Time: The 10 Greatest Books of All Time

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

A list I would agree with for the most part but I would definitely put War and Peace at #1

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1578073,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopularemail&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Fmostemailed+%28TIME%3A+Most+Emailed+Story+of+the+Day%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

There are several lifetimes' worth of promising literary leads here—544 books in all. An 85-page appendix providing enlightened summaries of all the works mentioned is worth the price of admission all on its own. But to get you started, here, in all its glory, is the all-time, ultimate Top Top 10 list, derived from the top 10 lists of 125 of the world's most celebrated writers combined. Read it and— well, just read it.




Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Middlemarch by George Eliot

[gateley]

1. Wow - I haven't read a single one! MAYBE Hamlet in High School.. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Huck Fin and the stories of Chechov are just great

I love his short stories, they are like the greatest for short story technique

[coalition_unwilling]

10. Of the 10 above, imho, Gatsby is probably the most accessible

and oh-so-relevant in oh-so-many ways. Highly readable too :)

On edit: To understand TBaggers, though, Huck Finn is a must-read :)

[gateley]

19. Yeah, I'm going to get on it -- really! Thanks! nt

[hfojvt]

38. very accesible to me

I just walked across the room and picked it up. I see a bookmark at page 10, meaning I got that far.

Maybe I will take it to work and read it during breaks. Lately I have finished a number of books that way.

[roguevalley]

47. a couple. I find novels boring. More of a non fic sort. But some

novels need reading. Most of the ones on the list I can pass on. Consider Moby Dick. The most unread great book in history. :)

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Catch 22 and A Confederacy of Dunces.

and To Kill a Mockingbird....
Mockingbird has been mentioned in several top 10 lists.

but yes, limiting to only 10 is impossible.

Years ago, Pilgrim's Progress would have been on the list.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Definitely on Catch-22 and at leat an honorable mention for TKAM.

[etherealtruth]

30. Those are my top three

admittedly, my list changes with time and mood

[FourScore]

49. Where's The Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird?

I thought for sure one or both of those would be on this list. But that just goes to show how dumb lists like this are.

[polly7]

55. Definitely, To Kill A Mockingbird ... should have Animal Farm in there too

[SoCalDem]

4. I've read all of them

good choices, but I might have left Hamlet off the list:)

In 10th grade we read War & Peace in Russian..:...It was our year long assignment in Russian I.. I'm not so sure I understood it all that much:)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. I've read W&P 3 times and loved it more each time.

In English, however.

[supernova]

5. Why Middlemarch?

as opposed to other 19th British lit, such as Thackaray, or Austen or Dickens?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. I agree. Espcecially about Austen.

[amborin]

32. Magic Mountain? The Return of the Native?

[Octafish]

8. Where's Borges?

Where's Lem?

Where's Vallee?

Where's Douglass?

[LooseWilly]

28. Not to mention Samuel Beckett,

William Burroughs

Joseph Conrad

Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki

Zora Neale Hurston

How about Mary Shelley?... Hunter S. Thompson?

(I'd've left War & Peace off to make room for Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston, Heart of Darkness by Conrad, or even Frankenstein by Shelley... or maybe Pale Fire by Nabokov, or Watt/ Waiting for Godot by Beckett)

Book lists like this say more about the canon, as embraced by the list maker, than they do about truly great literature... no? :+

[tishaLA]

11. remove Middlemarch, add Henry James

The Ambassadors, perhaps, or The Golden Bowl.

[edhopper]

12. No Moby Dick?

Useless list.
They probably have Regan on there all time Pres list too.

[Eddie Haskell]

22. I'm a fan of the whale, too.

Must be in the top ten.

[JVS]

45. That was a good book.

[Odin2005]

13. Where is "Moby Dick" and "A Christmas Carol"?

[dana_b]

14. I'll take Grapes of Wrath or practically

any Steinbeck novel over any of those. Huck Finn and Hamlet were amazing but Tolstoy's books and Madame Ovary bored the hell out of me. The Great Gatsby was good - a bit tedious. Some of the others I skimmed through in high school and so I really shouldn't criticize or say that Steinbeck is better - but I will anyway. :)

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. Oh yeah, The Grapes of Wrath.

