50 Books to (Re-)Read at 50

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

nextavenue, 51 Books

Your essential short list of novels, nonfiction and biographies

Got some time on your hands? This list of 50 great books is a good way to raise your literary IQ. It's by no means the "definitive" list, but each of these masterpieces is at least as relevant and powerful today as when it was written. And they're all still terrific reads.

Who voted?
Seems like it was just 1 person Mike Hammer

This list was originally published in 2012 and was added to this site almost 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
434 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
10609 The Natural Bernard Malamud 1952 American English
598 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
3455 Profiles in Courage John F. Kennedy 1956 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
4683 Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss 1960 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
7047 The Making of the President, 1960 Theodore White 1961 American English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
1685 Burr Gore Vidal 1973 American English
3148 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
634 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
12224 The Tao of Physics Fritjof Capra 1975 Austrian English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
8769 John Adams David McCullough 2001 American English
2848 What Is the What Dave Eggers 2006 American English
7755 Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali 2007 Dutch English
14176 My Life in France Julia Child 2006 American English