Graphic detail | The GBOATs

How long would it take to read the greatest books of all time?

The Economist consulted bibliophile data scientists to bring you the answer

“A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher of the 19th century. People are living longer than they did in Schopenhauer’s day, but the number of books has increased by a much bigger factor. So his dictum ought to carry even more weight now than it did then.
In issuing it, the famously pessimistic philosopher was uncharacteristically optimistic. He thought that readers could reliably discern which books deserved their time and which did not. That faith has waned. The idea of a literary canon has come under attack. Some readers would pry it open to admit more works by women and non-white authors; others would just sink it. Critics have lost cultural clout. The number of newspapers with book-review sections has dwindled. These days, it seems, everyone has their own personal canon.
And yet the need for winnowing persists, so much so that book recommendations seem to be almost as popular as the books they suggest. Influencers on BookTok, a bookish corner of TikTok, a video app, have replaced the credentialled judges of yore. Thousands of readers rate and review books on Goodreads, a website with tens of millions of members. Rebind, an app that is now in a test version, will let readers of classic books use artificial intelligence to question experts about the texts. The Economist periodically publishes best-book lists, plus reviews and recommendations on specific subjects.
Still, the number of texts that people are told they should read seems overwhelming. One way to prune is to see where best-book lists overlap, on the theory that books that appear most often must be really worth your while. That is what a website called thegreatestbooks.org has done. Its creator, Shane Sherman, a computer programmer in Texas, has used more than 300 lists to come up with a list of lists, which he calls, not entirely seriously, the “greatest books of all time” (GBOATs). It has more than 10,000 books, ranked by how often they appear on the constituent lists. You can search the top 500 below and sort them by decade or century of publication, year of publication, language and length.

Explore the 500 highest ranked books

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  • 1

    One Hundred Years of Solitude

    Gabriel García Márquez, 1967

    7 hours and 40 minutes to read
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  • 2

    The Great Gatsby

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

    2 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 3

    Ulysses

    James Joyce, 1922

    14 hours and 54 minutes to read
  • 4

    The Catcher in the Rye

    J.D. Salinger, 1951

    4 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 5

    Nineteen Eighty-Four

    George Orwell, 1949

    5 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 6

    In Search of Lost Time

    Marcel Proust, 1913

    3 days, 3 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 7

    Lolita

    Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

    6 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 8

    To Kill a Mockingbird

    Harper Lee, 1960

    5 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 9

    Moby Dick

    Herman Melville, 1851

    13 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 10

    Pride and Prejudice

    Jane Austen, 1813

    7 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 11

    Wuthering Heights

    Emily Brontë, 1847

    6 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 12

    Don Quixote

    Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

    23 hours and 54 minutes to read
  • 13

    Crime and Punishment

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

    11 hours and 28 minutes to read
  • 14

    Anna Karenina

    Leo Tolstoy, 1877

    19 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 15

    The Grapes of Wrath

    John Steinbeck, 1939

    10 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 16

    War and Peace

    Leo Tolstoy, 1869

    1 day, 7 hours and 28 minutes to read
  • 17

    The Lord of the Rings

    J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954

    1 day, 7 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 18

    Catch-22

    Joseph Heller, 1961

    10 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 19

    Madame Bovary

    Gustave Flaubert, 1857

    6 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 20

    Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Brontë, 1847

    10 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 21

    The Sound and the Fury

    William Faulkner, 1929

    5 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 22

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    Lewis Carroll, 1865

    1 hour and 39 minutes to read
  • 23

    Middlemarch

    George Eliot, 1871

    17 hours and 45 minutes to read
  • 24

    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    Mark Twain, 1884

    6 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 25

    Heart of Darkness

    Joseph Conrad, 1899

    2 hours and 17 minutes to read
  • 26

    Beloved

    Toni Morrison, 1987

    5 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 27

    The Divine Comedy

    Dante Alighieri, 1321

    6 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 28

    Invisible Man

    Ralph Ellison, 1952

    11 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 29

    The Odyssey

    Homer, 740BC

    7 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 30

    Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley, 1818

    4 hours and 16 minutes to read
  • 31

    The Stranger

    Albert Camus, 1942

    2 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 32

    The Brothers Karamazov

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880

    19 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 33

    Great Expectations

    Charles Dickens, 1860

    10 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 34

    The Bible

    1400BC

    20 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 35

    To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf, 1927

    3 hours and 53 minutes to read
  • 36

    Mrs Dalloway

    Virginia Woolf, 1925

    3 hours and 42 minutes to read
  • 37

    The Iliad

    Homer, 750BC

    10 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 38

    Midnight's Children

    Salman Rushdie, 1981

    13 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 39

    The Trial

    Franz Kafka, 1925

    4 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 40

    On the Road

    Jack Kerouac, 1957

    7 hours and 26 minutes to read
  • 41

    The Master and Margarita

    Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967

    8 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 42

    Brave New World

    Aldous Huxley, 1932

    3 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 43

    The Magic Mountain

    Thomas Mann, 1924

    18 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 44

    Gulliver's Travels

    Jonathan Swift, 1726

    5 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 45

    David Copperfield

    Charles Dickens, 1850

    19 hours and 53 minutes to read
  • 46

    Les Misérables

    Victor Hugo, 1862

    1 day, 7 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 47

    Gone with the Wind

    Margaret Mitchell, 1936

    23 hours and 17 minutes to read
  • 48

    The Sun Also Rises

    Ernest Hemingway, 1926

    3 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 49

    Their Eyes Were Watching God

    Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

    3 hours and 26 minutes to read
  • 50

    Things Fall Apart

    Chinua Achebe, 1958

    3 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 51

    The Color Purple

    Alice Walker, 1982

    4 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 52

    The Red and the Black

    Stendhal, 1830

    5 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 53

    A Passage to India

    E.M. Forster, 1924

    5 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 54

    Slaughterhouse-Five

    Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

    3 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 55

    Lord of the Flies

    William Golding, 1954

    3 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 56

    Absalom, Absalom!

