News

December Update

By Shane on Dec 10, 2025

Hey everyone. Just an update, since I have not made any updates in awhile. I have been adding "Best of 2025" lists as they come out, but I still need to go through and clean up a lot of the books. I will update the front page soon with a link to the Best Books of 2025. I have been working on a lot of massive changes lately and reworking a lot of things to make them better and more useful. I have also been working on other "The Greatest" sites. I am almost done with Music, and plan on doing movies and video games as well. If you would like to beta test music let me know. It should be going live within the next month or two.

Ranking Changes in May 2025

By Shane on Jun 01, 2025

New Month, new rankings. I didn't add as many lists this month, but I definitely added some really good ones. We are currently at 617 lists! If you want to see specific details on which books moved up the most and which books moved down in the top 1000 visit https://thegreatestbooks.org/ranking_configurations/53/diff?rc_id=56&limit=1000

top 5 books that moved up the most in the Top 100:
  1. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann | +13 (moved up)
  2. The Castle by Franz Kafka | +13 (moved up)
  3. The Golden Notebook by Doris May Lessing | +12 (moved up)
  4. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton | +11 (moved up)
  5. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque | +11 (moved up)

top 5 books that moved up the most in the Top 1000:
  1. The World Of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig | +387 (moved up)
  2. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall | +355 (moved up)
  3. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor | +339 (moved up)
  4. The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq | +336 (moved up)
  5. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann | +328 (moved up)

Rankings Changes in April

By Shane on May 02, 2025

New Month, new rankings. Last month I added lots of new and high quality lists. We are getting close to 600 lists! If you want to see specific details on which books moved up the most and which books moved down in the top 1000 visit https://thegreatestbooks.org/ranking_configurations/51/diff?rc_id=53&limit=1000

top 5 books that moved up the most in the Top 1000:
  1. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa | +278 (moved up)
  2. The Years by Annie Ernaux | +277 (moved up)
  3. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare | +263 (moved up)
  4. Lysistrata by Aristophanes | +248 (moved up)
  5. The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić | +227 (moved up)

top 5 books that moved down in the Top 1000:
  1. Requiem by Anna Akhmatova | -157 (moved down)
  2. The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek | -169 (moved down)
  3. Baby And Child Care by Benjamin Spock | -174 (moved down)
  4. Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre | -213 (moved down)
  5. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter | -260 (moved down)

Recommendations Feature

By Shane on Apr 16, 2025

I just launched a new recommendations feature! I've been working on this for a very long time. Please check it out. Members who have subscribed get additional recommendation features/settings they can adjust and see 50 recommendations instead of just 5.

https://thegreatestbooks.org/recommendations

March 2025 Stats

By Shane on Apr 01, 2025

We added a bunch of new lists in Match. The top 5 books that moved up the most in the top 100 were:

  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

The top 5 books that moved up the most in the top 1000 were:
  • Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Alfred Tennyson
  • Captain Hornblower R.N. by C. S. Forester
  • Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
  • Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
  • Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi

Similar Books Feature

By Shane on Apr 01, 2025

I just implemented a new feature that will show similar books. You can find it on the book details page of each book. It's a work in progress, so please let me know if you have any issues or suggestions on how to improve it. This is step 1 on my full recommendations engine I have been working on.

New Feature: Advanced Search/Filtering

By Shane on Feb 16, 2025

I just launched a brand new feature called Advanced Search that allows you to generate a list of books that are filtered by various fields like genre, book length, etc. It allows inclusions and exclusions, as well as hiding books you have already read. that I hope everyone finds useful. https://thegreatestbooks.org/searches

October Stats

By Shane on Nov 07, 2024

We added 42 new lists in October. The top 5 books that moved up the most in the top 100 were:

  • The Golden Notebook by Doris May Lessing
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The top 5 books that moved up the most in the top 1000 were:
  • Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
  • Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
  • North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Added 9 new lists and refreshed the rankings

By Shane on Sep 30, 2024

I added a bunch of horror lists since it's spooky season! Lots of really good ones.

