The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books

284 Works 3,146,840 Books 47,738 Reviews 4.0
125 writers submitted top-ten lists of their favorite works. Editor J. Peder Zane then utilized a point system and compiled a best-of list based on all the lists.
Categories:
All, 10 points (30), 100 points (1), 105 points (1), 107 points (1), 11 points (7), 110 points (1), 111 points (1), 12 points (6), 126 points (1), 13 points (10), 131 points (1), 14 points (3), 15 points (8), 150 points (1), 16 points (9), 160 points (1), 17 points (6), 171 points (1), 18 points (5), 19 points (2), 20 points (4), 21 points (6), 22 points (3), 23 points (2), 24 points (3), 26 points (2), 27 points (3), 28 points (2), 3 points (1), 30 points (2), 31 points (2), 32 points (2), 35 points (1), 36 points (1), 38 points (1), 39 points (1), 40 points (3), 41 points (1), 42 points (2), 43 points (1), 44 points (1), 45 points (1), 47 points (1), 49 points (1), 50 points (1), 52 points (2), 54 points (1), 55 points (1), 56 points (1), 6 points (11), 61 points (1), 62 points (1), 63 points (1), 66 points (1), 67 points (1), 7 points (43), 72 points (2), 79 points (1), 8 points (36), 81 points (1), 85 points (1), 87 points (1), 88 points (1), 9 points (33)
WorkCategory
The Woman in the Dunes (1964) by Kōbō Abe
10 points
Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe
10 points
The Untouchable (1997) by John Banville
10 points
Ill Seen Ill Said (1981) by Samuel Beckett
10 points
The Book of Leviathan (2001) by Peter Blegvad
10 points
The Outward Room (1937) by Millen Brand
10 points
Casa Guidi Windows (1851) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
10 points
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel (1986) by Truman Capote
10 points
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
10 points
The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
10 points
Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee
10 points
Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) by J. M. Coetzee
10 points
Geek Love (1989) by Katherine Dunn
10 points
Love Medicine (1984) by Louise Erdrich
10 points
J R (1975) by William Gaddis
10 points
I, Claudius (1934) by Robert Graves
10 points
The Golden Argosy: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language (1947) by Charles Grayson
10 points
The Golden Bowl (1904) by Henry James
10 points
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) by T. E. Lawrence
10 points
The Screwtape Letters (1941) by C. S. Lewis
10 points
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) by Herman Melville
10 points
The Bhagavad Gita (400 BCE) by Barbara Stoler Miller
10 points
Embers (1942) by Sándor Márai
10 points
The Birthday Party (1957) by Harold Pinter
10 points
The Homecoming (1965) by Harold Pinter
10 points
In Diamond Square (1962) by Mercè Rodoreda
10 points
Antony and Cleopatra (1623) by William Shakespeare
10 points
The Makioka Sisters (1943) by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
10 points
L'Assommoir (1876) by Émile Zola
10 points
Nana (1880) by Émile Zola
10 points
Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot
100 points
Stories (1889) by Anton Chekhov
105 points
In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust
107 points
Ask the Dust (1939) by John Fante
11 points
Parade's End (1925) by Ford Madox Ford
11 points
The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro
11 points
The Ambassadors (1903) by Henry James
11 points
Nine Stories (1953) by J. D. Salinger
11 points
Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray
11 points
Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
11 points
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
110 points
Hamlet (1603) by William Shakespeare
111 points
Daniel Deronda (1876) by George Eliot
12 points
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
12 points
The Transit of Venus (1980) by Shirley Hazzard
12 points
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1979) by William Maxwell
12 points
Song of Solomon (1977) by Toni Morrison
12 points
Germinal (1885) by Émile Zola
12 points
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
126 points
David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens
13 points
Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser
13 points
The Bear (1942) by William Faulkner
13 points
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway
13 points
Jesus' Son: Stories (1992) by Denis Johnson
13 points
Ship of Fools (1962) by Katherine Anne Porter
13 points
Antigone / Oedipus Rex / Oedipus at Colonus (442 BCE) by Sophocles
13 points
East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck
13 points
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
13 points
The Leopard (1958) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
13 points
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
131 points
Stones for Ibarra (1984) by Harriet Doerr
14 points
The Tin Drum (1959) by Günter Grass
14 points
Romeo and Juliet (1599) by William Shakespeare
14 points
A Death in the Family (1957) by James Agee
15 points
Invisible Cities (1972) by Italo Calvino
15 points
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) by Emily Dickinson
15 points
Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster
15 points
The Power and the Glory (1940) by Graham Greene
15 points
Selected Stories (1985) by Alice Munro
15 points
A Dance to the Music of Time (1955) by Anthony Powell
15 points
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
15 points
War and Peace (1868) by Leo Tolstoy