I just picked up a replacement copy, to read again, it seems ...topical.

[dana_b]

24. haha! so did I!

I don't know what happened to my old copy so I bought another one recently. And yeah - it is definitely topical. I have never had an ending of any book stick in my head like this one did.

[sammytko]

50. Grapes of wrath also my favorite

Have a copy on kindle app. Free download from amazon.

[sammytko]

51. Grapes of wrath also my favorite

Have a copy on kindle app. Free download from amazon.

[leeroysphitz]

15. TL;DR

[white_wolf]

16. I have to say the fact that the Lord of the Rings isn't on the list annoys me.

Tolkien was a brilliant man and his works were very influential.

[edhopper]

20. I concur

[JanMichael]

18. 8 of 10. There are others that I might have listed for top 10 but...

...for their impact in their time, and longevity, this is not an unreasonable list.

[bhikkhu]

21. :) - I've read every one, except Middlemarch

...that gives me something to look for on my next trip to the library.

I'd probably add "Ulysses", by Joyce, as easily of the same caliber, and Voltaire's "Candide" is also very deserving - written to perfection, more readable and re-readable than some of those.

[Vinnie From Indy]

23. WTF? Where is Al Franken's "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot"

That Barney Rubble! Man, what an actor!

[Kceres]

25. Sorta have a problem with the list.

All but one (Middlemarch)of the top 10 written by white men. Just sayin'.....

[dixiegrrrrl]

27. A man I USED to date told me why there are no great women artists:

there are no great women artists because if they were great, they would be on the great list.
That sort of logic.


Wonder whatever became of him?
Hmmmmmmm........

Oh,yeah, he froze to death from a withering glare and lives in the deepest pit of obscurity.

[lpbk2713]

26. My favorite of those not listed

The Old Man and the Sea

[JustAnotherGen]

29. Beautiful

In the 90's at University we called it the DWMs

Where are:
Things Fall Apart
Cry The Beloved country

No Buck? No Austen? And where is Hemingway? Hemingway could say more in one paragraph than combining all of the books of the authors above. Catcher In The Rye? EL Doctorow isn't on there?

I have read all of those books and with the exception of Huck and Gatsby - they're terrible!

[pitohui]

31. an odd and dated list...

"hamlet" does not need to be read, it should be seen performed methinks -- when you think of all the wonderful books waiting to be read, and you're told to pick only 10, i would not pick a play for any of them, let the plays be in their own list, of performances, to be seen as they were meant to be seen

of these picks, i've read 7 (well, i've sorta read 8, if you count having read "flaubert's parrot" by julian barnes as a suitable substitute for having read "madame bovary" and i suspect i enjoyed it more anyway) and "war and peace" and of course "huck finn" are truly great but some of the others are, let's face it, way past their sell-by date

why two books by one dude, when you can only pick 10 books? why a bit of fluff like "the great gatsby" when you could have put a dickens?

why books only from a relatively brief period of time (leaving aside "hamlet" which again isn't really best READ but rather viewed?)

there is an embarrassment of riches of truly fine 20th century and contemporary authors, and they can't put even one modern great on the list?

no "infinite jest"? no "libra"?

also... you sure don't need TWO books by men telling what women are, why not kick "anna k" and "madame bovary" off the list and replace one or both with books by actual WOMEN -- maybe even a woman who admitted she was a woman and put her name on the damn book, that might be nice!

probably the most influential, considering its place in the spark of the entire science fiction genre, would be mary shelley's frankenstein but there are many other great novels by women who are admitted women, you can pick ONE in a list of 10, hell you can pick 100 that are better reads than "the great gatsby"

i might as well add that i think one of the greatest books ever written is doris lessing's "the golden notebook" and i can't understand why such a writer is not at the top of every top 10 list

[hfojvt]

33. Lolita? Are you kidding me?

Most of the rest of them I have not read, but Lolita? Seriously?