    William Faulkner, 1936

    7 hours to read
  • 57

    Rebecca

    Daphne du Maurier, 1938

    8 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 58

    The Scarlet Letter

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

    4 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 59

    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

    Laurence Sterne, 1759

    9 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 60

    The Diary of a Young Girl

    Anne Frank, 1947

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 61

    Silent Spring

    Rachel Carson, 1962

    4 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 62

    The Little Prince

    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

    2 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 63

    The Portrait of a Lady

    Henry James, 1881

    6 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 64

    Candide

    Voltaire, 1759

    2 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 65

    Little Women

    Louisa May Alcott, 1868

    9 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 66

    One Thousand and One Nights

    800

    5 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 67

    As I Lay Dying

    William Faulkner, 1930

    3 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 68

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    James Joyce, 1916

    4 hours and 53 minutes to read
  • 69

    Native Son

    Richard Wright, 1940

    8 hours and 46 minutes to read
  • 70

    The Handmaid's Tale

    Margaret Atwood, 1985

    5 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 71

    Walden

    Henry David Thoreau, 1854

    4 hours and 17 minutes to read
  • 72

    Vanity Fair

    William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848

    16 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 73

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    Douglas Adams, 1979

    2 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 74

    Animal Farm

    George Orwell, 1945

    1 hour and 46 minutes to read
  • 75

    The Aeneid

    Virgil, 19BC

    6 hours and 9 minutes to read
  • 76

    In Cold Blood

    Truman Capote, 1966

    7 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 77

    Robinson Crusoe

    Daniel Defoe, 1719

    2 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 78

    The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath, 1963

    3 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 79

    For Whom the Bell Tolls

    Ernest Hemingway, 1940

    10 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 80

    Oedipus the King

    Sophocles, 429BC

    57 minutes to read
  • 81

    The Old Man and the Sea

    Ernest Hemingway, 1952

    1 hour and 29 minutes to read
  • 82

    Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Thomas Hardy, 1891

    8 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 83

    Hamlet

    William Shakespeare, 1600

    1 hour and 47 minutes to read
  • 84

    Faust

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1808

    5 hours and 29 minutes to read
  • 85

    Dracula

    Bram Stoker, 1897

    9 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 86

    The Prince

    Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532

    2 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 87

    A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess, 1962

    3 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 88

    The Age of Innocence

    Edith Wharton, 1920

    5 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 89

    Leaves of Grass

    Walt Whitman, 1855

    6 hours and 56 minutes to read
  • 90

    Pale Fire

    Vladimir Nabokov, 1962

    4 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 91

    Tom Jones

    Henry Fielding, 1749

    16 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 92

    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Oscar Wilde, 1891

    4 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 93

    The Tin Drum

    Günter Grass, 1959

    13 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 94

    The Golden Notebook

    Doris Lessing, 1962

    11 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 95

    Emma

    Jane Austen, 1815

    9 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 96

    Waiting for Godot

    Samuel Beckett, 1952

    52 minutes to read
  • 97

    The Leopard

    Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958

    10 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 98

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    Ken Kesey, 1962

    6 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 99

    Charlotte's Web

    E.B. White, 1952

    2 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 100

    All Quiet on the Western Front

    Erich Maria Remarque, 1928

    4 hours and 26 minutes to read
  • 101

    Fictions

    Jorge Luis Borges, 1944

    4 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 102

    The Big Sleep

    Raymond Chandler, 1939

    3 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 103

    The Canterbury Tales

    Geoffrey Chaucer, 1476

    9 hours and 53 minutes to read
  • 104

    Treasure Island

    Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883

    3 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 105

    The Count of Monte Cristo

    Alexandre Dumas, 1844

    1 day, 1 hour and 47 minutes to read
  • 106

    Fahrenheit 451

    Ray Bradbury, 1953

    2 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 107

    Paradise Lost

    John Milton, 1667

    4 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 108

    The Name of the Rose

    Umberto Eco, 1980

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 109

    The Idiot

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1869

    13 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 110

    Dune

    Frank Herbert, 1965

    8 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 111

    Essays

    Michel de Montaigne, 1580

    22 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 112

    Love in the Time of Cholera

    Gabriel García Márquez, 1985

    8 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 113

    Wide Sargasso Sea

    Jean Rhys, 1966

    2 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 114

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    Milan Kundera, 1984

    4 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 115

    The Stories of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov, 1900

    2 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 116

    A Farewell to Arms

    Ernest Hemingway, 1929

    5 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 117

    The Good Soldier

    Ford Madox Ford, 1915

    4 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 118

    My Ántonia

    Willa Cather, 1918

    4 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 119

    Under the Volcano

    Malcolm Lowry, 1947

    7 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 120

    On the Origin of Species

    Charles Darwin, 1859

    8 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 121

    The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

    Edgar Allan Poe, 1902

    15 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 122

    The Hound of the Baskervilles

    Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902

    3 hours and 28 minutes to read
  • 123

    The Metamorphosis

    Franz Kafka, 1915

    53 minutes to read
  • 124

    Journey to the End of The Night

    Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1932

    9 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 125

    Sons and Lovers

    D.H. Lawrence, 1913

    9 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 126

    First Folio

    William Shakespeare, 1623

    1 day, 21 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 127

    The Wind in the Willows

    Kenneth Grahame, 1908

    3 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 128

    The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

    Carson McCullers, 1940

    7 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 129

    Doctor Zhivago

    Boris Pasternak, 1957

    12 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 130

    The Second Sex

    Simone de Beauvoir, 1949

    4 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 131

    Rabbit, Run

    John Updike, 1960

    6 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 132

    Fathers and Sons

    Ivan Turgenev, 1862

    4 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 133

    The Castle

    Franz Kafka, 1926

    4 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 134

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    J.K. Rowling, 1997

    4 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 135

    The Plague

    Albert Camus, 1947

    10 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 136

    Dead Souls

    Nikolai Gogol, 1842

    8 hours and 3 minutes to read
  • 137

    Song of Solomon

    Toni Morrison, 1977

    5 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 138

    Antigone

    Sophocles, 441BC

    53 minutes to read
  • 139

    Lord Jim

    Joseph Conrad, 1900

    7 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 140

    The Autobiography of Malcolm X

    Alex Haley, 1965

    7 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 141

    The Maltese Falcon

    Dashiell Hammett, 1930

    4 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 142

    The Republic

    Plato, 379BC

    7 hours and 16 minutes to read
  • 143

    The Interpretation of Dreams

    Sigmund Freud, 1899

    11 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 144

    The Man Without Qualities

    Robert Musil, 1930

    1 day, 6 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 145

    Demons

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1872

    13 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 146

    Orlando: A Biography

    Virginia Woolf, 1928

    3 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 147

    Steppenwolf

    Hermann Hesse, 1927

    3 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 148

    Confessions

    St Augustine, 397

    10 hours to read
  • 149

    Buddenbrooks

    Thomas Mann, 1901

    13 hours and 24 minutes to read
  • 150

    The House of Mirth

    Edith Wharton, 1905

    7 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 151

    Portnoy's Complaint

    Philip Roth, 1969

    4 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 152

    The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

    John le Carré, 1963

    3 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 153

    Doctor Faustus

    Thomas Mann, 1947

    5 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 154

    The Talented Mr. Ripley

    Patricia Highsmith, 1955

    5 hours and 3 minutes to read
  • 155

    The Tale of Genji

    Murasaki Shikibu, 1010

    5 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 156

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

    Maya Angelou, 1969

    5 hours and 2 minutes to read
  • 157

    The Three Musketeers

    Alexandre Dumas, 1844

    12 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 158

    Howards End

    E.M. Forster, 1910

    6 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 159

    The Call of the Wild

    Jack London, 1903

    1 hour and 56 minutes to read
  • 160

    The Long Goodbye: A Novel

    Raymond Chandler, 1953

    5 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 161

    Bleak House

    Charles Dickens, 1852

    19 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 162

    An American Tragedy

    Theodore Dreiser, 1925

    18 hours and 29 minutes to read
  • 163

    Light in August

    William Faulkner, 1932

    8 hours and 3 minutes to read
  • 164

    The Woman in White

    Wilkie Collins, 1860

    13 hours and 46 minutes to read
  • 165

    Winnie the Pooh

    A.A Milne, 1926

    1 hour and 19 minutes to read
  • 166

    All the King's Men

    Robert Penn Warren, 1946

    12 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 167

    The House of the Spirits

    Isabel Allende, 1982

    7 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 168

    Tender Is the Night

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934

    6 hours and 18 minutes to read
  • 169

    The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

    James D. Watson, 1968

    2 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 170

    Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories

    Franz Kafka, 1971

    8 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 171

    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

    Hunter S. Thompson, 1971

    3 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 172

    Blood Meridian

    Cormac McCarthy, 1985

    6 hours and 16 minutes to read
  • 173

    Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

    10 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 174

    Brideshead Revisited

    Evelyn Waugh, 1945

    6 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 175

    A Confederacy of Dunces

    John Kennedy Toole, 1980

    6 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 176

    A Room of One's Own

    Virginia Woolf, 1929

    2 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 177

    The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

    Flannery O'Connor, 1971

    9 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 178

    The Shining

    Stephen King, 1977

    9 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 179

    Watership Down

    Richard Adams, 1972

    8 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 180

    The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    Thomas Kuhn, 1962

    4 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 181

    The Adventures of Augie March

    Saul Bellow, 1953

    4 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 182

    Gravity's Rainbow

    Thomas Pynchon, 1973

    17 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 183

    The Jungle

    Upton Sinclair, 1906

    3 hours to read
  • 184

    Lady Chatterley's Lover

    D.H. Lawrence, 1928

    6 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 185

    The Time Machine

    H.G. Wells, 1895

    1 hour and 58 minutes to read
  • 186

    The Remains of the Day

    Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989

    4 hours to read
  • 187

    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962

    2 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 188

    The Hobbit

    J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937

    5 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 189

    Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson, 1890

    2 hours to read
  • 190

    The Secret History

    Donna Tartt, 1992

    4 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 191

    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

    Muriel Spark, 1961

    2 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 192

    The Moviegoer

    Walker Percy, 1961

    11 hours to read
  • 193

    The Gulag Archipelago

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973

    1 day, 12 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 194

    Nostromo

    Joseph Conrad, 1904

    9 hours and 46 minutes to read
  • 195

    And Then There Were None

    Agatha Christie, 1939

    3 hours and 18 minutes to read
  • 196

    Communist Manifesto

    Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848

    48 minutes to read
  • 197

    Herzog

    Saul Bellow, 1964

    7 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 198

    The Waste Land

    T.S. Eliot, 1922

    26 minutes to read
  • 199

    A Wizard of Earthsea

    Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968

    3 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 200

    The Awakening

    Kate Chopin, 1899

    6 hours and 9 minutes to read
  • 201

    Gargantua and Pantagruel

    François Rabelais, 1532

    17 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 202

    U.S.A. Trilogy

    John Dos Passos, 1930

    17 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 203

    A Wrinkle In Time

    Madeleine L'Engle, 1962

    3 hours and 2 minutes to read
  • 204

    A House for Mr. Biswas

    V.S. Naipaul, 1961

    11 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 205

    Decameron

    Giovanni Boccaccio, 1349

    16 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 206

    A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

    Betty Smith, 1943

    8 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 207

    Father Goriot

    Honoré de Balzac, 1835

    5 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 208

    The Ambassadors

    Henry James, 1903

    9 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 209

    Atonement

    Ian McEwan, 2001

    6 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 210

    The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

    C.S. Lewis, 1950

    2 hours and 16 minutes to read
  • 211

    Dangerous Liaisons

    Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782

    8 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 212

    Fairy Tales and Stories

    Hans Christian Andersen, 1835

    19 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 213

    The Pickwick Papers

    Charles Dickens, 1836

    16 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 214

    Kim

    Rudyard Kipling, 1901

    5 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 215

    Housekeeping

    Marilynne Robinson, 1980

    3 hours and 29 minutes to read
  • 216

    White Teeth

    Zadie Smith, 2000

    10 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 217

    Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

    William Butler Yeats, 1933

    1 hour and 35 minutes to read
  • 218

    Medea

    Euripides, 431BC

    46 minutes to read
  • 219

    Of Mice and Men

    John Steinbeck, 1937

    1 hour and 41 minutes to read
  • 220

    War of the Worlds

    H.G. Wells, 1898

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 221

    The World According to Garp

    John Irving, 1978

    10 hours and 45 minutes to read
  • 222

    The Corrections

    Jonathan Franzen, 2001

    10 hours and 44 minutes to read
  • 223

    Atlas Shrugged

    Ayn Rand, 1957

    1 day, 2 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 224

    Macbeth

    William Shakespeare, 1606

    1 hour and 11 minutes to read
  • 225

    The God of Small Things

    Arundhati Roy, 1997

    5 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 226

    Tropic of Cancer

    Henry Miller, 1934

    5 hours and 1 minute to read
  • 227

    The Stand

    Stephen King, 1978

    23 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 228

    Women in Love

    D.H. Lawrence, 1920

    9 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 229

    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

    Mark Twain, 1876

    4 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 230

    Cold Comfort Farm

    Stella Gibbons, 1932

    4 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 231

    Jude the Obscure

    Thomas Hardy, 1895

    8 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 232

    The Once and Future King

    T.H. White, 1958

    17 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 233

    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

    Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886

    1 hour and 36 minutes to read
  • 234

    Babbitt

    Sinclair Lewis, 1922

    6 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 235

    The Complete Sherlock Holmes

    Arthur Conan Doyle, 1927

    1 day, 12 hours and 26 minutes to read
  • 236

    Siddhartha

    Hermann Hesse, 1922

    2 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 237

    A Tale of Two Cities

    Charles Dickens, 1859

    7 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 238

    Lucky Jim

    Kingsley Amis, 1954

    4 hours and 44 minutes to read
  • 239

    Democracy in America

    Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

    10 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 240

    The Charterhouse of Parma

    Stendhal, 1839

    6 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 241

    Molloy

    Samuel Beckett, 1951

    3 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 242

    The Good Soldier Svejk

    Jaroslav Hašek, 1921

    4 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 243

    Bonfire of the Vanities

    Tom Wolfe, 1987

    13 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 244

    The Life of Samuel Johnson

    James Boswell, 1791

    11 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 245

    Disgrace

    J.M. Coetzee, 1999

    3 hours and 45 minutes to read
  • 246

    American Pastoral

    Philip Roth, 1997

    8 hours and 46 minutes to read
  • 247

    Man's Fate

    André Malraux, 1933

    6 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 248

    Foundation

    Isaac Asimov, 1951

    4 hours and 18 minutes to read
  • 249

    Oedipus at Colonus

    Sophocles, 401BC

    1 hour and 41 minutes to read
  • 250

    Oresteia

    Aeschylus, 458BC

    1 hour and 48 minutes to read
  • 251

    If This Is a Man

    Primo Levi, 1947

    7 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 252

    Neuromancer

    William Gibson, 1984

    5 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 253

    The Mayor of Casterbridge

    Thomas Hardy, 1886

    6 hours and 34 minutes to read
  • 254

    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

    Michael Chabon, 2000

    13 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 255

    Nausea

    Jean Paul Sartre, 1938

    4 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 256

    Confessions of Zeno

    Italo Svevo, 1923

    9 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 257

    The Things They Carried

    Tim O'Brien, 1990

    3 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 258

    King Lear

    William Shakespeare, 1605

    1 hour and 22 minutes to read
  • 259

    Go Tell it on the Mountain

    James Baldwin, 1953

    4 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 260

    Giovanni's Room

    James Baldwin, 1956

    2 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 261

    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

    Agatha Christie, 1926

    4 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 262

    The Counterfeiters

    André Gide, 1925

    4 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 263

    A Sentimental Education

    Gustave Flaubert, 1869

    8 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 264

    Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

    Judy Blume, 1970

    1 hour and 45 minutes to read
  • 265

    Ivanhoe

    Sir Walter Scott, 1819

    10 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 266

    Possession

    A.S. Byatt, 1990

    10 hours to read
  • 267

    Of Human Bondage

    W. Somerset Maugham, 1915

    14 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 268

    The Chronicles of Narnia

    C.S. Lewis, 1950

    22 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 269

    Anne of Green Gables

    L.M. Montgomery, 1908

    5 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 270

    The Turn of the Screw

    Henry James, 1898

    2 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 271

    The Godfather

    Mario Puzo, 1969

    4 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 272

    If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

    Italo Calvino, 1979

    5 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 273

    The Adventures of Oliver Twist

    Charles Dickens, 1837

    8 hours and 54 minutes to read
  • 274

    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

    Jules Verne, 1870

    5 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 275

    Stranger in a Strange Land

    Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

    6 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 276

    The Left Hand Of Darkness

    Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969

    4 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 277

    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

    Haruki Murakami, 1994

    14 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 278

    Brighton Rock

    Graham Greene, 1938

    5 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 279

    Epic of Gilgamesh

    2000BC

    1 hour and 7 minutes to read
  • 280

    A Prayer for Owen Meany

    John Irving, 1989

    13 hours and 42 minutes to read
  • 281

    The Haunting of Hill House

    Shirley Jackson, 1959

    3 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 282

    Thus Spake Zarathustra

    Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883

    6 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 283

    Oblomov

    Ivan Goncharov, 1859

    3 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 284

    Winesburg, Ohio

    Sherwood Anderson, 1919

    5 hours and 3 minutes to read
  • 285

    The End of the Affair

    Graham Greene, 1951

    2 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 286

    Persuasion

    Jane Austen, 1817

    4 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 287

    The Sea, The Sea

    Iris Murdoch, 1978

    10 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 288

    The Flowers of Evil

    Charles Baudelaire, 1857

    36 minutes to read
  • 289

    The Sorrows of Young Werther

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

    2 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 290

    A Room With a View

    E.M. Forster, 1908

    3 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 291

    The Stories of John Cheever

    John Cheever, 1978

    3 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 292

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    Philip K. Dick, 1968

    3 hours and 44 minutes to read
  • 293

    Invisible Cities

    Italo Calvino, 1972

    1 hour and 33 minutes to read
  • 294

    The Good Earth

    Pearl S. Buck, 1931

    6 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 295

    A Season in Hell

    Arthur Rimbaud, 1873

    36 minutes to read
  • 296

    At Swim Two-Birds

    Flann O'Brien, 1939

    4 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 297

    The Moonstone

    Wilkie Collins, 1868

    11 hours to read
  • 298

    Pedro Páramo

    Juan Rulfo, 1955

    53 minutes to read
  • 299

    The Lover

    Marguerite Duras, 1984

    1 hour and 35 minutes to read
  • 300

    The Joy Luck Club

    Amy Tan, 1989

    4 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 301

    The Road

    Cormac McCarthy, 2006

    10 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 302

    Hunger

    Knut Hamsun, 1890

    3 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 303

    Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace, 1996

    1 day, 6 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 304

    Labyrinths

    Jorge Luis Borges, 1962

    4 hours and 45 minutes to read
  • 305

    White Noise

    Don DeLillo, 1985

    5 hours and 24 minutes to read
  • 306

    Look Homeward, Angel

    Thomas Wolfe, 1929

    12 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 307

    I, Claudius

    Robert Graves, 1934

    8 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 308

    The Alchemist

    Paulo Coelho, 1988

    2 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 309

    The Tempest

    William Shakespeare, 1623

    1 hour and 28 minutes to read
  • 310

    Memoirs of Hadrian

    Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951

    2 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 311

    The Poems of Robert Frost

    Robert Frost, 1913

    1 hour and 35 minutes to read
  • 312

    The Histories of Herodotus

    Herodotus, 450BC

    13 hours and 48 minutes to read
  • 313

    Darkness at Noon

    Arthur Koestler, 1940

    4 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 314

    The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1782

    15 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 315

    Mahabharata

    Vyasa, 400BC

    2 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 316

    Children's and Household Tales

    Brothers Grimm, 1812

    9 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 317

    A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792

    4 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 318

    The Red Badge of Courage

    Stephen Crane, 1895

    2 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 319

    Nightwood

    Djuna Barnes, 1936

    3 hours and 9 minutes to read
  • 320

    East of Eden

    John Steinbeck, 1952

    13 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 321

    Berlin Alexanderplatz

    Alfred Döblin, 1929

    5 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 322

    Naked Lunch

    William S. Burroughs, 1959

    5 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 323

    Money

    Martin Amis, 1984

    8 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 324

    A Doll's House

    Henrik Ibsen, 1879

    1 hour and 38 minutes to read
  • 325

    Finnegans Wake

    James Joyce, 1939

    12 hours and 9 minutes to read
  • 326

    Out of Africa

    Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), 1937

    1 hour and 33 minutes to read
  • 327

    The Tartar Steppe

    Dino Buzzati, 1940

    2 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 328

    The Old Wives' Tale

    Arnold Bennett, 1908

    12 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 329

    The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

    L. Frank Baum, 1900

    2 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 330

    Metamorphoses

    Ovid, 8

    7 hours and 24 minutes to read
  • 331

    The Elements of Style

    E.B. White, William Strunk Jr., 1918

    57 minutes to read
  • 332

    The Mill on the Floss

    George Eliot, 1860

    11 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 333

    Speak, Memory

    Vladimir Nabokov, 1951

    4 hours and 36 minutes to read
  • 334

    Zorba the Greek

    Nikos Kazantzakis, 1946

    5 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 335

    A Bend in the River

    V.S. Naipaul, 1979

    5 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 336

    A Good Man Is Hard to Find

    Flannery O'Connor, 1953

    4 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 337

    Pippi Longstocking

    Astrid Lindgren, 1945

    1 hour and 26 minutes to read
  • 338

    Cry, the Beloved Country

    Alan Paton, 1948

    4 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 339

    Leviathan

    Thomas Hobbes, 1651

    12 hours and 1 minute to read
  • 340

    Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

    James Agee, 1941

    6 hours and 1 minute to read
  • 341

    Ragtime

    E. L. Doctorow, 1975

    4 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 342

    His Dark Materials

    Philip Pullman, 1995

    5 hours and 56 minutes to read
  • 343

    Clarissa

    Samuel Richardson, 1748

    17 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 344

    Pensées

    Blaise Pascal, 1670

    6 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 345

    A Suitable Boy

    Vikram Seth, 1993

    1 day, 10 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 346

    Relativity

    Albert Einstein, 1916

    1 hour and 2 minutes to read
  • 347

    Sophie's Choice

    William Styron, 1979

    1 hour and 34 minutes to read
  • 348

    Death of Virgil

    Hermann Broch, 1945

    8 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 349

    Germinal

    Émile Zola, 1885

    10 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 350

    The Power and the Glory

    Graham Greene, 1940

    5 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 351

    The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

    John Maynard Keynes, 1936

    6 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 352

    The Last of the Mohicans

    James Fenimore Cooper, 1826

    8 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 353

    Pilgrim's Progress

    John Bunyan, 1678

    5 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 354

    The Day of the Locust

    Nathanael West, 1939

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 355

    Malone Dies

    Samuel Beckett, 1951

    2 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 356

    Homage to Catalonia

    George Orwell, 1938

    4 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 357

    The Complete Works of Plato

    Plato, 387BC

    1 hour and 35 minutes to read
  • 358

    A Dance to the Music of Time

    Anthony Powell, 1951

    1 day, 23 hours and 20 minutes to read
  • 359

    A Brief History of Time

    Stephen Hawking, 1988

    3 hours and 12 minutes to read
  • 360

    Le Morte d'Arthur

    Thomas Malory, 1485

    9 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 361

    The Secret Garden

    Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911

    4 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 362

    Stories of Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway, 1987

    3 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 363

    Rabbit Redux

    John Updike, 1971

    7 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 364

    The Daughter of Time

    Josephine Tey, 1951

    3 hours to read
  • 365

    The Princess of Cleves

    Madame de La Fayette, 1678

    3 hours and 35 minutes to read
  • 366

    Ethan Frome

    Edith Wharton, 1911

    2 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 367

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

    Robert M. Pirsig, 1974

    45 minutes to read
  • 368

    Our Mutual Friend

    Charles Dickens, 1864

    18 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 369

    The Shipping News

    Annie Proulx, 1993

    5 hours and 26 minutes to read
  • 370

    The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

    Edward Gibbon, 1776

    3 days, 16 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 371

    I Capture the Castle

    Dodie Smith, 1948

    7 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 372

    A Christmas Carol

    Charles Dickens, 1843

    1 hour and 31 minutes to read
  • 373

    The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

    Tom Wolfe, 1968

    6 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 374

    The Bacchae

    Euripides, 405BC

    1 hour and 7 minutes to read
  • 375

    2001: A Space Odyssey

    Arthur C. Clarke, 1968

    3 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 376

    Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

    Rebecca West, 1941

    19 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 377

    Rabbit Is Rich

    John Updike, 1981

    9 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 378

    The Crying of Lot 49

    Thomas Pynchon, 1966

    2 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 379

    The Waves

    Virginia Woolf, 1931

    26 minutes to read
  • 380

    Regeneration

    Pat Barker, 1991

    4 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 381

    The Feminine Mystique

    Betty Friedan, 1963

    8 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 382

    Wings of the Dove

    Henry James, 1902

    4 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 383

    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

    Victor Hugo, 1831

    10 hours and 53 minutes to read
  • 384

    A Fine Balance

    Rohinton Mistry, 1995

    12 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 385

    The Day of the Jackal

    Frederick Forsyth, 1971

    1 hour and 56 minutes to read
  • 386

    The Return of the Native

    Thomas Hardy, 1878

    2 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 387

    Never Let Me Go

    Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005

    5 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 388

    The Forsyte Saga

    John Galsworthy, 1906

    6 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 389

    Nights At The Circus

    Angela Carter, 1984

    6 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 390

    Meditations

    Marcus Aurelius, 161

    4 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 391

    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    Junot Diaz, 2007

    5 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 392

    The Poisonwood Bible

    Barbara Kingsolver, 1998

    9 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 393

    The Rainbow

    D.H. Lawrence, 1915

    10 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 394

    Kristin Lavransdatter

    Sigrid Undset, 1920

    1 day, 1 hour and 6 minutes to read
  • 395

    Critique of Pure Reason

    Immanuel Kant, 1781

    11 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 396

    Bonjour Tristesse

    Francoise Sagan, 1954

    28 minutes to read
  • 397

    So Long, See You Tomorrow

    William Maxwell, 1980

    3 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 398

    The Civil War

    Shelby Foote, 1958

    23 hours and 18 minutes to read
  • 399

    Murder on the Orient Express

    Agatha Christie, 1934

    3 hours and 28 minutes to read
  • 400

    The Death of Ivan Ilyich

    Leo Tolstoy, 1886

    1 hour and 23 minutes to read
  • 401

    American Psycho

    Bret Easton Ellis, 1991

    8 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 402

    Through the Looking Glass

    Lewis Carroll, 1871

    2 hours and 58 minutes to read
  • 403

    Ferdydurke

    Witold Gombrowicz, 1937

    5 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 404

    The Thirty-Nine Steps

    John Buchan, 1915

    2 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 405

    Das Kapital

    Karl Marx, 1867

    1 hour and 17 minutes to read
  • 406

    The Siege of Krishnapur

    J. G. Farrell, 1973

    7 hours and 4 minutes to read
  • 407

    Maus

    Art Spiegelman, 1980

    2 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 408

    Silas Marner

    George Eliot, 1861

    4 hours and 7 minutes to read
  • 409

    Main Street

    Sinclair Lewis, 1920

    9 hours and 25 minutes to read
  • 410

    The Varieties of Religious Experience

    William James, 1902

    10 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 411

    Independent People

    Halldor Laxness, 1934

    11 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 412

    Schindler's List

    Thomas Keneally, 1982

    7 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 413

    The French Lieutenant's Woman

    John Fowles, 1969

    8 hours and 21 minutes to read
  • 414

    The Phantom Tollbooth

    Norton Juster, 1961

    2 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 415

    The Vicar of Wakefield

    Oliver Goldsmith, 1766

    1 hour and 56 minutes to read
  • 416

    The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

    James Hogg, 1824

    4 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 417

    Sister Carrie

    Theodore Dreiser, 1900

    8 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 418

    Underworld

    Don DeLillo, 1997

    3 hours and 51 minutes to read
  • 419

    Play It As It Lays

    Joan Didion, 1970

    2 hours and 3 minutes to read
  • 420

    Perfume

    Patrick Süskind, 1985

    4 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 421

    Where the Wild Things Are

    Maurice Sendak, 1963

    1 minute to read
  • 422

    The Death of the Heart

    Elizabeth Bowen, 1938

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 423

    The Affluent Society

    John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

    4 hours and 31 minutes to read
  • 424

    Notes from the Underground

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864

    2 hours and 37 minutes to read
  • 425

    The Wealth of Nations

    Adam Smith, 1776

    18 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 426

    Collected Poems

    Wallace Stevens, 1954

    5 hours and 9 minutes to read
  • 427

    Eugene Onegin

    Alexander Pushkin, 1833

    1 hour and 51 minutes to read
  • 428

    Beowulf

    1000

    1 hour and 56 minutes to read
  • 429

    A Streetcar Named Desire

    Tennessee Williams, 1947

    54 minutes to read
  • 430

    Waiting for the Barbarians

    J.M. Coetzee, 1980

    3 hours and 42 minutes to read
  • 431

    The Golden Bowl

    Henry James, 1904

    11 hours and 32 minutes to read
  • 432

    The Education of Henry Adams

    Henry Adams, 1907

    9 hours and 57 minutes to read
  • 433

    Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy, 1874

    7 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 434

    A Hero of Our Time

    Mikhail Lermontov, 1840

    3 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 435

    Solaris

    Stanislaw Lem, 1961

    4 hours and 10 minutes to read
  • 436

    The Man Who Loved Children

    Christina Stead, 1940

    10 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 437

    Crash: A Novel

    J. G. Ballard, 1973

    3 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 438

    Dubliners

    James Joyce, 1914

    3 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 439

    Life and Fate

    Vasily Grossman, 1980

    4 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 440

    Electra

    Sophocles, 409BC

    38 minutes to read
  • 441

    The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

    Gertrude Stein, 1933

    5 hours and 16 minutes to read
  • 442

    Gilead

    Marilynne Robinson, 2004

    4 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 443

    Moll Flanders

    Daniel Defoe, 1722

    8 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 444

    The Koran

    610

    4 hours and 49 minutes to read
  • 445

    Middlesex

    Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002

    2 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 446

    The Alexandria Quartet

    Lawrence Durrell, 1957

    17 hours and 29 minutes to read
  • 447

    Black Beauty

    Anna Sewell, 1877

    3 hours and 30 minutes to read
  • 448

    Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban

    J.K. Rowling, 1999

    6 hours and 44 minutes to read
  • 449

    Cloud Atlas

    David Mitchell, 2004

    8 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 450

    The Glass Bead Game

    Hermann Hesse, 1943

    11 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 451

    Life, a User's Manual

    Georges Perec, 1978

    10 hours and 6 minutes to read
  • 452

    The Savage Detectives

    Roberto Bolaño, 1998

    14 hours and 8 minutes to read
  • 453

    The Magus

    John Fowles, 1965

    13 hours and 13 minutes to read
  • 454

    Philosophical Investigations

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953

    5 hours and 28 minutes to read
  • 455

    The Cherry Orchard

    Anton Chekhov, 1904

    1 hour and 1 minute to read
  • 456

    We

    Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924

    3 hours and 41 minutes to read
  • 457

    The Bluest Eye

    Toni Morrison, 1970

    3 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 458

    Call It Sleep

    Henry Roth, 1934

    8 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 459

    The Secret Agent

    Joseph Conrad, 1907

    4 hours and 40 minutes to read
  • 460

    Death in Venice

    Thomas Mann, 1912

    1 hour and 45 minutes to read
  • 461

    The Postman Always Rings Twice

    James M. Cain, 1934

    1 hour and 50 minutes to read
  • 462

    Analects

    Confucius, 479BC

    1 hour and 28 minutes to read
  • 463

    The Third Policeman

    Flann O'Brien, 1967

    4 hours and 24 minutes to read
  • 464

    Kindred

    Octavia E. Butler, 1979

    5 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 465

    Austerlitz

    W.G. Sebald, 2001

    2 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 466

    Red Harvest

    Dashiell Hammett, 1929

    3 hours and 17 minutes to read
  • 467

    Ada or Ardor

    Vladimir Nabokov, 1969

    9 hours and 33 minutes to read
  • 468

    Nine Stories

    J.D. Salinger, 1953

    5 hours and 1 minute to read
  • 469

    The Fountainhead

    Ayn Rand, 1943

    11 hours to read
  • 470

    The Unnamable

    Samuel Beckett, 1953

    3 hours and 15 minutes to read
  • 471

    Adam Bede

    George Eliot, 1859

    11 hours and 47 minutes to read
  • 472

    Quo Vadis

    Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1896

    12 hours and 5 minutes to read
  • 473

    The Right Stuff

    Tom Wolfe, 1979

    8 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 474

    Breakfast at Tiffany's

    Truman Capote, 1958

    1 hour and 31 minutes to read
  • 475

    Rabbit at Rest

    John Updike, 1990

    10 hours and 45 minutes to read
  • 476

    The Art of War

    Sun Tzu, 475BC

    3 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 477

    The Way We Live Now

    Anthony Trollope, 1875

    19 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 478

    The English Patient

    Michael Ondaatje, 1992

    4 hours and 27 minutes to read
  • 479

    The Naked and the Dead

    Norman Mailer, 1948

    5 hours and 14 minutes to read
  • 480

    The Betrothed

    Alessandro Manzoni, 1827

    9 hours and 29 minutes to read
  • 481

    The Souls of Black Folk

    W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903

    3 hours and 59 minutes to read
  • 482

    The Book of Disquiet

    Fernando Pessoa, 1982

    8 hours and 54 minutes to read
  • 483

    The Thorn Birds

    Colleen McCullough, 1977

    3 hours and 22 minutes to read
  • 484

    Prometheus Bound

    Aeschylus, 479BC

    32 minutes to read
  • 485

    Season of Migration to the North

    Al-Tayyib Salih, 1966

    2 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 486

    Wise Blood

    Flannery O'Connor, 1952

    2 hours and 52 minutes to read
  • 487

    The House of the Seven Gables

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

    6 hours to read
  • 488

    2666

    Roberto Bolaño, 2004

    20 hours and 11 minutes to read
  • 489

    The Federalist Papers

    Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, 1787

    16 hours and 50 minutes to read
  • 490

    Journey to the West

    Wu Cheng'en, 1592

    3 hours and 19 minutes to read
  • 491

    De Rerum Natura

    Lucretius, 55

    3 hours and 43 minutes to read
  • 492

    Cousin Bette

    Honoré de Balzac, 1846

    8 hours and 23 minutes to read
  • 493

    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

    J.K. Rowling, 2000

    10 hours and 24 minutes to read
  • 494

    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

    Roald Dahl, 1964

    1 hour and 44 minutes to read
  • 495

    The Sheltering Sky

    Paul Bowles, 1949

    5 hours and 38 minutes to read
  • 496

    The Sonnets

    William Shakespeare, 1609

    1 hour and 5 minutes to read
  • 497

    The Nicomachean Ethics

    Aristotle, 340BC

    4 hours and 46 minutes to read
  • 498

    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

    John le Carré, 1974

    6 hours and 39 minutes to read
  • 499

    Watchmen

    Alan Moore, 1987

    6 hours and 55 minutes to read
  • 500

    Effi Briest

    Theodor Fontane, 1895

    5 hours and 30 minutes to read
Your list 0 books
*Some dates of publication are unknown or estimated. Some books were published in parts over several years. Estimated reading time is based on an analysis of the audiobook or word count. Times may vary depending on the edition or translation of the book. Based on average reading speed of 300 words a minute.
Americans who read at least one book a year—just over half of adults—complete 11 a year on average; a typical reader would therefore need just over 45 years to get through this list of 500 must-reads. To help readers spend time wisely, we’ve included roughly how long it would take to read each book on this list of lists using estimates provided by Harry Tong, the co-founder of howlongtoread.com, a search engine. (He uses the length of an audiobook to calculate roughly how much time it would take to read it silently.) People read at different speeds, and some books are slower-going than others: one book club took 28 years to read “Finnegans Wake” by James Joyce (ranked 325th), a book you can polish off in 12 hours, our data say.
The book at the very top of Mr Sherman’s list on July 1st was “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, a pioneering work of magical realism. Mr Tong estimates that it should take only seven hours and 40 minutes of solitude to read, about average for a GBOAT. Second-ranked “The Great Gatsby”, a slim novel of Jazz-Age America, should take a mere two hours and 51 minutes. But number three, Joyce’s “Ulysses”, published at around the same time, demands a commitment of nearly 15 hours. If you spend 15 minutes a day reading, as the average American does, that’ll take you two months, which seems like a cheeky demand for a book whose action takes place on a single day. “Where The Wild Things Are” (421st GBOAT) takes just one minute to read, if you don’t dwell on the delightful illustrations. Impatient readers may be relieved to know that there is no correlation between length and greatness.

Top 100 books

Size=time to read

1

Rank, log scale

One Hundred

Years of Solitude

2

The Great Gatsby

3

Ulysses

4

The Catcher in the Rye

5

Nineteen Eighty Four

In Search of Lost Time

Lolita

To Kill a Mockingbird

Moby Dick

10

Pride and Prejudice

Wuthering Heights

Don Quixote

War and Peace

Jane Eyre

Catch-22

The Divine Comedy

The Odyssey

The Iliad

Gulliver’s Travels

50

Tristram Shandy

100

Pre-1700

1700s

1800s

1900s

Rank, log scale

Top 100 books

1

One Hundred

Years of Solitude

Size=time to read

2

The Great Gatsby

3

Ulysses

4

The Catcher in the Rye

Nineteen Eighty Four

5

In Search of

Lost Time

Lolita

Moby Dick

To Kill a Mockingbird

10

Pride and Prejudice

Don Quixote

Wuthering Heights

War and Peace

Catch-22

Jane Eyre

Beloved

The Divine Comedy

The Odyssey

The Iliad

Les

Misérables

Gulliver’s Travels

50

Tristram

Shandy

100

Pre-1700

1700s

1800s

1900s

Rank, log scale

Top 100 books

1

One Hundred

Years of Solitude

Size=time to read

2

The Great Gatsby

3

Ulysses

4

The Catcher in the Rye

Nineteen Eighty Four

5

In Search of

Lost Time

Lolita

Moby Dick

To Kill a Mockingbird

10

Pride and Prejudice

Don Quixote

Wuthering Heights

War and Peace

Catch-22

Jane Eyre

Beloved

The Divine Comedy

The Odyssey

The Iliad

Les

Misérables

Gulliver’s Travels

50

Tristram

Shandy

100

Pre-1700

1700s

1800s

1900s

A list of lists by its nature reflects a cultural consensus. If that’s the case, the culture is making some odd choices. The highest-ranked book that isn’t a novel is Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”, a 14th-century poem about the author’s journey from hell to purgatory to paradise. It appears at number 27. The Bible, by “Unknown”, is the 34th gboat. “Hamlet”, the first of Shakespeare’s six entries, is number 83. The “First Folio”, a compendium of his plays, ranks 126th.
Most GBOATs were originally written in English and since the start of the 20th century. And the literary compass points almost due West. After “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (set in a country that resembles Colombia, the birthplace of its author) nothing else both set in and by an author based in the global south appears until “Things Fall Apart”, a historical novel set in Nigeria, at number 50.
The Bible aside, the first non-fiction book to appear, at number 60, is “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam but was discovered, and murdered at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Among GBOATs popularity can pull rank on profundity. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is 134th, eight places higher than “The Republic” by Plato, a canonical Greek philosopher. Schopenhauer, sadly, does not make the top 500.
Although Mr Sherman is mainly doing statistics, he’s also doing some old-fashioned gatekeeping, mainly by varying the weights of the lists in his database. (He updates both the weightings and, as new lists appear, the rankings.) His adjustments seem sensible. He subtracts points from lists that use only books published over short time periods, for example. Lists that rely too much on non-experts and ones from a single region also lose points. Alongside the GBOATs Mr Sherman has come up with a choosier “global literary canon”, which limits each country to three books and imaginative literature to 80% of the entries (you can vary some of these weightings on his website).
Yet readers hungry for self-improvement as well as entertainment may yearn for the bracing smack of 19th-century-style prescriptiveness, the sort you would have got from Sir John Lubbock’s “one hundred best books”, a version of which was published in 1887. The spirit of Lubbock, described by a journalist as the “godfather” of best-books lists, lives on in the syllabuses of great-books courses at some universities. Homer, Virgil and St Augustine appear on Lubbock’s list and among the recent readings for Literature Humanities, a course that freshmen at Columbia College are required to take. (They’re all GBOAT authors, too.)
For Schopenhauer, shunning whatever is popular was an important part of reading wisely: “You should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public.” That is probably too dogmatic for the BookTok generation. But the more tempered advice of C.S. Lewis, a scholar of literature and author of “The Chronicles of Narnia” series for children, is worth heeding: “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” And if you’re reading mainly GBOATs, the odds are it will be time well spent.
Correction (July 29th 2024): The reading time of some books has been updated since we first published.

Sources: Shane Sherman, thegreatestbooks.org; Harry Tong, howlongtoread.com

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