Top 10 novels of all time

Goodness! I'm no academic! But being an avid fan of psychological crime fiction and crime fiction, I've read all the books of Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Tim Weaver, Peter James etc. But about five years ago, I decided I should broaden my reading experiences, so downloaded 'The 100 Books Everyone Should Read'! Some on the list were as expected (Catcher in the Rye, P&P, etc) but many I'd never heard of.
Since then, I've got many of them from the library and charity shops - I don't want to buy new when I may never get past the first page!!

I have read and, sometimes surprisingly, really enjoyed
1) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
2) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
3) Water For Elephants - Sarah Gruen
4) Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan
5) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
6) The Help - Kathryn Stockett
7) Around The World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
8) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
9) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
10) Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

I would never have touched 4, 8 or 10 with a barge pole, really not my thing, I didn't think. However, I have read the entire series of Outlander, and thoroughly enjoyed them! In fact, I even bought a factual book on the Battle of Culloden, and visited the site too, and learnt a lot!

The ones I really loathed, and couldn't finish, sometimes not even getting beyond the first chapter were Catch 22, On The Road, The Grapes of Wrath, Call of the Wild, Cloud Atlas, The God of Small Things etc.

And I'm afraid, in my, admittedly narrow experience, I've found that if it's a book that's won a prize, I generally really dislike and don't finish them!

Tenko I think I'm a Luddite, like you! I too, was put off classics because of English Lit 'O' Level - I never want to read Shakespeare ever again! Though actually, I did enjoy Wildred Owen's War Poems, and I generally really dislike poetry!!

Books, to me, are for enjoying! There are so many books out there, I will not continue with a book that's hard going, but I do like a book to challenge me... so long as it's not hard-going! Life is too short!

Oh, and Bill Bryson books are brilliant!!

BlueBelle, I'm with you :A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book that will stay with me forever.
If that isn't the hallmark of a great novel, I don't know what is.

Whitewavemark2

I haven’t read Beloved and it is one I may try.

One of the novels that I have read when young which changed my perception for ever was “Cry, the Beloved Country” Alan Paton.

I suspect this May by in a similar genre.

I haven’t read Beloved either but have read all the rest on the list.
Middlemarch is rather boring imo and Ullyses both boring and nonsensical but I agree with the others on the list.
I too was very impressed with Cry, the beloved country by Alan Paton, an incredibly good book.

Ww2 I absolutely adored A thousand splendid suns’ and *The Kite Runner, Bee keeper from Kabul, Angelas Ashes but classics no, only read one off that list which was Pride and Prejudice ( at school not by choice) , and hated every minute of it, although I did get my English lit o level I don’t enjoy Shakespeare at all, but I’m well read on life’s up and downs, literature around social geography and how the other half live.
A classic girl I m not, now kill me

I did not enjoy Anna Karenina. I disliked AK. I preferred her husband.
Loved War and Peace. Have read it three times. Once as a teenager and later as an adult.
Studied Middlemarch for part of a degree and wrote a 12,000 word essay on it which I still have. I find now that I have very little recollection of the book. Reading the essay is like reading an academic account by a person unknown☹️
Remember reading the first part of Beloved but had no desire to continue.
Loved Jane Eyre and appreciated the writing of Jane Austin.
No mention of Wuthering Heights which is surprising.

Moth62

I’ve tried several times to read War and Peace but failed dismally each time, so the two volumes sit in pristine condition on my bookshelves! My friend did Ulysses at college and neither of us could make head nor tail if it. I wonder if there’s maybe a bit of Emperor’s New Clothes about this list. But what do I know? Maybe it’s just me.

I agree and I think it’s quite an academic (maybe wrong word) list and I’ve read just 4 on that list and think novels, like music, poetry and art, is very personal.

My preferred reading matter and choices of music etc differ accordingly to my mood and are personal to me.

So long as we enjoy what we read I don’t think it really matters.

I had to look up the title - Istanbul by Orpan Pamuk is an outstanding memoir.
I agree - I Know Why Caged Birds Sing by Maya Angelou is brilliant.

I'd like to add two books ;

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Bad Blood by Lorna Sage - I mourn her tragic early death .

I've read 7 of the OP's list, I genuinely enjoy War & Peace - I did re-read it not long ago although skipped some of the battle scenes, not so keen on Karenina - beginning's good.

Elena Ferrantes 'My Best Friend' series (Graphite mentioned) I read in translation & adored. & my copy of Jane Eyre is threadbare from re-reading.

I must be a Luddite because I haven’t read any of the books on the list and I love reading . Reading for O levels put me off many classics

MartavTaurus

I totally agree with posters who say that reading translated works is not quite the same. Four on the list are not in the original version if they're being read in English, and thereby lose so much of what the author intended. I don't care how good a translation it is, it's the nuances in language that make a book.

But that applies to almost any book more than 20 years old, whether translated or not. The uestion must also be asked is the extent to which it matters.

If I am reading a detective novel, the euivlent of Agatha Christie written in French and translated into English, do the nuances matter that much?

For most people we are not reading a book as 'literature' something to be savoured and explored like a good red wine, we just want to know what happens.

I probably found 'War and Peace' easier to read than some other people because I am a student of the period and have a wide knowledge ofthat period in Russia and of the Napoleonic campaign to Russia and elsewhere. This would make it much easier read, but as to nuances of translation, I just wanted t read the story and find out what happened. I am not a student of Russian or British literature. I am a reader who enjoys a good yarn.

Like others I struggled with 'Middlemarch' until I attended a course where the cultural norms lying behind certain plot lines were explained to me. Cultural norms that did not need any reference of explanation to original mid-19th century readers.

I totally agree with posters who say that reading translated works is not quite the same. Four on the list are not in the original version if they're being read in English, and thereby lose so much of what the author intended. I don't care how good a translation it is, it's the nuances in language that make a book.

I'm not a major Dickens fan despite,( because of?) growing up in, and now living in, a town with associations with him.
I find his women characters often seem unsympathetically portrayed. I understand that he treated the women in his life badly.
However, I would vote for A Tale of Two Cities.

MaizieD

Dickens does come further down the list... he has three in, with Bleak House at No. 12.

I love Dickens, for the social history inherent in his works, for his indignation at the treatment of the poor. for his story telling ability and for his burst of wonderful prose. But few have time for such lengthy works these days.

Just seen this.
😃

I’ve read nine out of the Top Ten and value all of them save Ulysses.
I discovered Crime And Punishment in the library when I was fifteen and loved it, also The Brothers Karamazov.
Where’s the Dickens books?

I have always loved ‘Jane Eyre’. We did it for ‘O’ level and then I did it again for my degree. Middlemarch, and Madam Bovary were also studied at university. At art school one of our tutors recommended Ulysses, but I didn’t understand it. I have never heard of Beloved. I shall get that I think.

Maybe we should have a list of authors- as I have read most of George Elliot but not Middlemarch.
I have read Toni Morrison but not Beloved, same for Wolff.

I have read Joyce's short stories but not Ulysses.

I haven't read Proust or Flaubert because they are translations, same for Tolstoy. I can't read French or Russian!

I think it shows how arbitrary these lists can be. It also reminds me that I still have stuff to read after all!

I have read five and enjoyed them, and given up on two: Middlemarch and Ulysses.

Dickens does come further down the list... he has three in, with Bleak House at No. 12.

I love Dickens, for the social history inherent in his works, for his indignation at the treatment of the poor. for his story telling ability and for his burst of wonderful prose. But few have time for such lengthy works these days.

No Dickens is odd I agree but we don't know what the criteria for 'top novels' were.

I can't stand Jane Eyre and don't really think that Jane Austen belongs in this company.

I'd have liked to see Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks, along with Tolstoy and Flaubert

The Old Wives' Tale is one of my regular re-reads WW

I've read 6 of the list and probably about a third of the 100 listed. But most of them in my teens and I don't recall much about them.

I do like Middlemarch (which I read at a later age) and I like many 19thC novelists because they appeal to my interest in history. But I suffered from having to 'do' two Hardy novels, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The Mill on the Floss at school without much understanding of their historical context and the 19thC love of prolixity. Coming back to them later was a revalation.

I agree about Persuasion, but wouldn't condemn P & P as the 'Mills and Boon of Austen's novels'. It's still a great study of social interactions and Austen's very effective economy of language was revolutionary for her era. Has anyone tried reading Fanny Burney? Or the considered 'father' of the English novel, Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison

I haven't really read any serious novels for years now, preferring non fiction history and a bit of economics. So I'm not inspired to rush out to read some of those on the list.

A few years ago I decided that I couldn’t die without reading Ulysses, I’m Irish and feel it’s part of my heritage.

After 3 attempts, I gave up…..I have however read Angelas Ashes does that count?

Graphite, I have done the same -

I just looked it up and here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Gabriel García Márquez has said that he felt blocked as a novelist after writing his first four books and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that opened his way to the composition of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Moreover, García Márquez claimed that he "could recite the whole book, forwards and backwards."[4] Jorge Luis Borges considered Pedro Páramo to be one of the greatest texts written in any language.

Thank you WWM. It’s been achieved, if that’s the right word, over many years including school and university and, generally, a lifetime of voracious reading.

University included an in-depth study of the nineteen century novel as well as contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. We’ve also had some excellent local WEA courses on American writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald etc) and others including Jean Rhys and Patricia Highsmith - both in the top 100.

Other writers I have come upon through happenstance. In the early years of World Book Day, when participants could choose a title from a short list, collect a boxful from the library to give away, I chose Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I was hooked.

I like to read prizewinning fiction, e.g. all the Bookers and Pulitzers including all the short-listed nominations. It covers a lot of ground.

I do like a recommendation. I listen to BBC’s A Good Read and so on, which is why I like lists like this, especially the way it’s presented so that I can find out what else each writer who has contributed to the list has liked.

Middlemarch resonates with me as it reminds me of my schooldays and what seems like a very lengthy study of the 1832 Reform Act but which captured my imagination. It was a time of huge social change with the coming of the railways and the mobility that offered working class people. I suspect many people interested in family history can trace the movement of their ancestors from rural ag labs to lives in towns and cities in those decades of the early to mid 1800s.

The only book I recall struggling with from the top 100 was Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend which I think was to do with the translation. Wonderful TV series though.

I still love Madame Bovary but mostly not my choice of "the best"