For The Love of Books

This is one of the 394 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”.

This list was originally published in 1999 and was added to this site about 10 years ago.

Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
29 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
2 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
3 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
22 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
17 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
5 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
168 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
8 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
32 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
267 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
31 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
160 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
445 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
264 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
48 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
1274 The Collected Stories of William Faulkner William Faulkner 1950 American English
72 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
78 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
6 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
28 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
53 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
13 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
57 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
206 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
154 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
621 Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1963 British English
511 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
318 The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Machado de Assis 1881 Brazilian Portuguese
73 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
593 Carry On, Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1925 British English
541 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
56 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
2083 Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey 1968 American English
529 Poems of W. H. Auden W. H. Auden 1930 British English
1471 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth 1960 American English
1574 The Works of Max Beerbohm Max Beerbohm 1902 British English
232 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
588 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
1413 Oxford English Dictionary Oxford University Press 1884 British English
25 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
10 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
282 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
16 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
21 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
681 Death on Credit Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1936 French French
784 The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922 British English
24 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
136 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
27 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
2187 The Deptford Trilogy Robertson Davies 1970 Canadian English
1428 The Hardy Boys Franklin W. Dixon 1927 American English
14 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
189 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
91 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
26 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
35 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
1 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
138 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
62 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
349 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
252 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
4 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
98 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
30 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
536 In Our Time Ernest Hemingway 1925 American English
44 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
38 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
23 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
265 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
75 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
819 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
1229 Andersonville MacKinlay Kantor 1955 American English
214 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
3414 The Progress of Love Alice Munro 1986 Canadian English
578 Selected Stories of Alice Munro Alice Munro 1996 Canadian English
253 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
197 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
1448 Tell Me a Riddle Tillie Olsen 1961 American English
1403 Little Disturbances Grace Paley 1959 American English
222 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
1077 Three Lives Gertrude Stein 1909 American English
1574 Nero Wolfe Rex Stout 1934 American English
61 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
1574 Lad Albert Payson Terhune 1919 American English
1490 Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas 1952 British English
97 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
64 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
1487 Omeros Derek Walcott 1990 Saint Lucian English
477 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh 1934 British English
305 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
3296 Duke of Deception Geoffrey Wolff 1979 American English
36 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
90 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English