Top 10 novels of all time

I love Middlemarch, P&P and Jane Eyre.

Couldn’t finish To The Lighthouse. Found it much like the curates egg - good in parts.

I’ve read Madame Bovary, and ever since then, when driving through deserted French villages in summer - all the houses with shutters closed - I think of her going quietly mad with boredom and frustration, and shudder.

I’ve read the two Tolstoy (on the Kindle, I can’t cope with fat heavy books any more) but won’t be in a rush to read either again.

Tolstoy for me all the way.

I read Middlemarch for the first time very recently and enjoyed it very much. Some of the language sounded very modern to me. E.g. " he wouldn't have stood a chance with Celia"

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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?

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'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.

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.

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 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

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'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 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.