I am more into ones like "A Boy and His Dog" from a graphic novel by Harlan Ellison. My kind of comedy. I read a lot besides those "recommended" and required for English classes. I also read "The Thirty Years that Shook Physics" by Gamov. Of course that was not required or suggested.
MIke MIhaljevich I was thinking the same about their judgement. Why wasn’t The Master and Margarita on the list. An absolute masterpiece and no sign of it. Pfffft!
Everyone is complaining that their favorite book isn't on the list but honestly making a top 10 books of all time list is simply imposible. It should really be top 10 thousand.
Surely everyone's own top ten book of all time is a snapshot that won't last long, new books added, older ones remembered after the first list was drawn up, favorite themes and plots and characters shifting as our lives develop. Variety is the spice of life, and man and woman don't live by ten books alone.
i agree too. everyone has a different view. I tend to rank the classic books in my top ten. They stand the test of time. Also societal values change fashions come and go. some books are deeper than others, Some are landmarks others are entertainment.My top two ,simply for quality of the prose are war and peace and wuthering heights. many will disagree but for me those rate. good luck with any top ten
Any attempt to select the top ten novels of all time, without breaking literary works into different categories, is, in my opinion, far too ambitious a quest.
What categories are those exactly? You suggest calling War and Peace epic war novel and Catcher in the Rye to b categorized as Bildungsroman Coming of age type? That's too neurotic. It is for genre fiction. Not for literary fiction.
Nayan D'Souza the Catcher in the rye has never been made into a movie and never will because the author hated movies and refused letting anyone have the rights to it even after he dies.
There’s no way to sum up the top ten greatest novels of all time. It’s just not possible. There are too many books out there, too many classics especially.
My personal list: 10- The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 9- Penpal - Dathan Auerbach 8- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 7- The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton 6- Going Bovine - Libba Bray 5- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 4- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 3- 1984 - George Orwell 2- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien 1- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
10. 1984 9. The Catcher and the Rye 8. Of Mice and Men 7. Grapes of Wrath 6. Death In the Afternoon 5. For whom the Bell Tolls 4. Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Cafe 3. To Kill a Mockingbird 2. The Book Thief 1. East Of Eden This is my personal favorites not the best
Top ten novels is like saying " Who is your favorite child?" But I am disappointed that Victor Hugo isn't on the list. Either "Les Miserables" or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" is a great read. No Bronte on the list, either?
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula deserve Honorable Mentions. They are every bit as iconic and culturally important as any book on this list.
Honestly Frankenstein is a masterpiece but its extremely well.known so people will assume you're not well read, whereas something like lord of the flies, which in my opinion is a classic is still well known and commonly assigned in schools. So no I don't think Frankenstein should be on the last but perhaps something like far from the madding crowd or jude the obscure (both by British novelist and poet, Thomas hardy, who is my favourite writer)
I was thinking the same thing. I don't know how someone could possibly exclude that from a list of the best/most important novels of all time. I can only imagine they haven't read it.
I feel like watchmojo produce videos like this to provoke people to click on the video and get views. How can you possibly rank something like this? At LEAST, you can break it down by the decade like you did with the movie list. This is ridiculous.
Oh my... what a shitty list. Allways the same overrated novels like Gatsby, Lolita, Moby Dick, but no "Brothers Karamazov" or "Demons". It´s regrettable.
No Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Joyce??? I would have liked to see The Stranger too... but come on, man, really??? Even Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow? Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain???
I know this list must have been hard to make, but Charles Dickens is seriously only an honorable mention?! The man practically gave birth to the modern novel! A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite novel of all time personally. And no Steinbeck either? Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath are masterpieces! And, also, Crime and Punishment deserves a high spot on this list. Talk about a novel with an incredibly thought-provoking social conscience and profundity. And lastly, I was forced to read Madame Bovary in tenth grade, and after reading a bunch of classic literature, I can firmly say that that sad excuse for a book is by far the worst thing I've ever read. I've never hated a character more than I have Bovary herself. She's a disgrace to female characters in literature throughout all time. That book's story isn't even that good. The cyanide-induced suicide at the end was my favorite part for a reason.
I totally agree. A Tale of Two Cities is too good to not make a list like this, I mean the iconic opening lines were literally paraphrased to describe what a different book on this list touched on! I also agree that no Steinbeck or Crime and Punishment is sort of surprising. Perhaps instead of two Tolstoy's they could've made room for one of these?
Sean O'Sullivan I agree! They should have had the one novel per author role. While I do love Great Expectations, I just find AToTC a lot more fun and impactful to read.
EZ64 Yeah it would be a little difficult to narrow down a Dickens to just the one, but my personal favorite was always AToTC and I feel like the list is incomplete without at least one. Then again the same argument could be made for likely Orwell and Steinbeck and plenty of others so I don't exactly envy whoever had to make the final call on this list.
You can't have a top 10 novels of all time list and not even mention Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment is definitely top 10, and The Brothers Karamazov is worthy of greatest book ever written. All these novels on this are super overrated: The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird. Come on now. These books don't hang a lantern on Dostoyevsky.
I love the writing style of The Great Gatsby, but it's not a particularly great book. The Catcher in the Rye is way overrated, and is quite juvenile. To Kill a Mockingbird is quite good, but not top 10 ever good.
The Catcher in the Rye might be overrated, but I believe it was the first of the kind. Portraying teen age anxiety and angst, I read it when I was about 16-17 as a teen ager in Denmark in the early sixties, and I loved it. I believe it is a very important book, although to my disappointment my daughter who was born in 1980 did not like it at all.
@@hannejeppesen2887 Oh, I read Catcher when I was younger and loved it, no doubt about it. I tried to reread it later on and just found the book way too juvenile and frankly a little obnoxious. It is a very important book and quite a good book, but it's still way overrated. It's too bad Salinger never was able to follow it up with more mature works, but then maybe he didn't have it in him. (Or else he just never showed the world.)
@@Fantumh I tried to read some of Salinger's other work, but the writing could not hold my attention. I grew up in Denmark and was a teenager in the early sixties, I was probably about 16-17 years old when I read Catcher in the Rye, in Danish. When I came to the US as an au pair 22 years old, I had Catcher in the Rye with me. I had only had about 2 years or less of English in school, but living in the US and watching TV and mixing with young people my age (dating) I learned English fairly fast, also took night classes, it wasn't long before I could read Catcher in the Rye in English, it helped I had my Danish version. By the way about the same time Denmark had 2 famous authors who also published books about coming of age, the confusing, sex etc. Both was a little more edgy than Salinger's and one was quite dark, but still a great book.