Goodreads Import

By Shane on Sep 08, 2024

I recently added a new feature, where you can import your goodreads lists and reviews. You can read more about the feature on the "My Lists" page. This is a beta/experimental feature. please let me know if you run into any issues.

Fixed rankings bug and added 4 new lists

By Shane on Aug 21, 2024

There was a bug that was giving short lists with high rankings too many bonus points. I fixed this and added 4 new high quality lists. zero change in the top 10, and minimal changes in the top 100

New Rankings

By Shane on Aug 15, 2024

So I did something I've wanted to do for awhile. I updated the rankings to be percentage based instead of point based, and removed min/max normalization. The min/max normalization was boosting a lot of lists unnecessarily based on a few really terrible lists with negative rankings.

I think the new rankings are much more accurate and fair. I am welcome to all feedback. Please use the "Contact Me" feature for any and all feedback.

I also added around 10 new lists. Many of them are very high quality. I hope you enjoy!

Added 3 new very high quality lists

By Shane on Aug 09, 2024

These are some of the best lists I've seen in years! I have a bunch more I'll be adding soon

New Lists

By Shane on Aug 04, 2024

I added a handful of new lists and made some minor algorithm adjustments. 

Added 2 new 21st Century lists

By Shane on Jul 24, 2024

They were both in reply to recently NY Times 21st century list.

Added the new 100 Best Books of the 21st Century NY Times List

By Shane on Jul 12, 2024

This is a great list. "503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of
The New York Times Book Review."

definitely bumped up a lot of 21st century books!

Added 5 new lists and refreshed the rankings

By Shane on Jul 09, 2024

I added 5 new lists and refreshed the rankings. Lots of high quality nice lists

Major Ranking Changes

By Shane on Jul 02, 2024

You might have noticed the rankings changed a bit. I got a great suggestion from a user of the site, about how to improve the rankings recently. Instead of a global book age penalty, I introduced a list date penalty, which I think is vastly better. Below is an explanation. As always, if you have any feedback on this please contact me. thanks!


List Date Penalty Feature


In our continuous effort to provide the most accurate and fair rankings, we have introduced a new feature: the List Date Penalty. This feature aims to reduce recency bias in our rankings by applying a penalty to books based on their publication dates relative to the list's publication date.

How It Works


  • Publication Date Comparison: For each book on a list, we compare its publication date to the publication date of the list.
  • Penalty Application:
    • Maximum Penalty: If a book was published in the same year as the list, it receives the maximum penalty, as we believe it hasn't had enough time to stand the test of time.
    • Proportional Penalty: Books that were published in the years leading up to the list's publication date receive a proportional penalty based on the number of years they have been available.
    • No Penalty: Books that were published more than a specified number of years (max age for penalty) before the list's publication date do not receive any penalty, acknowledging their enduring relevance and influence.

Why This Matters


By mitigating recency bias, the List Date Penalty feature helps to ensure that books that have had more time to be evaluated by readers and critics are given their due weight. This results in a more equitable and historically balanced ranking that truly reflects the greatest books of all time.

The Global Canon

By Shane on Jun 03, 2024

I created a new "Global Canon" page that should is a list that has strict limits to reduce the "western bias" that is always a huge complaint about aggregating book lists. This list has no more than three books from any single country. Additionally, children's books are excluded to maintain the focus on adult literature, and only one book per author is included. 

https://thegreatestbooks.org/global-canon

Added 5 new lists

By Shane on May 15, 2024

Added 5 new lists. 4 of them were from a good article in a Canadian news paper from 2010. The other was from a super interesting book written by famous librarian. 

300 Lists!

By Shane on May 09, 2024

We finally reached 300 lists! I am going to take some time to work on fixing bugs and adding some often requested features, before adding any more lists.

Added 4 new lists and refreshed the rankings

By Shane on May 04, 2024

I added 4 new interesting lists, and refreshed the rankings. If anyone is curious I probably have a backlog of 250+ lists to add! Once I hit 300, I am going to work on some new often requested features. If you have any you want to see, please e-mail me!

Added 2 new high quality lists

By Shane on Apr 25, 2024

We added 2 new high quality lists and refreshed the rankings

Added 8 new lists

By Shane on Apr 20, 2024

Mostly Science and Philosophy

Added 5 new lists

By Shane on Apr 19, 2024

I added 5 new lists, and refreshed the rankings

Added Infinite Scrolling

By Shane on Apr 18, 2024

I added infinite scrolling to the front page. It's an often requested feature. There might be bugs, so please e-mail me and let me know if you have any issues. Once It's tested a bit more, I'll implement it site-wide

Major Rankings Changes

By Shane on Apr 13, 2024

Lately I've noticed that more and more 21st Century books have been showing up in the top 500, so I've made some adjustments to reduce the chances of this happening. I think the greatest books need to stand the test of time, and I think this change makes for a more accurate list. Please e-mail me if you have any feedback. 

New Rankings and Features

By Shane on Mar 31, 2024

I have improved the algorithm in various ways to hopefully create a more accurate list. I have also added the ability to see older rankings from the rankings page, you can click from the main menu. I also added 3 new lists. I'll be adding a lot more lists in the future. Whenever I add new lists from now on, I will archive the existing ranked list, and generate a new one, so you can always go back and look at the old rankings from a specific point in time. 

Added back some requested features

By Shane on Dec 31, 2023

I've gotten some great feedback so far on the changes. I've made a few upgrade today.

  • added back the numbers in front of the books on most of the lists
  • added back stats that are available on the "My Lists" page
  • fixed various bugs that probably were not obvious to most visitors

Welcome to the new site

By Shane on Dec 30, 2023

Hello! Welcome to the new The Greatest Books site. Lots of things have changed. Here's a list of the new features:

  • Filter by Genre
  • Filter by Country
  • Custom user lists and review
  • Ability to add Comments about a book
  • Smarter algorithm for determining "The Greatest" Books
  • Cleaner and improved design on both desktop and mobile versions

I also added a bunch of new lists and I am going to be adding a lot more over the next couple weeks. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or issues. There is a new login system, that should be seamless but if you have any problems logging in please let me know.

Future Feature List

By Shane on Dec 29, 2023

Here are some of the features I am currently working on:

  • Recommended books
  • Shared book lists(1 or more people can all edit a user list)
  • Improved date filters (by century instead of specific years)
  • Ability to filter by book length
  • Ability for users to create their own ranking configuration (adjust the weights, and other algorithm modifiers)

If you have any other suggestions for features please join the discord or email me at [email protected]
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In 2009, I embarked on a quest to discover the greatest books ever written, only to realize that a definitive, comprehensive list didn't exist. This realization sparked the creation of The Greatest Books.

The journey of developing The Greatest Books has been a true labor of love. This is a one man show currently. I would love for this to be my full time job but right now it's just a side project I work on in my free time. If you would like to support the site, please click the link below. I appreciate it!

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Latest Lists

These are the newest 10 lists added.

  1. Russell Banks's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  2. Donna Tartt's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  3. Vendela Vida's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  4. Charles R. Johnson's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  5. Siri Hustvedt's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  6. Richard Ford's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  7. Jane Hirshfield's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  8. Laurie Frankel's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  9. Viet Thanh Nguyen's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  10. Dave Eggers's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  11. Louise Erdrich's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  12. Amor Towles's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  13. Maaza Mengiste's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  14. Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - 29 days
  15. Readers’ Top 100 Novels Of All Time - 30 days
  16. Madeline Miller's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - about 1 month
  17. Andrew Sean Greer's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - about 1 month
  18. Susan Choi's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - about 1 month
  19. T. C. Boyle's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - about 1 month
  20. Jennifer Egan's Book Choices from "The Writer's Library" - about 1 month