The Greatest Books of All Time

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

About this list

Reader's Digest, 100 Books

Reader's Digest has created a list of greatest books of all time. Their website says:

To land in the top 100, a book needed to truly stand out in the stacks. We considered best sellers, award winners, and books that are highly rated by readers and critics alike. Many have been made into blockbuster movies. (Make sure to check out these exciting book to movie adaptations coming out this year!) Going on, many are taught in schools today. Many have snagged spots on other “best of” lists published by the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, PBS, Time magazine, and more. And most have had profound impacts on literature, culture, or the world in general.

Reader's Digest mentions that the list is updated periodically by writers specialize in book content. Book selections are made by editors at Reader's Digest.

No voters are named. The article is written by Leandra Beabout, who i am going to assume is the 1 voter.
A former English teacher, Leandra writes about books and lifestyle for Reader's Digest. She also has bylines in the Guardian, the Telegraph and The Healthy. Leandra splits her time between the U.S. and India, where she and her husband currently live in the lower Himalayas.

This list was originally published in 2022 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
13356 Where the Sidewalk Ends Shel Silverstein 1974 American English
2628 Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann 1966 American English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
293 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
3148 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
582 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
5267 A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah 2007 Sierra Leonean English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
13941 Daring Greatly Brené Brown 2012 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1643 Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt 1996 American English
1122 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
1783 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
1285 Selected Stories of Alice Munro Alice Munro 1996 Canadian English
3486 The Fault in Our Stars John Green 2012 American English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
573 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Judy Blume 1970 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
5099 Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese 2009 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
1775 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1318 Love Medicine Louise Erdrich 1984 American English
1895 Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris 2000 American English
418 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
2898 Moneyball Michael M. Lewis 2003 American English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
416 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
5358 Team of Rivals Doris Kearns Goodwin 2005 American English
2502 Homegoing Yaa Gyasi 2016 Ghanaian English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
1085 The Book Thief Markus Zusak 2005 Australian English
1536 Rubyfruit Jungle Rita Mae Brown 1973 American English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
2022 The Color of Water James McBride 1995 American English
738 The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1989 American English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
1542 The Devil In The White City Erik Larson 2003 American English
1799 The Giver Lois Lowry 1993 American English
6332 The Night Watchman Louise Erdrich 2020 American English
2486 The Golden Compass Philip Pullman 1995 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
1817 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot 2010 American English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
4139 The Liars' Club Mary Karr 1995 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
1884 The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright 2006 American English
1987 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks 1985 British English
4751 The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan 2006 American English
1901 The Power Broker Robert Caro 1974 American English
3618 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
1209 Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 American English
648 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
407 The World According to Garp John Irving 1978 American English
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
13941 Unbroken Laura Hillenbrand 2010 American English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
443 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2013 Nigerian English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
892 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 2003 Afghan English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English