@@saptorshighosh1049 and to put Anna Karenina #1? That book is overrated as hell. Its a culture piece drowned in metaphor. You can identify with Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, Alyosha, and the Underground man from Notes from Underground. Those characters were interesting and made you think. I was 200 pages into Anna Karenina and was like "CAN THIS BITCH DIE ALREADY?!" I know I'm smacking a historical "classic" in the face, but Tolstoy couldn't hold a candle to Dostoyevsky.
Big Dostoevsky fan, but he actually acknowledged Anna Karenina was a great novel. But I don’t see how Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov don’t make the list.
+nottomrowntree No it's not. The way she pronounces it sounds weird because one part of the name's all jumbled and then long vowels seem to pop up at random places. And I'm a native russian speaker, by the way. I totally get where T-o-lstoy is coming from in terms of a stress, though, because it's much easier for english-speakers to say it that way than it is to articulate Tolst-o-y as his actual last name was (not to mention that the name's "Lev" not "Leo" but let's leave that for translators' consciense to bear;) ) On a side note, I'm fairly sure that her french pronunciation isn't that accurate either... Oh, those vowels!.. I'm not the one to judge, certainly, but why go out of your way trying to sound like you know some language or other when you clearly don't? It only leads people to think you're all bragging, condescending, and just generally a know-it-all... which is a confusing choice for the image to say the least. P.S. I sincerely apologise to those who got offended by either the point I made or grammar/spelling/odd sentence structure. As you could've guessed by now (insert an eye-roll), english is not my first language and it's not even the second one so bear with me. Although I am a not-so-soon-to-be translator so that's something.
100 Years of Solitude, most beautiful book I have ever read; Catcher in the Rye is good, but Seymour is better; Gravity's Rainbow is an astonishing work and simply must be read by anyone who cares about literature...
Jane Eyre is my favorite classic novel. Not only is it a compelling story, but it is couched in such exquisite prose as to make the vehicle as enjoyable as the journey. Strangely and unfortunately, Bronte's other works were nowhere near as good as this one.
This list is very American-inclined , since there is no way novels like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment , Kafka's The Trial & Camus's The Plague , shouldn't be included in any top ten list.
Just because you don’t like the selection on the list, doesn’t mean the list was American-inclined. There was Tolstoy who is Russian, Proust who is French, and Cervantes who is Spanish.
No, edenstore, you've confused the narcissistic, self-justifying narrative of the pedophile with the point of the book. The actual point of the book is that Humbert Humbert is a delusional idiot who is chasing after his vanished youth and his childhood girlfriend, imposing that psychosexual dynamic onto his relationship with Dolores, and ruining her life in the process. It's just too evident that Humbert Humbert and Dolores have nothing in common and that he's only convinced himself that she is the love of his life merely because she's there at the right age and thus she becomes a stand-in for Annabel. It's a satire on a superficial American culture that is stuck in a perpetual adolescence. This is like reading Michel Houellebecq's _Submission_ and coming away with the notion that the message of the novel is that Sharia law is totally awesome merely because the main character finds himself settling in quite happily to the new arrangement, out of an excess of pathetic, 21st century European anomie which makes any ethical system seem better than none. Both are acidly funny satires if you don't fall into the trap of seeing things through the narrator's eyes.
The count of monte Cristo? Les Misarables? All quiet on the western front? A tale of two cities? The lord of the rings as an Honorable mention? What the hell are you guys smoking
Kyle Witzen Yes, my opinion. Thank you for stating the obvious. It's simply an opinion, but one that i can argue pretty strongly for, if you wish to. But then again, it's not really just my opinion, but one that, i'm sure, is shared by many others. Have you read Dickens greatest novels? Have you read Don Quixote? and you still think that Catcher in the Rye is better art? One of the top 10 literary achievements in history?
I know, can you believe it!? How can a list of the top 10 greatest novels NOT include the famous (in your mind) Russian writer "Dosteyevski"? It's a trevesti.
Not that famous, I mean I love the book but compared to others in this list it's sort of not that popular ( except for no. 8 I have never heard of that book don't even remember the name )
I agree but Tolstoy deserves to be on the list. These 3 writers you mentioned are in my top 5 too! Anyways, I 've seen hundreds of lists, never agreed fully. It's normal. I think this list is kinda the books we should all read before turn 18. Kafka and Mann are mostly understandable to advanced learners and Dostoevsky is a writer that people either love or hate. Imo as said he is a phenomenon.
For Dickens, I would have chosen _A Tale of Two Cities_ instead of _Great Expectations._ And I would have elevated the choice to one of the top 10, instead of just honorable mention.
I've read 7 of these, and most of the runner ups. I was disappointed in Catcher in the Rye. Kept hearing about how wonderful it was. No Victor Hugo? No Dostoyevsky? No Dickens?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, 1984 by George Orwell, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Iliad by Homer, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Candide by Voltaire, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft
"Man is human, and the small amount of intelligence one may possess counts as little or nothing against the rage of passion and the limits of human nature pressing upon him!" Spoken by Werther From 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' ( 1774, revised 1787 ) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( 1749 - 1832 )
And two pride and prejudice is too courtly love and crap. While les miserables is so dam long, and wonders on to characters that I dont care about, and backstories about characters such as Myriel, Fantine, and other characters that are interesting, but knowing their backstory doesn't matter. Count of Monte Cristo is okay, but the three musketeers is Alexandres best work
1: The Brothers Karamazov 2: The Count of Monte Cristo 3: Le Miserables 4: Bleak House 5: Under The Volcano 6: Brideshead Revisited 7: Father Goriot 8: The Tale of Peter Rabbit 9: Noddy Goes to Toyland 10: Zuleika Dobson 11: Coming Up For Air 12: The Master and Margarita 13: The Red and The Black 14: Catch 22 Honorable Mentions: Stranger in a Strange Land, Dead Souls, Heart of a Dog, The Bridge of San Luis Ray, Villette, and many many more...
