Book AwardsThe Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books

Book awards by cover

Works (284)

TitlesOrder
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 171 points
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert160 points
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 150 points
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 131 points
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 126 points
Hamlet by William Shakespeare111 points
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 110 points
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 107 points
Stories by Anton Chekhov105 points
Middlemarch by George Eliot 100 points
Moby Dick by Herman Melville 88 points
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 87 points
Ulysses by James Joyce 85 points
The Odyssey by Homer — not in English Common Knowledge81 points
Dubliners by James Joyce79 points
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 72 points
King Lear by William Shakespeare72 points
Emma by Jane Austen67 points
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 66 points
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 63 points
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 62 points
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky61 points
Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 55 points
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) by Laurence Sterne54 points
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 52 points
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 52 points
Holy Bible by God50 points
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov49 points
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner47 points
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James45 points
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 44 points
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer43 points
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad42 points
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 42 points
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 41 points
Bleak House by Charles Dickens 40 points
The Trial by Franz Kafka 40 points
Beloved by Toni Morrison 40 points
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 39 points
The Stranger by Albert Camus 38 points
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 36 points
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren 35 points
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford 32 points
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 32 points
Persuasion by Jane Austen31 points
Macbeth by William Shakespeare31 points
The Oresteia: Agamemnon / The Libation Bearers / The Eumenides by Aeschylus30 points
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 30 points
The Red and the Black by Stendhal28 points
Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy by John Updike28 points
Collected Stories by Isaac Babel27 points
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald27 points
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce27 points
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 26 points
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 26 points
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever24 points
Paradise Lost by John Milton24 points
The Aeneid by Virgil24 points
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy23 points
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman23 points
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol22 points
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann22 points
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty22 points
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov21 points
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens21 points
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 21 points
The Hamlet by William Faulkner21 points
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway21 points
The Iliad by Homer — not in English Common Knowledge 21 points
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio20 points
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky20 points
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead 20 points
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal 20 points
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway19 points
Independent People by Halldór Laxness19 points
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights by Richard Burton18 points
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky18 points
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 18 points
The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition by Stephen King18 points
The Tempest by William Shakespeare18 points
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson17 points
Don Juan by Lord Byron17 points
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding17 points
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster 17 points
Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson17 points
Candide by Voltaire17 points
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges16 points
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler16 points
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell16 points
Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell16 points
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy16 points
1984 by George Orwell 16 points
The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka16 points
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri56 points
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift16 points
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West16 points
A Death in the Family by James Agee15 points
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino15 points
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson15 points
Howards End by E. M. Forster15 points
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene15 points
Selected Stories by Alice Munro 15 points
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell 15 points
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark 15 points
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr14 points
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass 14 points
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare14 points
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 13 points
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser13 points
The Bear by William Faulkner13 points
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway13 points
Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson13 points
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa13 points
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter13 points
Antigone / Oedipus Rex / Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles13 points
East of Eden by John Steinbeck13 points
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson13 points
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot12 points
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 12 points
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard12 points
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell12 points
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 12 points
Germinal by Émile Zola12 points
Ask the Dust by John Fante 11 points
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford11 points
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 11 points
The Ambassadors by Henry James11 points
Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger11 points
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray11 points
Native Son by Richard Wright 11 points
The Bhagavad Gita by Barbara Stoler Miller10 points
The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe10 points
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 10 points
The Untouchable by John Banville 10 points
Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett10 points
The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad10 points
The Outward Room by Millen Brand10 points
Casa Guidi Windows by Elizabeth Barrett Browning10 points
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel by Truman Capote10 points
The Golden Argosy: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language by Charles Grayson10 points
The Professor's House by Willa Cather10 points
The Awakening by Kate Chopin 10 points
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee 10 points
Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee10 points
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn10 points
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich10 points
J R by William Gaddis10 points
I, Claudius by Robert Graves10 points
The Golden Bowl by Henry James10 points
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence10 points
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis10 points
Embers by Sándor Márai10 points
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville10 points
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter10 points
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter10 points
In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda10 points
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare10 points
The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki10 points
L'Assommoir by Émile Zola10 points
Nana by Émile Zola10 points
The Complete Fables by Aesop9 points
Mahābhārata (John D. Smith ed.) by Vyasa9 points
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee9 points
The American Dream by Edward Albee9 points
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee9 points
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac9 points
The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos9 points
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler9 points
The Fall by Albert Camus9 points
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather 9 points
The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût9 points
Selected Stories by Andre Dubus9 points
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot9 points
Medea [in Translation] by Euripides 9 points
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon9 points
1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray9 points
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy9 points
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 9 points
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen9 points
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann 9 points
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann9 points
The Misanthrope and Other Plays: A New Selection (Penguin Classics) by Molière9 points
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec 9 points
Wheat that Springeth Green (New York Review Books Classics) by J. F. Powers9 points
Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym9 points
Henry V by William Shakespeare9 points
Othello by William Shakespeare9 points
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson9 points
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson9 points
The Master by Colm Tóibín9 points
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset9 points
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West9 points
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams9 points
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac8 points
Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges8 points
Bullet Park by John Cheever8 points
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov8 points
Life & Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee8 points
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad8 points
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad8 points
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies8 points
Hard Times by Charles Dickens8 points
The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble8 points
Bacchae [Greek text] by Euripides 8 points
Light in August by William Faulkner8 points
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding8 points
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald8 points
The Sheltered Life by Ellen Glasgow8 points
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris8 points
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway8 points
Almost Paradise by Susan Isaacs8 points
Shining Through by Susan Isaacs8 points
Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson8 points
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera8 points
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis8 points
Man's Fate by André Malraux 8 points
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant8 points
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien 8 points
Norwood by Charles Portis8 points
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie8 points
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini8 points
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott8 points
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald 8 points
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein8 points
Sophie's Choice by William Styron8 points
Golpo Guchho by Rabindranath Tagore8 points
Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev8 points
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 8 points
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde8 points
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory7 points
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott7 points
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 7 points
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes7 points
Herzog by Saul Bellow7 points
My Ántonia by Willa Cather7 points
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 7 points
The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov7 points
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute7 points
Letourneau's Used Auto Parts by Carolyn Chute7 points
Merry Men by Carolyn Chute7 points
The Hours by Michael Cunningham7 points
U.S.A. by John Dos Passos7 points
The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble7 points
The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant by Mavis Gallant7 points
The Comedians by Graham Greene7 points
The Evening of the Holiday by Shirley Hazzard7 points
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen7 points
The Thin Red Line by James Jones7 points
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 7 points
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré7 points
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry 7 points
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 7 points
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 7 points
The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki 7 points
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov7 points
McTeague: A Story of San Francisco by Frank Norris7 points
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien 7 points
Metamorphoses [in translation] by Ovid7 points
The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick7 points
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais7 points
The Burning Plain, and Other Stories by Juan Rulfo7 points
The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald 7 points
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss7 points
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith7 points
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson7 points
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 7 points
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole 7 points
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope7 points
The Color Purple by Alice Walker 7 points
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White7 points
The Dreamer Wakes by Cao Xuequin7 points
Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates7 points
The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker6 points
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett6 points
Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard6 points
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles6 points
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown6 points
Collected Stories by Raymond Carver6 points
The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary6 points
Troilus and Cressida by Geoffrey Chaucer6 points
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge6 points
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 6 points
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley6 points
Underworld by Don DeLillo 3 points