For The Love of Books

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

About this list

For The Love of Books, 95 Books

Ronald Schwartz polled 115 major writers about their favorite books, and published each of their ballots in the book “For the Love of Books”. The book does list every single one of the major writers.

This list was originally published in 1999 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
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
1468 The Collected Stories of William Faulkner William Faulkner 1950 American English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
812 Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1963 British English
655 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
301 The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Machado de Assis 1881 Brazilian Portuguese
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
1819 Carry On, Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1925 British English
714 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
2106 Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey 1968 American English
618 Poems of W. H. Auden W. H. Auden 1930 British English
1422 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth 1960 American English
3502 The Works of Max Beerbohm Max Beerbohm 1902 British English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
753 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
2109 Oxford English Dictionary Oxford University Press 1884 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
1078 Death on Credit Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1936 French French
979 The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
137 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
1800 The Deptford Trilogy Robertson Davies 1970 Canadian English
2645 The Hardy Boys Franklin W. Dixon 1927 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
197 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
246 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
825 In Our Time Ernest Hemingway 1925 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
1342 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
1114 Andersonville MacKinlay Kantor 1955 American English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
2923 The Progress of Love Alice Munro 1986 Canadian English
1285 Selected Stories of Alice Munro Alice Munro 1996 Canadian English
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
2125 Tell Me a Riddle Tillie Olsen 1961 American English
1885 Little Disturbances Grace Paley 1959 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
1155 Three Lives Gertrude Stein 1909 American English
2646 The Nero Wolfe Series Rex Stout 1934 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
2574 Lad Albert Payson Terhune 1919 American English
1355 Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas 1952 British English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
1270 Omeros Derek Walcott 1990 Saint Lucian English
467 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh 1934 British English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
6097 Duke of Deception Geoffrey Wolff 1979 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English