The Ideal Library

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

About this list

Book, 121 Books

100 prominent cultural figures, mostly writers, were polled for their choice of an "ideal library". The following list is a tally of every book that received at least 2 votes.

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
968 Jesus' Son Denis Johnson 1992 American English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
1565 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again David Foster Wallace 1997 American English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
600 Nine Stories J. D. Salinger 1953 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
1659 The Americans Robert Frank 1959 American English
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
1331 Cathedral Raymond Carver 1983 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
3074 Lunch Poems Frank O'Hara 1964 American English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
5089 On Food and Cooking Harold McGee 1984 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
1020 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
1909 The Collected Stories Of Lydia Davis Lydia Davis 2009 American English
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
4414 The House Book Terence Conran 1974 British English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
2641 The Palm At The End Of The Mind Wallace Stevens 1971 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
4436 A Mother's Kisses Bruce Jay Friedman 1964 American English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
238 A Season in Hell Arthur Rimbaud 1873 French French
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
3626 Adventures On The Wine Route Kermit Lynch 1988 American English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
2290 Arcadia Tom Stoppard 1993 British English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
4295 Bird By Bird Anne Lamott 1994 American English
1039 Birds of America Lorrie Moore 1998 American English
904 Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut 1973 American English
942 Cannery Row John Steinbeck 1945 American English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
2145 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson 1999 American English
3085 Diane Arbus Marvin Israel, Doon Arbus 1972 American English
993 Essays of E. B. White E. B. White 1977 American English
6081 Essential Cuisine Michel Bras 1996 French French
500 Everything That Rises Must Converge Flannery O'Connor 1965 American English
3082 Flappers And Philosophers F. Scott Fitzgerald 1920 American English
1476 Flatland Edwin A. Abbott 1884 British English
2002 Freedom Jonathan Franzen 2010 American English
4867 Grid Systems In Graphic Design Josef Müller-Brockmann 1981 Swiss German
987 Harriet the Spy Louise Fitzhugh 1964 American English
197 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
4436 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities And Other Stories Delmore Schwartz 1938 American English
6645 It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want To Be Paul Arden 2003 British English
2888 John Keats Walter Jackson Bate 1963 American English
312 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
178 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
155 Macbeth William Shakespeare 1606 British English
418 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
2507 Mrs. Bridge Evan S. Connell 1959 American English
985 Mythology Edith Hamilton 1942 American English
4436 Native Funk & Flash Alexandra Jacopetti 1974 American English
245 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
1265 On Writing Stephen King 2000 American English
2340 Personal History Katharine Graham 1997 American English
5635 Pictures From Home Larry Sultan 1992 American English
1672 Pulphead John Jeremiah Sullivan 2011 American English
611 Revolutionary Road Richard Yates 1961 American English
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
2653 Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick 1979 American English
1230 Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake 1789 British English
514 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
5439 The Andy Warhol Diaries Andy Warhol 1989 American English
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
576 Complete Poems Elizabeth Bishop 1969 American English
655 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
737 The Custom of the Country Edith Wharton 1913 American English
5101 The Doctor Stories William Carlos Williams 1984 American English
4436 The Dream Songs John Berryman 1964 American English
3451 The Elegant Universe Brian Greene 1999 American English
4408 The Essential Rumi Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi 1995 Persian Persian
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
286 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
676 The Princess Bride William Goldman 1973 American English
6553 The Quilts Of Gee's Bend William Arnett, Alvia Wardlaw, Jane Livingston, John Beardsley 2002 American English
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
793 The Sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut 1959 American English
680 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
4571 The Taste Of Country Cooking Edna Lewis 1976 American English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
5112 The War Of Art Steven Pressfield 2002 American English
1037 The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston 1976 American English
101 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
861 We Have Always Lived in the Castle Shirley Jackson 1962 American English
1783 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
924 Where I'm Calling From Raymond Carver 1988 American English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English