Catcher in the rye isn't in your top 14? Just because of the concepts.A Judge cop etc or a love are just a bunch of phonies. A false front or a delusion of what you think you know? No one will ever know anyone.It's Fight club,Donnie Darko,Powder,A clockwork orange,lolita and Nietzsche IQ all rolled into one Book
i think it requires a certain mindset. it's very dark. it's okay if it's not your cup of tea. i'd encourage you to pick it up again in a few years... i hope you will
Zach Clanton Serious question. As someone who loves dystopian fiction such as Brave New World and 1984 to name a few, is Hunger Games a pretty good read? Or is it almost as bad as Twilight or other cash ins?
***** there is a lot of character development through out the beginning and then when the hunger games starts you wont be able to stop reading. it just receives a lot of criticism because for some reason people hate to see things succeed
Ciaran Hufsky I just read Ayn Rand's Anthem after much delay. One of the most passionate dystopian narratives praising individualism I've read. Truly remarkable. Thanks for the suggestion btw, I'll look into Running Man.
C'mon! Don Quixote is not only "THE most important piece of writing to emerge from Spain's golden age", it is THE most important piece of writing to emerge, period.
My favorite books of all time are 1. Notes from Underground by Dostoyevski 2. The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie by Agota Kristof and 3. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. My point is this is a rather subjective matter.
The list should be named: Top 10 Most Influential Novels of Western Culture. (even then, it is not really accurate) Anyway it should include: 1. Shadow Over Innsmouth/ anything from H.P Lovecraft (created the horror-genre) 2. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien (created the high-fantasy-genre) 3. Ulysses - James Joyce (extreme variety of narrative) 4. Pride and Prejudice/ anything from Jane Austen (feministic literature) 5. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (created the speculative fiction) 6. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (marked generations) 7. Unlce Tom's Cabin - Harriet Stowe (opened discussion about slavery) 8. Dracula - Bram Stoker (first big novel where media are important) 9. Germinal - Emile Zola (opened discussion about exploitation) 10. The Stranger - Albert Camus (opened discussion about immigration)
Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn make the top 10 while Lord of the Rings, Frankenstein, and Paradise Lost don't. Please Watchmojo, stick to Movies, TV and Video Games.
This video should have definitely been split up more e.g. Top 10 fantasy, Romanticism, Classicism, Ancient Greek books. 10 is a ridiculously small number for a incredibly large number of absolute classics.
@@rancor4513 Oxford dictionary definition of novel: "a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism." Which one does not qualify?
+Alexander Riley Perhaps, but _The Catcher in the Rye_ is also polarizing for those who have read it and that didn't stop it from getting mentioned. Holden Caulfield is literary Marmite. (Personally, I hated him and the book when I had to read it in high school. And if it doesn't click with you in high school, then it never will.)
it's not artsy fartsy - ulysses is talked about more than it's read. it's penetrable - finnigans wake is unreadable. quite literally. i believe the two have been confused with each other. ...ulysses is not artsy fartsy & if you can not read it then it's on you. ...ulysses belongs.
Is it just me or did anyone else find it weird when they said "It was the best of times it was the worst of times" during War & Peace. Wasn't that from a Tale of Two Cities? I'm sorry I was under the impression they were trying to sneak in a line from the book during the narration of the video. Great vid! BTW I'm surprised Ulysses didn't make the list.
For me anyways 1. Hitchhikers Guide/Restaurant At The End Of The Universe 2. LOTR 3. The Metamorphosis 4. Animal Farm 5. Cat's Cradle 6. A Storm Of Swords 7. A Clockwork Orange 8.A Brave New World 9. Something Wicked This Way Comes 10. Hatchet
Metamorphosis was a novella/short story. It's Brave New World, not "A Brave New World". If Hatchet and A Storm of Swords make this list, you need to read more novels (even if they are all Fantasy or Sci-Fi, there is no way those books crack a sensible top 10, opinion or not)
IveGotToast To be clear, the list was greatest novels of all time, not favorite. You do understand there is a difference correct? Ulysses wouldn't be in my top 50 books I have ever read, but is it likely one of the top 10 greatest novels? Most certainly. You can argue that I am a "self-righteous" cunt, but it does not seem to be my problem that you misinterpret lists and seem to think that your preferred (or nostalgic) novels are synonyms with the ones you think are best. Understand that for those that read these books regularly and encourage reading of higher literature by more people, it is disparaging to see people list Hatchet as the 10th best novel of all time. If you had said Grapes of Wrath was in the top 10, I would have disagreed, but it would not have been idiotic and I would not have "discounted" what you had said. What you did was akin to listing Gerald Ford as one of the top 10 greatest leaders of all time. It makes no sense at all to do so. I am not being some stickler about technicalities (yes I corrected you on Brave New World, but if you read the book, you should know the title), I am basically stating the obvious that a book that no one in their right mind would list in the top 5,000 novels of all time is certainly not in the top 10.
mydogdaisy1212 I began my comment with "for me anyways", so it was clear from the beginning that my list was opinionated. It's my list and I would refuse to put a book that i dislike, such as The Grapes Of Wrath on the list no matter how universally acclaimed it is. Since you can't stand to see a child's novel on the list, I will fix it. I googled "10 best novels of all time" and copied the first list I found. 1. Ulysses 2. The Great Gatsby 3. A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man 4. Lolita 5. A Brave New World ;) 6. The Sound And The Fury 7. Catch - 22 8. Darkness At Noon 9. Sons And Lovers 10. The Grapes Of Wrath Now that's a basic, boring, and unoriginal list that everyone can agree on. Now if you'll excuse me Vikings is on, and I have a date with a bunch of actors with bad accents. You probably don't care though. You strike me as someone who thinks TV is beneath you.
IveGotToast You should read C.S. Lewis's "An Experiment in Criticism" captures the un-literary spirit of the so called literary experts so well. People who read books merely to criticize, and who bring things out of the work to match their own view on life rather than emptying all expectations going into a work and receiving whatever is to be had from the experience in and of itself. Read what you enjoy reading, not what others say you should enjoy
One of the best things about these beloved novels as that even though the acclaimed authors who wrote them are long gone, but the stories are immortal and continue to delight and inspire readers to this very day.
Chandler Sanchez You have the Ulysses, written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which is a poem. But you have also Ulysses, which is a novel, written by James Joyce... So you both are correct :p
The Fact that Blood Meridian, Gravity's Rainbow, White Noise, The Brothers Karamazov, Infinite Jest, among others are not on here is absolutely criminal. Blood Meridian better be on the top of the twentieth Century. that books is the essential book.
Luis Montano except that the "predominant" is a group of countries not just one, 40% of the books are american and the other 60% is between other nations...
Of all the authors of prescribed texts for my high school and university studies, Thomas Hardy is the most vividly remembered regardless of whether or not he should be considered a great novelist. Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles had a massive emotional and moral impact on me. Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice will also always be remembered for their impact. Admittedly, it's pretty futile making a list of the 10 greatest novels. Many English-speaking nationalities would not even know anything about great Asian authors through the centuries. As for more contemporary writers, we shouldn't be intimidated in acknowledging somebody like Stephen King or Margaret Atwood just because they are popular. They should make the top 500 list!
My personal list: 10 - A Christmas Carol 9 - Don Quixote 8 - Pride & Prejudice 7 - Grapes of Wrath 6 - Catcher in the Rye 5 - 1984 4 - Crime & Punishment 3 - Beloved 2 - The Great Gatsby 1 - The Count of Monte Cristo Honorable Mentions (in no order): - Cat’s Cradle - One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - Brave New World - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Wuthering Heights - Kindred - Gravity’s Rainbow
M. Bulgakov's novel "the Master and Margarita" is a very bright and optimistic . The main characters in it are love and creativity as the main exponents of the forces of Good on earth. That is why, perhaps, I advise everyone to read this work. The novel is mystical, exciting and life-affirming, as it raises such issues that have always worried man: good and evil, courage and cowardice, unbelief and faith, creative and free personality, lies and truth, indifference and love, the problem of power, the theme of personal responsibility and personal destiny. Critics have made an analogy of Bulgakov's novel and the history of Faust, only in the "Master and Margarita" the situation is presented in an inverted form. Faust sold his soul to the devil and betrayed the love of Marguerite for the sake thirst for knowledge, and in the novel Bulgakov Margarita makes a deal with the devil for the love of the Master.
Why the fuck was Lord of The Rings not on the list J. R. R. Tolkien formed high fantasy as we know it today its one of the most influential and best selling novels of all time,
Templedelagloire As I've said its formed high fantasy as we know it, Everything Fantasy has been based of Tolkien universe and it "is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold" So the real question is why the fuck isn't it on the list
Templedelagloire But since they have "invented" words that now are in the Oxford dictionary and have a huuuge fanbase (talking about the books, not the films) amongst all ages and both genders it should be on this list. And it is considered one of the best novels of all time
But kids are naturally clanish and pick on each other without mercy and without being stranded, so the introduction of stabilizing power not just laws was the message of order overcoming organized brutality. A foundation of affectual government.
You must be kidding, greatest literute is French. Sartre, Camus, Proust, Hugo, Saint-Exupéry, Stendhal and many, many others. USA had the same quality of literature only from 20th century, when french literature was great already before america has been discovered.
I disagree , Google the Tongan boys who were marooned on an island for over a year in very similar circumstances to the novel . The outcome was very different and very positive . Real life circumstances that make the novel seem somewhat irrelevant .
God I hate Whiner in the Rye so much. And before I get shit, know I understand why people like the book: they can relate to Holden Caulfield, or at least some of his problems. I however cannot, and as a result, the book is just a lot of whining to me.
As a big fan of the book, i totally respect your opinion. I say this because i hate alot of people who liked it, try to turn it around on alot of other people and bash people into liking it. Gives us fans of the book a bad name. It's a really subjective book
He's complaining mostly because of his fucked up mental problems like him being suicidal, his brother dying, his father abusing him, and losing innocence. He wanted to be "the catcher in rye" because his innocence was lost and wanted to save his sister's innocence.
It is perfectly understood the great influence of Russian literature and the great impact it has on these dates, but something that I disagree is that there are better works compared to Nabokov and Lolita, nobody says it is bad because it is not, but does not deserve to be located in the top taking into account that no mention was made to Hemingway or Kafka.
1) Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 2) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 4) Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon 5) Ulysses - James Joyce 6) The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann 7) Don Quixote - Cervantes 8) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky 9) Beloved - Toni Morrison 10) Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
"1984" should have been first, because it examines society as a whole, looking at our base instincts for the pursuit of power and self-survival. Intense, horrifying, prophetic.
I think it's very difficult to produce a Top 10 of greatest novels - particularly with the silent addition "with film adaptations where we can show the clips". What is less important than people agreeing is people thinking. My main criticism would be that "1984" only got "an also ran",. The strength of the prose, the universality of Winston Smith's situation, the ever increasing relevance for our own time makes this novel an essential read for everyone on the planet. It still packs an incredible punch as a novel in its own right.S.x.
I am glad that my second favourite writer Leo Tolstoy is in this top 10 greatest novels of all time. According to my opinion Crime and punishment by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky is also one of the best novels of all time.
I can not be the only one who was severely affected growing up by Jane Eyre. Jane was a smart, bright eyed young girl, who had been through a lot and in niway was perfect, and she knew it. But she was also not pretty, and she fell in love with a man who wasn't handsome, and both would freelyvadmit this about themselves. This barely scratches the surface of how much this book is incredibe
Let me take a wild guess. Books without movie clips were disqualified.
LMAO
I am more into ones like "A Boy and His Dog" from a graphic novel by Harlan Ellison. My kind of comedy.
I read a lot besides those "recommended" and required for English classes.
I also read "The Thirty Years that Shook Physics" by Gamov. Of course that was not required or suggested.
I agree. Movie clips could've been shown now and then, not most of the time..
😁😁
MIke MIhaljevich I was thinking the same about their judgement. Why wasn’t The Master and Margarita on the list. An absolute masterpiece and no sign of it. Pfffft!
This should really be called "Ten Books Senior American High School Kids Have Heard About [ and probably not actually read]"
Exactly
Few have read Moby Dick, Anna Karinena or war and peace! Those books can kill you! 😂😂😂 i'm a survivor of all three, but it was a struggle!
Ha ha you are correct!
@@mandalorianscum1138 I have read two of these three masterpieces. Excellent books. One simply has to get used to reading works for grown-ups.
@@nicholasreid1836 i don't read annything else, i love to chalenge myself!
Everyone is complaining that their favorite book isn't on the list but honestly making a top 10 books of all time list is simply imposible. It should really be top 10 thousand.
+jjjjjjjjjj11ify i agree.
