The Spouter-Inn; or, A Conversation with Great Books

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

About this list

The Spouter-Inn Podcast, 74 Books

This is a podcast about "Great Books". Here is the description from the website:

Reading is far from dead. More people than ever are reading—on Kindles, iPads, and phones, in paperbacks and hardcover. The choice of what to read is endless: new online content appears every morning, and many of us have that ever-growing pile of “books I might read someday.” Some of the books in that pile might be so-called “classics,” “great books” that have been read for hundreds—even thousands—of years. But who picks up a copy of Homer’s Iliad from the bookstore table, or downloads a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy? These books aren’t always easy to begin, and the fact that you might have studied them in college or high school just makes them seem more like work and not play. It’s not always clear how to get into these books: Can you skip parts? Can you start at the end? Why isn’t this more like a novel?

At The Spouter-Inn, we want to invite you into a series of conversations about books—how they’re shaped, what kind of world they come out of, and how they speak to us right now. Whether you’ve done the reading or are just curious, come join Suzanne (a literature professor at Princeton University) and Chris (a PhD dropout and poet) as talk about these books and what it means to read them today. Guests for many episodes often include academics and literature experts.

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
1123 The Symposium Plato -385 Greek Ancient greek
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
807 The Book of the City of Ladies Christine De Pizan 1405 French French
9705 The Book Of Peace Christine De Pizan 1413 French French
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
395 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
3551 The Improvement of Human Reason Ibn Tufayl 1170 Arabic Arabic
2400 The Blazing World Margaret Cavendish 1666 British English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
2837 How to Cook a Wolf M. F. K. Fisher 1942 American English
1377 Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 1964 British English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
14043 Memory Serves Lee Maracle 2015 Canadian English
3557 The Black Jacobins C. L. R. James 1938 British English
11092 Stella Émeric Bergeaud 1859 Haitian French
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
83 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
8374 Beyond A Boundary C. L. R. James 1963 British English
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
501 W, or the Memory of Childhood Georges Perec 1975 French French
10181 Monkey Beach Eden Robinson 2000 Canadian English
11092 Disciplina Clericalis Petrus Alphonsi 1919 Multiple Latin
12656 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Samuel R. Delany 1999 American English
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
3582 Selected Poems Andrew Marvell 1681 British English
1239 The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne John Donne 1952 British English
9716 The Boys In The Band Matt Crowley 1968 American English
4936 Exile And Pride Eli Clare 1999 American English
9718 Laxdæla Saga Unknown 1245 Icelandic Old norse
2980 Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer 2013 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
2151 The Conference Of The Birds Attar Neyshabouri 1177 Persian Persian
3626 Bear Marian Engel 1976 Canadian English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
11826 I Am Woman Lee Maracle 1988 Canadian English
9707 Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon 1952 French French
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
697 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
987 Harriet the Spy Louise Fitzhugh 1964 American English
11507 Native Tongue Suzette Haden Elgin 1984 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
11433 Midwinter Day Bernadette Mayer 1982 American English
604 The Blind Owl Ṣādiq Hidāyat 1937 Iranian Persian
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
125 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
2344 Song of Songs Christian Church -500 Jewish Hebrew
1528 The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius 524 Roman Latin
9708 The Etymologies Isidore of Seville 630 Spanish Latin
11092 Layli And Majnun Nezami Ganjavi 1188 Persian Persian
1555 Troilus And Criseyde Geoffrey Chaucer 1385 British Middle english
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
13800 Dancing On Our Turtle's Back Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 2011 Canadian English
14328 Shapes Of Native Nonfiction Elissa Washuta, Theresa Warburton 2019 Unknown English
7744 My Life and My Life in the Nineties Lyn Hejinian 1980 American English