But Charles is a dull country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns.” Synopsis: “When Emma Rouault marries Charles Bovary she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women’s magazines. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society.” Synopsis: “Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. (Note: At the end, you’ll find the 10 greatest authors of all time. And btw Number one isn’t William Shakespeare). Whether you’re looking for great books to add to your reading list or share with others, you’ll enjoy this list of top ten books of all time, as voted by famous authors. The illustrious group of famous authors who cast their votes included Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, Peter Carey, Kate Atkinson, Tom Wolfe, Carl Hiaasen, Norman Mailer, Annie Proulx, and moreĪfterwards, each book was assigned points based on their ranking, and an overall ranked list was created and published in Zane’s book, Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. Over a period of several years, Zane asked 125 famous authors to provide “a list, ranked, in order, of what you consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time-novels, story collections, plays, or poems.” A few also picked some non-fiction works. In the early 2000s, John Peder Zane-an American journalist-set out to answer this question. This Present Darkness, by Frank E.Sir Francis Bacon once said “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”īut with so little time to read so many books, how do we avoid reading bad books and find the great few books to read that “should be chewed and digested thoroughly?”.Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston.The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway.The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett.The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez.The Lord of the Rings (series), by J.R.R.The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B.The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood.Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas.The Coldest Winter Ever, by Sister Souljah.The Chronicles of Narnia (series), by C.S.The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz.Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery.And then There Were None, by Agatha Christie.Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.Alex Cross Mysteries (series), by James Patterson.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith.A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.
#World famous books full
Here’s the full list of 100, in alphabetical order going by book title: Around 15 are sci-fi or fantasy, and two titles could be considered romances. Five titles are Christian fiction, and five could be considered dystopian novels.
#World famous books movie
Around 60 of the authors are American.Ībout a quarter are books written for kids or teens, and three-quarters have been made into a movie or TV show. More than 80 authors on the list are white, and just under 70 are men. To make the top 100 list, polling company YouGov asked a representative sample of 7,366 Americans to answer the question, “What is your most-loved novel?” The surveys returned a list of 700 individual titles, which editors culled, limiting it to novels, one title per author, and books published in the US in English.īased on our count, about half of the books in the top 100 list are considered classics or are books you might see on an American high school curriculum.