I saw the movie Anna Karenina and didn't think that was a very good story either.

I got about 100 pages in to "War and Peace" and then gave it up.

[pitohui]

34. whoever put together this list has an odd view of women (and girls)

there is just too much in a simple top ten list that is about men telling women and girls what we are

"lolita" was well written and all but c'mon, it does not deserve to be on the top 10 list of the best 10 things ever written, that's just nonsense

i vote "anna k," "lolita," and "madame bovary" off the island

i would replace these with mary shelley's "frankenstein," one of the great seeds of science fiction,
doris lessing's "the golden notebook," one of the great novels ever and one of the first that dealt with real women living real lives, and then i guess i'm not ready to pin down the third novel, there are too many good ones out therem but if long-lasting influence as well as great writing is required then jane austen or virginia wolfe will prob. have to fight it out ...

i just can't see where "lolita" is a particularly important novel on any level other than fine writing and there are hundreds if not thousands of beautifully written novels, why pick that one?

[hfojvt]

46. I find it hard to believe that it is well written

I usually don't pay that much attention to style, and it was the hero of that book who disgusted me and made me quit reading. But I tried to read Ada by the same author. And good grief, talk about sentences that just go on and on bringing in all these irrelevancies and past events and such. It seemed to me that it was the most poorly written dreck that I had ever had the misfortune to try to sift through.

Although now you make me reach over to my bookshelf and I see that I only made it to the 2nd page of The Golden Notebook. I am just not as much of a reader as I was in my first 35 years of life. Now that I don't sell books, I hardly ever read them any more. Now, also, the internet consumes much of my reading and most of the rest of my leisure time, except for volunteer work.

I could list my own top ten, but probably none of them would be considered "great" literature. Things like Poul Anderson's "The Corridors of Time" and "Time and Again", Simak's "All Flesh is Grass" amd John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar".

Others like Bellamy's "Looking Backward", Charles Sheldon's "In his steps" (one of the best sellers or all time (thanks to copyright problems) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland" are really just moralizing in novel form, but I found them inspiring when I read them, as encouraging the possibility that humanity can make a better world for itself. As such, I would probably pick them as worth reading just as much, or more, than any other book.

[GreenArrow]

35. Dostoyesky? Don Quixote? Hugo?

Replaced by Lolita?

[MilesColtrane]

36. Hamlet needs to be on the list of the top ten plays, not novels.

That would make room for "Blood Meridian".

[grahamhgreen]

37. Here's a vote for Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins

[KG]

39. um, 'Hamlet' is not a book.

[WinkyDink]

40. Just about to post this!

[WinkyDink]

41. "Stories"? And no James or Joyce?

[Major Hogwash]

42. Must be a mistake, where's "My Pet Goat"?

I mean, if the President read it and took several months pouring over it, longer than he did the PDB of August 6th, you'd think that TIME would include it on their list.

Maybe it's number 11.

[JVS]

43. Very tilted toward English language and modernity. Surprised to see none of the Greek or Roman...

epic poems.

[JVS]

44. No Catcher in the Rye? What a bunch of phonies!

[ZombieHorde]

48. Not a single book by Gary Gygax?

No R.A.Wilson? Where is World War Z? No Joseph Campbell? Pfft.

[aikoaiko]

52. Where's The Shining?

:shrug:

[Bucky]

53. No Molly Ivins? No Bukowski? I call bullshit

[JVS]

54. Molly Ivins in the top 10 of all time?

I've really got to read one of her books.

[Safetykitten]

56. No Crime and Punishment?

[thelordofhell]

57. And the 10 top selling books of all time (not counting bibles and instruction books)

A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Dream Of The Red Chamber by Cau Xeuquin
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
She by H. Rider Haggard
Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill