers The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) (97) Thomas Pynchon Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) (--) Herman Hesse Siddhartha (1922) (--) Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) (--) Ayn Rand The Fountainhead (1943) (--) Jane Austen Persuasion (1818) (--) Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1838) (--) Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain (1924) (--) William Faulkner Absalom, Absalom! (1936) (--) E.M. Forster Howards End (1910) (--) Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano (1947) (--) D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (1913) (--) John Steinbeck East of Eden (1952) (--) Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962) (--) Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1860) (--) Robert Graves I, Claudius (1934) (--) Rick Riordan The Lightning Thief (2005) (--) John Updike Rabbit, Run (1960) (--) Toni Morrison Song of Solomon (1977) (--) H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1898) (--) Mario Puzo The Godfather (1969) (--) Veronica Roth Divergent (2011) (--) Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass (1871) (--) Pearl Buck The Good Earth (1931) (--) William Styron Sophie’s Choice (1979) (--) Stephen Cane The Red Badge of Courage (1895) (--) H.G. Wells The Time Machine (1895) (--) Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex (2003) (--) Laurra Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie (1935) (--) Anna Sewell Black Beauty (1877) (--) Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (1900) (--) Donna Tartt The Secret History (1992) (--) W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage (1915) (--) L. Frank Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) (--) Jonathan Franzen The Corrections (2001) (--) Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy (1925) (--) Yann Martel Life of Pi (2001) (--) Wilkie Collins The Moonstone (1868) (--) Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) (--) Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) (--) Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) (--) Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Stanger Land (1961) (--) Louis-Ferdinand Céline Journey to the End of the Night (1932) (--) Alice Sebold The Lovely Bones (2002) (--) Walker Percy The Moviegoer (1961) (--) Kate Chopin The Awakening (1899) (--) D.H. Lawrence Women in Love (1920) (--) Edith Wharton The House of Mirth (1905) (--) Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer (1934) (--) Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure (1895) Resources and Related Links: Classic Novels Book Club: Writ by Whit Page Classic Novels Book Club: Meetup Site The Top 100 Works of Fiction (revised) Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: Fiction” Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: General” First posted 6/26/2018; last updated 2/3/2026.

 

Classic Novels Book Club: The Top 100

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When I launched the Classic Novels Book Club read more here) in July 2018, it was based on a a list of the top 100 works of fiction of all-time. That list has been revised (posted here), but the original has been left in tact here. Highlighted titles are those which the book club has read or is scheduled to read as of 11/11/2025. You can click on book titles to link to more detailed pages about those books. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) George Orwell Animal Farm (1945) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.) George Eliot Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1872) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) (1320) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Richard Wright Native Son (1940) Albert Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger, aka The Outsider) (1942) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) (1997) Frank Herbert Dune (1965) Richard Adams Watership Down (1972) Jane Austen Emma (1816) John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) Marcel Proust Swann’s Way (1913), part one of In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) (series: 1913-1927) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908) Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) Francois-Marie de Voltaire Candide (1759) Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945) Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar (1963) William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (O Alquimista) (1988) Stephen King The Stand (1978) John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) Henry James The Portrait of a Lady (1881) James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) Franz Kafka The Trial (1925) Thomas Pynchon Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) Thomas Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1887) Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1767) Resources and Related Links: Classic Novels Book Club: Writ by Whit Page Classic Novels Book Club: Meetup Site The Top 100 Works of Fiction (revised) Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: Fiction” Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: General” First posted 6/26/2018; last updated 11/12/2025.

All Time Best Books: Top 100

First posted 5/26/2018; updated 11/11/2025.

All-Time Books: Top 100

Inspired by the 2018 PBS special The Great American Read, I assembled more than 170 best-of-books lists (see sources here) and aggregated them to create one master list of the all-time books. While these are mostly novels, there are some non-fiction books and even a few children’s picture books. Here are the results: Various writers The Holy Bible: King James Version (1610) Mao Tse-Tung Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (aka “Little Red Book”) (1964) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) J.K. Rowling Harry Potter (series, 1997-2007) J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (aka The Diary of Anne Frank) (1947) C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) George Orwell Animal Farm (1945) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) Muhammad Qu’ran (632 CE) Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) (series: 1913-1927) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time (1988) Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953) George Eliot Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1872) Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966) Frank Herbert Dune (1965) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) (1320) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) Richard Adams Watership Down (1972) Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Albert Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger, aka The Outsider) (1942) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (1859) Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957) Philip Pullman The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights) (1995), first book of His Dark Materials series (1995-2000) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are (1964) Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1532) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908) Henry David Thoreau Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) Plato The Republic (380 B.C.) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (trilogy: 2008-2010) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962) Alex Haley and Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) Georges Simenon Maigret (series, 1931-1972) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) Markus Zusak The Book Thief (2005) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1887) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) William Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) Resources and Related Links: General (non-specific genre lists) Writ by Whit (lists specially assembled by Dave Whitaker) General (non-specific genre lists) Fiction Non-Fiction Children’s Picture Books and Read-Alouds Novels for Children and Young Adults Reviews/Where to Buy and Download Books Sales

 

The All-Time Top 100 Works of Fiction

First posted 6/26/2018; updated 7/5/2020.

Fiction: Top 100 Novels

These are the best fiction books of all-time, according to an aggregate of more than 20 lists focused specifically on fiction books and another 50+ general book lists. Note: this list was originally posted in June 2018 and that version was used as the springboard for the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the original list here. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) J.K. Rowling Harry Potter (series: 1997-2007) J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (series: 1950-1956) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) George Orwell Animal Farm (1945) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) (series: 1913-1927) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.) Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) (1320) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) George Eliot Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1872) Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) Frank Herbert Dune (1965) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Richard Adams Watership Down (1972) Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Albert Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger, aka The Outsider) (1942) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937) Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862) Philip Pullman The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights) (1995) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (2008) L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Paulo Coelho O Alquimista (The Alchemist) (1987) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) Lois Lowry The Giver (1993) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time (1962) Richard Wright Native Son (1940) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1887) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales (1387) Markus Zusak The Book Thief (2005) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929) Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) S.E. Hinton The Outsiders (1967) Franz Kafka The Trial (1925) Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code (2004) William Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) Stephen King The Stand (1978) Bram Stoker Dracula (1897) Resources and Related Links: Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: Fiction” Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: General”

Newsweek: Top 100 Books

First posted 6/9/2020.

Newsweek: Top 100 Books

Newsweek’s list was assembled by aggregating ten other lists. Unfortunately, the ten are not all referenced, but the article does say it included Modern Library, Oprah Winfrey’s book club selections, a reading list for St. John’s College, and Britain’s Daily Telegraph list of “the perfect library.” Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) George Orwell 1984 (1949) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) / The Iliad (800 B.C.) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Dante Alighieri Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) (1304) Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales (1387) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) George Eliot Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1872) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (1955) Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (1840) Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (1859) Herodotus The Histories of Herodotus (5th century) Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract (1762) Karl Marx Das Kapital (1867) Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1532) St. Augustine of Hippo The Confessions (400 A.D.) Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651) Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (series, 1950-1956) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) various writers The Holy Bible: King James Version (1451) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) William Faulkner Light in August (1932) W.E. Burghardt Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903) Jean Rhys Wide Saragosso Sea (1966) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) John Milton Paradise Lost (1667) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) William Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) William Shakespeare King Lear (1608) William Shakespeare Othello (1609) William Shakespeare The Sonnets (1609) Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1855) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Rudyard Kipling Kim (1901) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Toni Morrison Song of Solomon (1977) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) George Orwell Animal Farm (1954) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966) Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962) Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time (1913) Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep (1939) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Robert Graves I, Claudius (1934) Carson McCullers The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (1913) Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men (1946) James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Elie Wiesel Night (Un di Velt Hot Geshvign) (1958) John Updike Rabbit, Run (1960) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy (1925) Nathanael West The Day of the Locust (1939) Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer (1934) Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon (1929) Philip Pullman His Dark Materials (trilogy: 1995-2000) Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) Sigmund Freud The Interpreation of Dreams (1900) Henry Adams The Education of Henry Adams (1907) Mao Zedong Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Little Red Book) (1966) William James The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945) Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962) John Maynard Keynes General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (1900) Robert Graves Goodbye to All That (1929) John Kenneth Galbraith The Affluent Society (1958) William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Alex Haley & Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Lytton Strachey Eminent Victorians (1918) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) Winston Churchill The Second World War (6 volumes, 1953) Resources and Related Links: A List of Books: “Newsweek: Top 100 Books” Newsweek (6/28/2009). “Inside Newsweek’s Top 100 Books: The Meta-List”