150 points
Labyrinths (1962) by Jorge Luis Borges
16 points
The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
16 points
Mr. Bridge (1969) by Evan S. Connell
16 points
Mrs. Bridge (1959) by Evan S. Connell
16 points
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy
16 points
The Complete Stories (1971) by Franz Kafka
16 points
1984 (1949) by George Orwell
16 points
Gulliver's Travels (1727) by Jonathan Swift
16 points
The Fountain Overflows (1956) by Rebecca West
16 points
Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert
160 points
Winesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sherwood Anderson
17 points
Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding
17 points
A Passage to India (1924) by E. M. Forster
17 points
Don Juan (1826) by Lord Byron
17 points
Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady (1747) by Samuel Richardson
17 points
Candide (1759) by Voltaire
17 points
Anna Karenina (1875) by Leo Tolstoy
171 points
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (2001) by Richard Burton
18 points
Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
18 points
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
18 points
The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition (1990) by Stephen King
18 points
The Tempest (1610) by William Shakespeare
18 points
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1938) by Ernest Hemingway
19 points
Independent People (1946) by Halldór Laxness
19 points
The Decameron (1469) by Giovanni Boccaccio
20 points
Demons (1871) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20 points
The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
20 points
The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) by Stendhal
20 points
The Master and Margarita (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov
21 points
Our Mutual Friend (1865) by Charles Dickens
21 points
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner
21 points
The Hamlet (1940) by William Faulkner
21 points
The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
21 points
The Iliad (750 BCE) by Homer
21 points
Dead Souls (1884) by Nikolai Gogol
22 points
The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann
22 points
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980) by Eudora Welty
22 points
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
23 points
Leaves of Grass (1855) by Walt Whitman
23 points
The Stories of John Cheever (1978) by John Cheever
24 points
Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
24 points
The Aeneid (29 BCE) by Virgil
24 points
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
26 points
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
26 points
Collected Stories (1929) by Isaac Babel
27 points
Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
27 points
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce
27 points
The Red and the Black (1830) by Stendhal
28 points
Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy (1995) by John Updike
28 points
Underworld (1997) by Don DeLillo
3 points
The Oresteia: Agamemnon / The Libation Bearers / The Eumenides (458 BCE) by Aeschylus
30 points
The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
30 points
Persuasion (1817) by Jane Austen
31 points
Macbeth (1606) by William Shakespeare
31 points
The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford
32 points
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger
32 points
All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
35 points
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
36 points
The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus
38 points
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë
39 points
Bleak House (1852) by Charles Dickens
40 points
The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
40 points
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
40 points
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
41 points
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
42 points
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
42 points
The Canterbury Tales (14) by Geoffrey Chaucer
43 points
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
44 points
The Portrait of a Lady (1908) by Henry James
45 points
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
47 points
Pale Fire (2011) by Vladimir Nabokov
49 points
Holy Bible (1) by God
50 points
Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen
52 points
Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë
52 points
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) (1759) by Laurence Sterne
54 points
Complete Stories (1971) by Flannery O'Connor
55 points
The Divine Comedy (1308) by Dante Alighieri
56 points
The Regeneration Trilogy (1991) by Pat Barker
6 points
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (1953) by Samuel Beckett
6 points
Woodcutters (1984) by Thomas Bernhard
6 points
The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
6 points
Manchild in the Promised Land (1965) by Claude Brown
6 points
Collected Stories (2009) by Raymond Carver
6 points
The Horse's Mouth (1957) by Joyce Cary
6 points
Troilus and Cressida (1374) by Geoffrey Chaucer
6 points
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
6 points
The Idiot (1867) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6 points
A Fan's Notes (1968) by Frederick Exley
6 points
The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61 points
To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
62 points
