The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors

[Geemont]

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books/url]

125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Pratchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.”

It's an interesting list.  A few surprises, but nothing I'd completely disagree with, though not all would be my choices.  I haven't read 8 or 10 and only parts of 3 and 9, but I've read the rest.

1.   Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2.   The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3.   In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
4.   Ulysses by James Joyce
5.   Dubliners by James Joyce
6.   One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7.   The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8.   To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
9.   The complete stories of Flannery O’Connor
10.   Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

I'm sure if "readers" were asked, the list would be more weighted towards popular selections like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Spooky Stackhouse.

There is Kindle version of the book.

[psychotick]

Still the true tragedy is that I've read only parts of a couple of those books and some I've never even heard of. d*mn - maybe it's time to do some reading.

Cheers, Greg.

[Rook]

Evidently, "famous authors" and I have different tastes (I hope that doesn't bode ill for my writing career!). I love Great Gatsby, but haven't read more than a few excerpts of the others.

[Sean Patrick Fox]

I'm a little surprised Great Gatsby is so high on the list. Not upset, mind you, as it was one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading in school.

[Geoffrey]

I was surprised that I read all the books from the 19th Century list but only most of the 20th Century list .... and I'm much more of a modern and contemporary reader than a Victorian era reader.  (But then Joyce bores me so that's 1/5 the 20 th Century list)

[Dara England]

So according to the brightest literary minds of our day, Lolita (a novel about a middle-aged professor who becomes sexually involved with his twelve year old stepdaughter) is the finest piece of writing ever produced by the human race? Better than anything by Shakespear, Austen, Dickens, Keats, Browning, etc (none of whom were even worthy of a spot on the list)? As the dowager countess from DA would say, "I, I, I...have no words to say how I feel".

[Lursa (aka 9MMare)]

Hmm.

So now maybe they should poll all the readers. Or a cross-section of 125 readers.

[QuantumIguana]

So according to the brightest literary minds of our day, Lolita (a novel about a middle-aged professor who becomes sexually involved with his twelve year old stepdaughter) is the finest piece of writing ever produced by the human race? Better than anything by Shakespear, Austen, Dickens, Keats, Browning, etc (none of whom were even worthy of a spot on the list)? As the dowager countess from DA would say, "I, I, I...have no words to say how I feel".

I rolled my eyes a bit at that too. I read it, I don't think that it rates being that high. But it is listed as the best book of the 20th Century, not the best book of all time. I keep hearing it called a love story, but I just can't see it. It's a story about someone who marries someone to get access to a woman's 12-year old daughter. I'm not saying it's not a good story, but the rating seems a little high.

I've never seen Shakespeare as something to read. I've read several of Shakespeare's plays, but reading them seems a distant second to seeing the plays. As I see it, reading them is like looking at the blueprint of a house.

[Tony Richards]

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse Good grief!! I had to do that one at school, and it was absolute murder. Certainly NOT one of the greatest novels of all time. Are these guys trying to impress us with their ivory tower aloofness?

[cheriereich]

  What a list. I did really enjoy The Great Gatsby, but I haven't read the others. It sounds like they should poll the average reader and see. I bet it would be VERY different. (And yes, I would vote for the Harry Potter series).

[Todd Trumpet]

Wow, I hope it doesn't rain much around the 125...

...from their Top 10 list, it looks like more than a few might risk drowning.

Todd

[Ann Herrick]

...
I've never seen Shakespeare as something to read. I've read several of Shakespeare's plays, but reading them seems a distant second to seeing the plays. As I see it, reading them is like looking at the blueprint of a house.

I SO agree!


Greatest/best lists in any category can be fun to see, but they are so arbitrary.

[Geemont]

So according to the brightest literary minds of our day, Lolita (a novel about a middle-aged professor who becomes sexually involved with his twelve year old stepdaughter) is the finest piece of writing ever produced by the human race?

Depending on list Lolita and The Great Gatsby tend to bounce around for first among professionals for best modern novel in English.

The enigma of Lolita is  it's excellence is not judged solely on the contents of the story, but  heavily by Nabokov's exquisite and ecstatic English prose.  No author of the modern era has a finer prose style, especially rated by professional authors who consider English the tool of their trade.  

Any one who wants to be a novelist writing in English would do themselves justice by reading Nabokov, then remembering his native languages were Russian and French.

Readers who read just for story are likely to be disappointed by Lolita, especially since there is no real explicit or erotic sex.  And it's not a love story between a dirty old man and a little girl, rather between the Old World (Europe) and the New World (America).   

[John A. A. Logan]

I'm sorry to see Mikhail Bulgakov's, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, and Giuseppe di Lampedusa's, THE LEOPARD, omitted from the 20th century list.
I hope Dostoyevsky had at least one novel on the 19th century list? Not to mention Knut Hamsun...

[Jon Olson]

I rolled my eyes a bit at that too. I read it, I don't think that it rates being that high. But it is listed as the best book of the 20th Century, not the best book of all time. I keep hearing it called a love story, but I just can't see it. It's a story about someone who marries someone to get access to a woman's 12-year old daughter. I'm not saying it's not a good story, but the rating seems a little high.

I've never seen Shakespeare as something to read. I've read several of Shakespeare's plays, but reading them seems a distant second to seeing the plays. As I see it, reading them is like looking at the blueprint of a house.

It was shocking in its day. Now we're all so pedophilia aware, it just turns us off. But think of Oedipus, or Shakespeare's lovers who are cousins, or his girls dressed as boys whose sister falls in love with. Or Macbeth, whose wife marries his brother, who killed her husband. It's LITERATURE, where everything is possible; it's not life, where we reasonably respect certain restraints. Anyway, the writing in Lolita is hard to beat.