Surely everyone's own top ten book of all time is a snapshot that won't last long, new books added, older ones remembered after the first list was drawn up, favorite themes and plots and characters shifting as our lives develop. Variety is the spice of life, and man and woman don't live by ten books alone.
exactly
I agree, but this list is horrible
i agree too. everyone has a different view. I tend to rank the classic books in my top ten. They stand the test of time. Also societal values change fashions come and go. some books are deeper than others, Some are landmarks others are entertainment.My top two ,simply for quality of the prose are war and peace and wuthering heights. many will disagree but for me those rate. good luck with any top ten
Any attempt to select the top ten novels of all time, without breaking literary works into different categories, is, in my opinion, far too ambitious a quest.
Indubitably
What categories are those exactly? You suggest calling War and Peace epic war novel and Catcher in the Rye to b categorized as Bildungsroman Coming of age type? That's too neurotic. It is for genre fiction. Not for literary fiction.
True
No .... It's Stewpid!
A highschool knows "In search of the lost time"? HAHAHAHA xD
Because it's not the greatest novel of all time if it's not made into a movie
Most classics where adapted to movies. It's not like they are discriminating.
Nayan D'Souza the Catcher in the rye has never been made into a movie and never will because the author hated movies and refused letting anyone have the rights to it even after he dies.
Spencer Not every book needs to be a movie 🙄
There’s no way to sum up the top ten greatest novels of all time. It’s just not possible. There are too many books out there, too many classics especially.
Hell, it would be too hard a task for me to even pick ONE novel as my favorite.
This should be a top 20 list
@@David-se5ph top 20, but with ties available
Agree.
Wisco9er yep .
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment deserves a listing.
Ikr
So true! Such an unfair list, not even ann honourable mention of Crime and Punishment, but they included Moby Dick? Give me a break!
Brother Karamotzov does but not crime and punishment, it offers much less
Shine Joy Moby Dick is fantastic, don’t know why you’re mad but I agree other than that.
Well, this video is American
My personal list:
10- The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
9- Penpal - Dathan Auerbach
8- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
7- The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
6- Going Bovine - Libba Bray
5- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
3- 1984 - George Orwell
2- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
1- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Nice list
Jack O'Connor Thanks
The outsiders should be number one
💯
10. 1984
9. The Catcher and the Rye
8. Of Mice and Men
7. Grapes of Wrath
6. Death In the Afternoon
5. For whom the Bell Tolls
4. Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Cafe
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. The Book Thief
1. East Of Eden
This is my personal favorites not the best
Top ten novels is like saying " Who is your favorite child?" But I am disappointed that Victor Hugo isn't on the list. Either "Les Miserables" or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" is a great read. No Bronte on the list, either?
Oh God !!! All those books are from my all time favourite, I didn't think people like you still exist, you saved me, thanks :D
"Les Miserables" is absolutely in my top 10, maybe even top 5 books of all time. However, I've never actually read "The Brothers Karamozov".
The Brother Karmazove is the best piece of litrature in human history.
I adore Lolita and To Kill Mockinbird, but I don't think they deserve to be on the list.
The epitome of a Russian Novel. Gotta be in any top 10 list.
What did the librarian say to the student?
Read more
10/10
Master of Click Bait
Genius
This joke is just dead now, nobody really gives a ****
Ha
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula deserve Honorable Mentions. They are every bit as iconic and culturally important as any book on this list.
Frankenstein sucked bro, what a drag to get through
H.G.Wells: 'The War Of The Worlds' and 'The Time Machine', and most probably 'The Invisible Man'.
Honestly Frankenstein is a masterpiece but its extremely well.known so people will assume you're not well read, whereas something like lord of the flies, which in my opinion is a classic is still well known and commonly assigned in schools. So no I don't think Frankenstein should be on the last but perhaps something like far from the madding crowd or jude the obscure (both by British novelist and poet, Thomas hardy, who is my favourite writer)
odinson99m Dracula doesnt deserve a spot but Frankenstein sure does. We read that in English 4 during my senior year in high school
@@divisdecos5271 I disagree. Dracula was a great novel and better than Frankenstein.
People too often use “greatest” and “my favorite” interchangeably. These two categories are definitely not synonyms.
The Brothers Karamazov? Not even an honorable mention?
Why do they even try😶
I was thinking the same thing. I don't know how someone could possibly exclude that from a list of the best/most important novels of all time. I can only imagine they haven't read it.
or "Les Miserables"
I thought that too.
as a Russian, I am really impressed that Dostoevsky is so popular. That is great)
I feel like watchmojo produce videos like this to provoke people to click on the video and get views. How can you possibly rank something like this? At LEAST, you can break it down by the decade like you did with the movie list. This is ridiculous.
We ranked dictators. You find THIS ridiculous? ;)
Signed
Mr X
WatchMojo.com
not to mention sandwhiches
WatchMojo.com You're right. Basically everything you guys do is idiotic. This is just an example of that.
LOTR not on this bullshit to the highest degree hang them or at least the hobbit and you signing everything is annoying
WatchMojo.com hey he just gave you another series.
Another list without any Dostoyevsky, like really?
I was hoping Crime and Punishment would make the list.
As was I
Oh my... what a shitty list. Allways the same overrated novels like Gatsby, Lolita, Moby Dick, but no "Brothers Karamazov" or "Demons". It´s regrettable.
christiandoritos several authors are like that, but it's generally the older ones that that got paid by the chapter.
@@alekseinilychkirillov8230 Gatsby isn't overrated
The Sound and the Fury
Ulysses
Crime and Punishment
Brothers Karamazov
The Trial
Ulysses is suspiciously absent. Crime and Punishment should also be in the Top Ten.
Great list.
Otherwise known as "five books you've never read".
Not a one book by hemingway
No catch 22
1984 is a fucking honorable mention
Also fucking draculla maybe?
Many people have told me that Ulysses is very difficult to read. Is that true?
You can't simply do a list like this and not mention Animal Farm...
MetaphorInVain I liked 1984 more but ya. Wheres the Orwell?
YEAH! WHERE'S ANIMAL FARM???!!!
I do agree that Animal Farm is great, but it is more of a novella than a novel.
Implantedclub If that was intend as an insult, I don't think anyone will get offended by that. Animal Farm is a really good book.
well they mentioned a similar book by the same author (1984)
George Orwell’s “1984” novel should be in the top ten.
Hate to say it, but quite frankly it's not top 10
It should be #2!
@@jamesalexander5623 it should be # 1 ;)
This one of the novels that should be in every novels/Sci-Fi/Dystopia books top.
@@TheGyroBarqusShow well it's my fav distopian entry LoL
No Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Joyce??? I would have liked to see The Stranger too... but come on, man, really??? Even Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow? Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain???
All great,and don't forget Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand was amazing, she changed the way I now see the world.
The Picture of Dorian Gray...
That book was great
I know this list must have been hard to make, but Charles Dickens is seriously only an honorable mention?! The man practically gave birth to the modern novel! A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite novel of all time personally. And no Steinbeck either? Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath are masterpieces! And, also, Crime and Punishment deserves a high spot on this list. Talk about a novel with an incredibly thought-provoking social conscience and profundity. And lastly, I was forced to read Madame Bovary in tenth grade, and after reading a bunch of classic literature, I can firmly say that that sad excuse for a book is by far the worst thing I've ever read. I've never hated a character more than I have Bovary herself. She's a disgrace to female characters in literature throughout all time. That book's story isn't even that good. The cyanide-induced suicide at the end was my favorite part for a reason.
I totally agree. A Tale of Two Cities is too good to not make a list like this, I mean the iconic opening lines were literally paraphrased to describe what a different book on this list touched on! I also agree that no Steinbeck or Crime and Punishment is sort of surprising. Perhaps instead of two Tolstoy's they could've made room for one of these?
Sean O'Sullivan I agree! They should have had the one novel per author role. While I do love Great Expectations, I just find AToTC a lot more fun and impactful to read.
EZ64 Yeah it would be a little difficult to narrow down a Dickens to just the one, but my personal favorite was always AToTC and I feel like the list is incomplete without at least one. Then again the same argument could be made for likely Orwell and Steinbeck and plenty of others so I don't exactly envy whoever had to make the final call on this list.
Sean O'Sullivan Yeah, had to be one of their harder ones to compile.
I agree but I think Dickens' real masterpiece is bleak house
Top ten books with movies I can use to keep audience attention
You can't have a top 10 novels of all time list and not even mention Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment is definitely top 10, and The Brothers Karamazov is worthy of greatest book ever written. All these novels on this are super overrated: The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird. Come on now. These books don't hang a lantern on Dostoyevsky.
Absolutely. Also, what about Faulkner and Thomas Mann?
I love the writing style of The Great Gatsby, but it's not a particularly great book. The Catcher in the Rye is way overrated, and is quite juvenile. To Kill a Mockingbird is quite good, but not top 10 ever good.
The Catcher in the Rye might be overrated, but I believe it was the first of the kind. Portraying teen age anxiety and angst, I read it when I was about 16-17 as a teen ager in Denmark in the early sixties, and I loved it. I believe it is a very important book, although to my disappointment my daughter who was born in 1980 did not like it at all.
@@hannejeppesen2887 Oh, I read Catcher when I was younger and loved it, no doubt about it. I tried to reread it later on and just found the book way too juvenile and frankly a little obnoxious. It is a very important book and quite a good book, but it's still way overrated. It's too bad Salinger never was able to follow it up with more mature works, but then maybe he didn't have it in him. (Or else he just never showed the world.)
@@Fantumh I tried to read some of Salinger's other work, but the writing could not hold my attention. I grew up in Denmark and was a teenager in the early sixties, I was probably about 16-17 years old when I read Catcher in the Rye, in Danish. When I came to the US as an au pair 22 years old, I had Catcher in the Rye with me. I had only had about 2 years or less of English in school, but living in the US and watching TV and mixing with young people my age (dating) I learned English fairly fast, also took night classes, it wasn't long before I could read Catcher in the Rye in English, it helped I had my Danish version. By the way about the same time Denmark had 2 famous authors who also published books about coming of age, the confusing, sex etc. Both was a little more edgy than Salinger's and one was quite dark, but still a great book.
It was unfair not including any of Dostoyevsky's works 🤷
Bet you haven’t even read either of them
@@weirdguy4948 i didn't even know I had 25 likes on this one till you made your baseless assumption, thanks man.
@@saptorshighosh1049 and to put Anna Karenina #1? That book is overrated as hell. Its a culture piece drowned in metaphor. You can identify with Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, Alyosha, and the Underground man from Notes from Underground. Those characters were interesting and made you think. I was 200 pages into Anna Karenina and was like "CAN THIS BITCH DIE ALREADY?!" I know I'm smacking a historical "classic" in the face, but Tolstoy couldn't hold a candle to Dostoyevsky.
Big Dostoevsky fan, but he actually acknowledged Anna Karenina was a great novel. But I don’t see how Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov don’t make the list.
Crime and Punishment
Yes!
I was waiting for this one as well.
read c and p. will try to read brothers
Whoever made up this list is not as well-read as they think they are.
agreed, wheres all the doctor who novels?
SouthPark333Gaming fuck. Im laughing because i dont know if your serious. But i have seen the doctor who collection at barns and nobles
Love Doctor Who but is a TV show not a Book.
bernie b There are books about it, so you obviously don't love it that much.
>"Greatest *Novels*"
>"Where's Macbeth? Where is the epic of Gilgamesh?"
C'mon dude think about what you're typing.
The way she pronounced Karenina made me cringe. Also, the lack of Fyodor Dostoevsky on this last made me cringe
I am fairly certain that's the correct pronunciation
+nottomrowntree No it's not. The way she pronounces it sounds weird because one part of the name's all jumbled and then long vowels seem to pop up at random places. And I'm a native russian speaker, by the way. I totally get where T-o-lstoy is coming from in terms of a stress, though, because it's much easier for english-speakers to say it that way than it is to articulate Tolst-o-y as his actual last name was (not to mention that the name's "Lev" not "Leo" but let's leave that for translators' consciense to bear;) )
On a side note, I'm fairly sure that her french pronunciation isn't that accurate either... Oh, those vowels!..
I'm not the one to judge, certainly, but why go out of your way trying to sound like you know some language or other when you clearly don't? It only leads people to think you're all bragging, condescending, and just generally a know-it-all... which is a confusing choice for the image to say the least.
P.S. I sincerely apologise to those who got offended by either the point I made or grammar/spelling/odd sentence structure. As you could've guessed by now (insert an eye-roll), english is not my first language and it's not even the second one so bear with me. Although I am a not-so-soon-to-be translator so that's something.
+Fantastic Bookworm See? That's ^ what they call "holier-than-thou" attitude. ;D
It is the worst top 10 of all time.
Greg Hufton ikr? Where the fuck Dostoevsky?!
100 Years of Solitude, most beautiful book I have ever read; Catcher in the Rye is good, but Seymour is better; Gravity's Rainbow is an astonishing work and simply must be read by anyone who cares about literature...
G R is a very difficult read
@@Pythagoras1963 it’s well worth the effort
100 years of solitude ✍🏾
@@AfterGODsheart Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Alice in Wonderland? 1984? Crime and Punishment?
FrankiesLittleMonster Now that I have heard 1984 does not make the list makes me die a little inside.....
It is on the list... 1984
Alice and Wonderland is just a weird batch of ridiculous.
Greg Espinoza That is YOUR opinion.
Jane Eyre is my favorite classic novel. Not only is it a compelling story, but it is couched in such exquisite prose as to make the vehicle as enjoyable as the journey. Strangely and unfortunately, Bronte's other works were nowhere near as good as this one.
You just called the bible a work of fiction
Same. But they basically are calling any and all religious literatures fake.
***** time for me to move out of America 😂
***** you're right. 😂 I'm just gonna live a life of a recluse. And disable all UA-cam comments
Miguel Tejo oops
This list is very American-inclined , since there is no way novels like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment , Kafka's The Trial & Camus's The Plague , shouldn't be included in any top ten list.
Did you watch the video? I guess Tolstoy was American lol
You like the Brothers Karamazov too?
Just because you don’t like the selection on the list, doesn’t mean the list was American-inclined. There was Tolstoy who is Russian, Proust who is French, and Cervantes who is Spanish.
I would recommend “Dream of the Red Chamber” by Chinese author Cao Xueqin in mid-18th century to be the top one.
Lolita. Lolita. But wait Lolita wasn't a young tempress... she was the victim of HH
What's HH?
Victoria Godwin yeah. I'm so fucking pissed about their description. They obviously only saw the 1962 adaptation of the novel.
No, edenstore, you've confused the narcissistic, self-justifying narrative of the pedophile with the point of the book. The actual point of the book is that Humbert Humbert is a delusional idiot who is chasing after his vanished youth and his childhood girlfriend, imposing that psychosexual dynamic onto his relationship with Dolores, and ruining her life in the process. It's just too evident that Humbert Humbert and Dolores have nothing in common and that he's only convinced himself that she is the love of his life merely because she's there at the right age and thus she becomes a stand-in for Annabel. It's a satire on a superficial American culture that is stuck in a perpetual adolescence.
This is like reading Michel Houellebecq's _Submission_ and coming away with the notion that the message of the novel is that Sharia law is totally awesome merely because the main character finds himself settling in quite happily to the new arrangement, out of an excess of pathetic, 21st century European anomie which makes any ethical system seem better than none. Both are acidly funny satires if you don't fall into the trap of seeing things through the narrator's eyes.
Victoria Godwin exactly
The count of monte Cristo? Les Misarables? All quiet on the western front? A tale of two cities? The lord of the rings as an Honorable mention? What the hell are you guys smoking
Ikr
MrKJ444 All quiet on the western front FTW! And isn't LOTR too complex to be a novel? Idk tho
I'm gonna have to agree with Mr. Poe on this one.
legofreak446 poe's poems pwn posers.
I just finished reading Tale of Two Cities. That book was *SO* hard, but *SO* good!
1984, George Orwell
Me too
LuckyGuu yes
Man of culture I see
Yes. The world building is amazing
I love that book, though it’s very depressing
Fahrenheit 451, Crime and Punishment, The Grapes of Wrath, Brave New World all need a mention
Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby ahead of Don Quixote? No Dickens? Madame Bovary no.2? This is the worst list i've seen yet.
+godriczimmerman Opinion.
Kyle Witzen Yes, my opinion. Thank you for stating the obvious. It's simply an opinion, but one that i can argue pretty strongly for, if you wish to. But then again, it's not really just my opinion, but one that, i'm sure, is shared by many others. Have you read Dickens greatest novels? Have you read Don Quixote? and you still think that Catcher in the Rye is better art? One of the top 10 literary achievements in history?
I have written my own list in the comment section, it is in the public domain, fit for your dismissal.
look at the inspiration scale its not that bad though l didi not agree to all the list too
+godriczimmerman CitR is number one for me. I hold it close to my heart.
No Dosteyevski ? YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME !!!!!
I know, can you believe it!? How can a list of the top 10 greatest novels NOT include the famous (in your mind) Russian writer "Dosteyevski"? It's a trevesti.
i mean, literally taste might be subjective, but are you saying Dosteyevski isn't famous? C'mon!
Tale of Two Cities? Of Mice and Men?
ikr where is omam and animal farm
Of Mice and Men is a novella not a novel
@@francisbennett3054 no it's not
@@adrianbooklecter7545 If you would take the 5 seconds needed to Google it, you would see that of Mice and Men is in fact a novella.
@@francisbennett3054 the first edition wrote below the title: A novel
So it was meant to be one, it doesn't matter it's length, it's like Animal Farm
How The Brothers Karamazov wasn't mentioned here is beyond me.
I thought “The Count of Monte Cristo” would be here.
My favourite!! The movie didn't do it justice. Wish they do a reboot.
Not that famous, I mean I love the book but compared to others in this list it's sort of not that popular ( except for no. 8 I have never heard of that book don't even remember the name )
@@raspberrycrowns9494 How on Earth "The count of Monte Cristo isn't famous?
@@yelyharmony2047 it's one of my favorites but it doesn't get enough recognition like say, Pride and Prejudice
@@raspberrycrowns9494 pride and prejudice sucks
Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Mann should be listed. Two Tolstoy's are too many.
I agree but Tolstoy deserves to be on the list. These 3 writers you mentioned are in my top 5 too! Anyways, I 've seen hundreds of lists, never agreed fully. It's normal. I think this list is kinda the books we should all read before turn 18. Kafka and Mann are mostly understandable to advanced learners and Dostoevsky is a writer that people either love or hate. Imo as said he is a phenomenon.
Tolstoy deserves spots but I personally wish they could’ve included other books, not just obvious classics even non readers will know. yk?
I would have 2 Tolstoy's and 2 dostoeyevskys
For Dickens, I would have chosen _A Tale of Two Cities_ instead of _Great Expectations._ And I would have elevated the choice to one of the top 10, instead of just honorable mention.