The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
63 points
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
66 points
Emma (1815) by Jane Austen
67 points
Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott
7 points
Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen
7 points
Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes
7 points
Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
7 points
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
7 points
The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
7 points
The Three Sisters (1901) by Anton Chekhov
7 points
The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985) by Carolyn Chute
7 points
Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (1988) by Carolyn Chute
7 points
Merry Men (1994) by Carolyn Chute
7 points
The Hours (1998) by Michael Cunningham
7 points
U.S.A. (1938) by John Dos Passos
7 points
The Radiant Way (1987) by Margaret Drabble
7 points
The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant (1996) by Mavis Gallant
7 points
The Comedians (1966) by Graham Greene
7 points
The Evening of the Holiday (1966) by Shirley Hazzard
7 points
Hedda Gabler (1890) by Henrik Ibsen
7 points
The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones
7 points
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
7 points
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) by John le Carré
7 points
Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
7 points
Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) by Thomas Malory
7 points
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
7 points
Death of a Salesman (1948) by Arthur Miller
7 points
The Tale of Genji (2015) by Shikibu Murasaki
7 points
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1947) by Vladimir Nabokov
7 points
McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) by Frank Norris
7 points
The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O'Brien
7 points
Metamorphoses [in translation] (8) by Ovid
7 points
The Messiah of Stockholm (1987) by Cynthia Ozick
7 points
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532) by François Rabelais
7 points
The Burning Plain, and Other Stories (1953) by Juan Rulfo
7 points
The Rings of Saturn (1995) by W. G. Sebald
7 points
The Lorax (1971) by Dr. Seuss
7 points
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) by Betty Smith
7 points
Kidnapped (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
7 points
The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J. R. R. Tolkien
7 points
A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole
7 points
Phineas Finn (1869) by Anthony Trollope
7 points
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
7 points
Charlotte's Web (1952) by E. B. White
7 points
The Dreamer Wakes (1986) by Cao Xuequin
7 points
Disturbing the Peace (1975) by Richard Yates
7 points
Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
72 points
King Lear (1608) by William Shakespeare
72 points
Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce
79 points
Old Goriot (1835) by Honoré de Balzac
8 points
Fictions (1944) by Jorge Luis Borges
8 points
Bullet Park (1969) by John Cheever
8 points
Uncle Vanya (1897) by Anton Chekhov
8 points
Life & Times of Michael K (1983) by J. M. Coetzee
8 points
Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad
8 points
The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad
8 points
The Deptford Trilogy (1970) by Robertson Davies
8 points
Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens
8 points
The Ice Age (1977) by Margaret Drabble
8 points
Bacchae [Greek text] (405 BCE) by Euripides
8 points
Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
8 points
Joseph Andrews (1742) by Henry Fielding
8 points
The Gate of Angels (1990) by Penelope Fitzgerald
8 points
The Sheltered Life (1932) by Ellen Glasgow
8 points
Red Dragon (1981) by Thomas Harris
8 points
The Old Man and the Sea (1950) by Ernest Hemingway
8 points
Almost Paradise (1984) by Susan Isaacs
8 points
Shining Through (1988) by Susan Isaacs
8 points
Fiskadoro (1985) by Denis Johnson
8 points
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) by Milan Kundera
8 points
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) by C. S. Lewis
8 points
Man's Fate (1933) by André Malraux
8 points
Bel-Ami (1885) by Guy de Maupassant
8 points
The Third Policeman (1967) by Flann O'Brien
8 points
Norwood (1966) by Charles Portis
8 points
The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie
8 points
Scaramouche (1921) by Rafael Sabatini
8 points
The Raj Quartet (1976) by Paul Scott
8 points
Austerlitz (2001) by W. G. Sebald
8 points
The Giving Tree (1964) by Shel Silverstein
8 points
Sophie's Choice (1979) by William Styron
8 points
Golpo Guchho by Rabindranath Tagore
8 points
Sketches from a Hunter's Album (1852) by Ivan Turgenev
8 points
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain
8 points
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde
8 points
The Odyssey (750 BCE) by Homer
81 points
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
85 points
Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens
87 points
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
88 points
The Complete Fables (600 BCE) by Aesop
9 points
The American Dream (1960) by Edward Albee
9 points
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) by Edward Albee
9 points
The Zoo Story (1959) by Edward Albee
9 points
Cousin Bette (1846) by Honoré de Balzac
9 points
The Diary of a Country Priest (1936) by Georges Bernanos