Modern Library: 100 Best Novels

First posted 6/9/2020.

image from the Modern Library Facebook page

Modern Library: 100 Best Novels

Modern Library assembled top 100 lists of the best novels and non-fiction books based on online votes. The poll for the novels closed on October 20, 1998 with 217,520 votes cast. Here are the results: James Joyce Ulysses (1922) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon (1940) D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (1913) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano (1947) Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh (1903) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Robert Graves I, Claudius (1934) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy (1925) Carson McCullers The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Richard Wright Native Son (1940) Saul Bellow Henderson the Rain King (1959) John O’Hara Appointment in Samarra (1934) John Dos Passos U.S.A. (Trilogy) (1936) Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio (1919) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Henry James The Wings of the Dove (1902) Henry James The Ambassadors (1903) F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night (1934) James T. Farrell The Studs Lonigan Trilogy (1935) Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier (1915) George Orwell Animal Farm (1954) Henry James The Golden Bowl (1904) Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie (1900) Evelyn Waugh A Handful of Dust (1934) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men (1946) Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928) E.M. Forster Howards End (1910) James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter (1948) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) James Dickey Deliverance (1970) Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time (Series) (1975) Aldous Huxley Point Counter Point (1928) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent (1926) Joseph Conrad Nostromo (1904) D.H. Lawrence The Rainbow (1915) D.H. Lawrence Women in Love (1920) Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer (1934) Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead (1948) Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire (1962) William Faulkner Light in August (1932) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon (1929) Ford Madox Ford Parade’s End (1928) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson (1911) Walker Percy The Moviegoer (1961) Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) James Jones From Here to Eternity (1951) John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicles (1958) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage (1915) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Sinclair Lewis Main Street (1920) Edith Wharton The House of Mirth (1905) Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet (1960) Richard Hughes A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) V.S. Naipaul A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) Nathanael West The Day of the Locust (1939) Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929) Evelyn Waugh Scoop (1938) Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1960) James Joyce Finnegan’s Wake (1941) Rudyard Kipling Kim (1901) E.M. Forster A Room with a View (1908) Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945) Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March (1953) Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose (1971) V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River (1979) Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart (1938) Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (1900) E.L. Doctorow Ragtime (1975) Arnold Bennett The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Henry Green Loving (1945) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Erskine Caldwell Tobacco Road (1932) William Kennedy Ironweed (1983) John Fowles The Magus (1965) Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Iris Murdoch Under the Net (1954) William Styron Sophie’s Choice (1979) Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky (1949) James M. Cain The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) J.P. Donleavy The Ginger Man (1955) Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons (1919) Resources and Related Links: Modern Library “100 Best Novels” Modern Library “Top 100” (how list was compiled)

Vladimir Nabokov Lolita: Published 20 Years Ago This Year

Last updated 7/5/2020.

Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

First Publication: 1955 Category: controversial sex-themed novel Sales: 50 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: “Awe and exhilaration – along with heartbreak and mordant wit – abound in Lolita.” AZ The “novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov…is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze,” WK otherwise known as “Lolita,” his private nickname for her. WK He “becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather.” WK “Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love – love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.” AZ “The novel was adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne. It has also been adapted several times for the stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Broadway musical.” WK “Its assimilation into popular culture is such that the name ‘Lolita’ has been used to imply that a young girl is sexually precocious.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia