Top 10 novels of all time

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"

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"

Tolstoy for me all the way.

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.

I've read and completed 9/10. The search for time lost was well named. I'll never get back the time I spent on starting and restarting it.

I found Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, incredibly irritating, I find it difficult to have sympathy for women who bring their troubles upon themselves - and it stops me appreciating what are, as this list tells us, great novels.

I have only read one of he books on Cabowich's list. uite simply I rarely read novels ane even then, few written since 1930. I would much rather read a book about some subject I am intersted in than a novel. Novels are for when I am tired or ill.

I agree TerriBull. I have read most of the books on the list, whether they are the greatest novels is certainly debatable.
I much prefer Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
P & P, S &S and Emma have been done to death by the Media.
Middlemarch is an enjoyable novel, but in my mind ranks on a par with North and South, and Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
In the same social genre I’d put How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn.
The Tolstoy novels do take some devotion as does anything by Dostoevsky. It surprised me that he didn’t make the list, given the sample cohort.

What I am always struck by are peoples’ lists and realising how many books I’d forgotten I have read.

Just as appreciating a painting appreciating a book is purely subjective .
I think that it's impossible to whittle the list down to just ten .

I struggled with Ulysses . I remember a date misunderstanding that I'd digested it and asking me all sorts of questions about it in a crowded pub .
It was obvious that I really hadn't grasped it and he persisted causing amusement to those around us.
I don't agree about To The Lighthouse .
I loved Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina I found them so moving that I cried .
I would have thought that one Dickens would be included .
I've thoroughly enjoyed any book by Allende , Attwood ,Pamuk and Zola .
I have yet to read Beloved .
It's on my list.

I've read 7 and, apart from Pride and Prejudice, didn't really enjoy them. Ulysses - what was that about?

My own personal top ten are:

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
2. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
3. Captain Corelli''s Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
4. Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby van Pelt
5. Me Before You - JoJo Moyes
6. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
7. One True Thing - Anna Quindlen
8. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (non-fiction but lovely)
9. Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
10. Worldwide Adventures in Love - Louise Wener

There are so many prescriptive lists of "books" that MUST be read. Why? Books are completely subjective, they should be read for pleasure. Particularly at a time when there are concerns around reading versus the screen and the former falling off a cliff. I've read a couple off the list. There's no way I would put myself through the incomprehensible torture of Ulysses. Books can be the most wonderful medium of transporting the reader to become completely lost in a narrative, never wanting it to end or conversely give such a brain ache that would stiffle any burgeoning reader and prove counter productive in fostering a love of reading. These lists are far too narrow and often too highbrow and often what might be suggested for students of English literature doesn't transcend into real life reading for pleasure.

MartavTaurus I might look for Madame Bovary and see if my French is up to it. I suspect not. I do manage French Agatha Christie books though.

I have read 5, mainly when I was young and curious.

Middlemarch was a totally inappropriate A level text, and I recognised ir even then. I read it again in my 40s, and still struggled, then in my 70s, my local university ran a one term evening course studying it and I realised how much of the book runs on the unspoken cultural norms of the period, that no one then needed explaining to them; the deep cultural divide between Physicians and Surgeons, why Lydgate would inevitably be attracted to and marry Rosamund, although so obviously unsuitable.

Why these experts chose P&P rather than Persuasion, I do not understand. P&P is the Mills and Boon of Austen's novels. A joy and a delight, but not profound. Persuasion is a far deeper thoughtful novel and by far Jane Austen's greatest novel.

Has Flaubert had a sex change?

I love that novel, Madame Bovary, but you need to read it in French for its sublime language.
Interesting that another French one is there too, Proust.

Thanks graphite I am in awe of your reading prowess.

I bumble along at a tad different level though and judging from most posts so do others☺️.

The other novel that sticks with me is “The Old Wives Tales” Arnold Bennet. I haven’t a clue why.

Stephen King is one of more than 170 novelists, critics and academics the Guardian polled for their top 10, ranked in order, which we tallied to compile an overall 100.

www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/16/story-behind-100-best-novels-all-time

All 100 here:

www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time

You can click on the title, see who recommended it and what else is in their top ten.

The only one of the 100 I haven't read is Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo which I have now reserved from the library. It was recommended by Valeria Luiselli a Mexican American writer I have never heard of so I'll be adding her to my list.

Number 1 Middlemarch is my all time favourite novel which I reread every couple of years. There's an excellent audio version read by Juliet Stevenson and, of course, the BBC series starring Juliet Aubrey at Dorothea Brooke.

Ulysses is best listened to, as most stream of consciousness novels are imho.

I consider myself well read but have only read four of these and three I tried but didn't finish.

I've read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. We did Ulysses at college but I didn't get anywhere with it.

I can't imagine that 'normal' people would read and enjoy most of these. Maybe I'm just a pleb!

I agree, uninspiring

I have read 6 of them but only because I was young and thought I should!

Actually if I think about it, those novels that deal with life at the very basic level - that experienced by the ordinary folk are the ones I find have the most profound and influential.

“A Thousand splendid Suns” being another.

5 is 2 more than I have read.
It seems a tad pretentious to me but I have long known I am no intellectual.

I think the prominent academics etc. asked AI for a list of highbrow novels and the Guardian had to fill a column. Uninspiring indeed!

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.