9 points
The Way of All Flesh (1903) by Samuel Butler
9 points
The Fall (1956) by Albert Camus
9 points
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
9 points
The Ten Thousand Things (1958) by Maria Dermoût
9 points
Selected Stories (1988) by Andre Dubus
9 points
The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot
9 points
Medea [in Translation] (431 BCE) by Euripides
9 points
Sunset Song (1932) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
9 points
1982, Janine (1984) by Alasdair Gray
9 points
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas Hardy
9 points
The Line of Beauty (2004) by Alan Hollinghurst
9 points
A Doll's House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen
9 points
Buddenbrooks (1924) by Thomas Mann
9 points
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend (1949) by Thomas Mann
9 points
The Misanthrope and Other Plays: A New Selection (Penguin Classics) (1666) by Molière
9 points
Life: A User's Manual (1978) by Georges Perec
9 points
Wheat that Springeth Green (New York Review Books Classics) (1988) by J. F. Powers
9 points
Quartet in Autumn (1977) by Barbara Pym
9 points
Henry V (1600) by William Shakespeare
9 points
Othello (1604) by William Shakespeare
9 points
Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
9 points
The Killer Inside Me (1952) by Jim Thompson
9 points
The Master (2004) by Colm Tóibín
9 points
Kristin Lavransdatter (1920) by Sigrid Undset
9 points
Mahābhārata (John D. Smith ed.) (2009) by Vyasa
9 points
The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West
9 points
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams
9 points

Tags

1001(8,096) 1001 books(8,672) 19th century(22,883) 20th century(19,386) adventure(6,301) American(12,984) American literature(22,237) British(11,573) British literature(12,593) classic(72,987) classic fiction(6,194) classic literature(10,187) classics(82,751) drama(18,717) ebook(9,023) England(10,525) English(8,906) English literature(15,229) fantasy(14,632) favorites(6,925) fiction(285,795) Folio Society(5,930) French literature(6,272) goodreads(5,936) historical fiction(14,081) Kindle(8,465) literature(66,834) novel(52,797) own(12,892) owned(6,645) paperback(6,195) play(7,956) plays(9,379) poetry(22,451) read(31,410) Roman(8,548) romance(13,340) Russia(7,201) Russian(7,092) Russian literature(9,948) satire(5,987) science fiction(7,189) short stories(9,217) theatre(6,192) to-read(111,303) translation(5,575) unread(13,704) usa(5,467) William Shakespeare(10,208)

Top Members

harrietlouise (261 works), eatsnacksreadbooks (252), sandrikoti (236), ericandsue (226), erohwedd (221), Themis-Athena (217), GrettelTBR (212), SCPeterson (212), thatguyzero (212), phoebekw (208), PaulCranswick (204), michaelg16 (203), aimg (202), ELiz_M (200), inunonaizo (199), FurfuralAndVanillin (197), SleepySheep (195), dharmalita (194), Estragon1958 (193), mffowler (192), emaestra (190), piano3646 (190), tootstorm (190), absurdeist (189), e-zReader (188), Mz.Balma (186), boookywooky (185), Floyd3345 (185), homeless (184), KrisR (184), angelrose (183), HadriantheBlind (182), hazzabamboo (182), tyrosine (182), cctesttc1 (180), Clio12 (180), Keelz09 (179), alo1224 (178), mick745 (178), tstan (178), proustitute (177), vernaye (177), davidabrams (176), Smiler69 (176), SpareOom (174), ndrose (172), rdurie (172), Dorritt (171), steevohenderson (171), emleemay (170), erinalbion (170), eromsted (170), mediterraneobcn (170), pdubya62 (170), biblio99 (169), bookmountain (168), dartmouthcrew (168), marisina_soy (168), aquaticus (167), tmccormick (167), VenRandle (167), weird_O (167), pseudoeden (166), SilentInAWay (166), jasbro (165), jwhenderson (165), kamintra (165), llibresantjoan (164), Valdon (164), beckyrenner (163), Caroline_McElwee (163), Chandna_Agarwal (163), efeltonf (163), mr._sammy (163), smithtm (163), cns1000 (162), mattorsara (162), Randy_Hierodule (162), caitief (161), Jwagensveld98 (161), giogabbiano (160), KriRand70 (160), agenbiteofinwit (159), AlainCipit (159), ednasilrak (159), JMCH (159), RoseCityReader (159), Tom.Shubrook (159), bobcar31 (158), Himalmitra (158), JuliaBoechat (158), rmckeown (158), GSLulos (157), JBarringer (157), jmdunc54 (157), MichaelCO (157), obsessedbybooks (157), sprainedbrain (157), uscer (157), AmanteLibros (156), EmilyD1037 (156), goldenbowl (156), Jwagen (156), kcnjamie (156), laprop1990 (156), puckers (156), Yardape (156), dehaansg (155), Hillside_Library (155), js31550 (155), soffitta1 (155), ThufirHawat (155), almigwin (154), Gmmmm (154), leslie.98 (154), ljhliesl (154), opuscule (154), shearrob (154), thalassa_thalassa (154), AmieB7 (153), Anietzerck (153), ifjuly (153), Sandydog1 (153), the_red_shoes (153), wendyrey (153), AntT (152), D.Prisson (152), dariazeoli (152), Jazz1987 (152), kdweber (152), alaskabookworm (151), antimuzak (151), Cathyvil (151), chuck_ralston (151), DanielSTJ (151), debweiss (151), EmScape (151), Kimberlyhi (151), maryhollis (151), rehpii (151), Schmerguls (151), hatingongodot (150), popa (150), Robert_Musil (150), thewordygecko (150), agmlll (149), Ashley_Hoss_820 (149), beardo (149), DonaldPowell (149), featherbear (149), iamamro (149), Kristelh (149), lattermild (149), LSPopovich (149), arubabookwoman (148), charliemarlowe (148), mysticjoe (148), abbot (147), darwin.8u (147), Dureo (146), Jimbookbuff1963 (146), KelMunger (146), Marjan.Max.Maric (146), nicoelston (146), SigmundFraud (146), stortemelk (146), BolstenDorder (145), hemlokgang (145), marxones (145), MLA (145), night_owl13 (145), sibylline (145)