“It’s very *minor* Dickens”
I've read 7 of these, and most of the runner ups. I was disappointed in Catcher in the Rye. Kept hearing about how wonderful it was.
No Victor Hugo? No Dostoyevsky? No Dickens?
andyiswonderful if you read it again you will love it
andyiswonderful Great Expectations is by Charles Dickens
@@lesliematteis8010 oops. My Alzhiemers. I read that in high school.
Fyodor dostoevsky, Balzac, Gogol?
Don't expect WatchMojo to actually know something about literature.
facts how do you have a top 10 list and not include dostoyevsky
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Count of Monte Cristo by Alxandre Dumas
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, 1984 by George Orwell, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Iliad by Homer, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Candide by Voltaire, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft
"Man is human, and the small amount of intelligence one may possess counts as little or nothing against the rage of passion and the limits of human nature pressing upon him!"
Spoken by Werther
From 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' ( 1774, revised 1787 )
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( 1749 - 1832 )
Dont worry, they got covered with pride and prejudice on Mrs mojo.
And two pride and prejudice is too courtly love and crap. While les miserables is so dam long, and wonders on to characters that I dont care about, and backstories about characters such as Myriel, Fantine, and other characters that are interesting, but knowing their backstory doesn't matter. Count of Monte Cristo is okay, but the three musketeers is Alexandres best work
I found pride and prejudice to be the most boring book I ever read. Sensibilities changed since her days.
1: The Brothers Karamazov
2: The Count of Monte Cristo
3: Le Miserables
4: Bleak House
5: Under The Volcano
6: Brideshead Revisited
7: Father Goriot
8: The Tale of Peter Rabbit
9: Noddy Goes to Toyland
10: Zuleika Dobson
11: Coming Up For Air
12: The Master and Margarita
13: The Red and The Black
14: Catch 22
Honorable Mentions: Stranger in a Strange Land, Dead Souls, Heart of a Dog, The Bridge of San Luis Ray, Villette, and many many more...
Bleak House, of course. In my opinion', Dickens' greatest with its scathing indictment of the law. Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
Catcher in the rye isn't in your top 14? Just because of the concepts.A Judge cop etc or a love are just a bunch of phonies. A false front or a delusion of what you think you know? No one will ever know anyone.It's Fight club,Donnie Darko,Powder,A clockwork orange,lolita and Nietzsche IQ all rolled into one
Book
Actually, you already have four Honourable Mentions in your top "ten" list. So I suppose you mean "MORE Honourable Mentions"?
Omg love Count of Monte Cristo❤️❤️❤️
gud
The Brothers Karamatzov? Hello?!!!
what translation do you recommend??
beanie angela Pevear and Volokhonsky are often preferred for Russian translations. I have the Constance one tho.
@@agall1013 david mcduff for penguin classics was excellent
greatest novel of all time. Not an exaggeration
Don Quixote number 9? No Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Goethe? This list is horrible :s
+Hans Landa I'm currently reading "The count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas, amazing, just amazing...
+Hans Landa Hemingway, Steinbeck... the list goes on.
+Anton Wooldridge Vonnegut...
+Outhmane Rassili Great choice!
I've read The Catcher In The Rye and I still don't understand why it's such a classic
Because it captures everything.
COULDN'T AGREE MORE! CHEERS
i think it requires a certain mindset. it's very dark. it's okay if it's not your cup of tea. i'd encourage you to pick it up again in a few years... i hope you will
I don't know why it's consider a classic but I keep reading it multiple times. lol
nineteen eighty four should have been number 1, the effect it has is just unbelievable
How is 1984 only an honorable mention! I mean seriously, it was a literary masterpiece and should of been placed on the actual list itself!
I'm so glad the hunger games didn't make the list!
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss makes me want to stay away from the movies too.
The hunger games trilogy is great, but these are completely different books
Zach Clanton Serious question. As someone who loves dystopian fiction such as Brave New World and 1984 to name a few, is Hunger Games a pretty good read? Or is it almost as bad as Twilight or other cash ins?
***** there is a lot of character development through out the beginning and then when the hunger games starts you wont be able to stop reading. it just receives a lot of criticism because for some reason people hate to see things succeed
Ciaran Hufsky I just read Ayn Rand's Anthem after much delay. One of the most passionate dystopian narratives praising individualism I've read. Truly remarkable. Thanks for the suggestion btw, I'll look into Running Man.
I thought all those books are good, but my favorite is "The Sun Also Rises"
100 years of solitude?
michael morales I just got it yesterday! I’m so excited to read it!!!!!!
One of the best books ever, should definitely be in the top ten
What a book.
At least in top 5. A piece of fiction that only a genius mind could create.
Oh! Love that book!
I'm not satisfied with the list as it doesn't include "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" even in the honourable mentions.
Venture Onic maybe they only included books that were adapted to movies
@@yazmorales9015 I realized that some weeks ago.😅
One hundred years of solitude is top tier. The best multigenerational novel of all time
I've read none of these books and I disagree
Maybe you should read them
+Nicholas Rodriguez im reading the catcher in the rye its great
+Tyler Smith is it violent and have action
+kieran sargeant How can you disagree if you haven't read them?
Exactly
what about the Bronte's or Austen or Dickens or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?!? how was this list complied?
C'mon! Don Quixote is not only "THE most important piece of writing to emerge from Spain's golden age", it is THE most important piece of writing to emerge, period.
My favorite books of all time are 1. Notes from Underground by Dostoyevski 2. The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie by Agota Kristof and 3. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. My point is this is a rather subjective matter.
The list should be named: Top 10 Most Influential Novels of Western Culture.
(even then, it is not really accurate)
Anyway it should include:
1. Shadow Over Innsmouth/ anything from H.P Lovecraft (created the horror-genre)
2. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien (created the high-fantasy-genre)
3. Ulysses - James Joyce (extreme variety of narrative)
4. Pride and Prejudice/ anything from Jane Austen (feministic literature)
5. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (created the speculative fiction)
6. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (marked generations)
7. Unlce Tom's Cabin - Harriet Stowe (opened discussion about slavery)
8. Dracula - Bram Stoker (first big novel where media are important)
9. Germinal - Emile Zola (opened discussion about exploitation)
10. The Stranger - Albert Camus (opened discussion about immigration)
Totally agreed. I would recommend “Dream of the Red Chamber” by Chinese author Cao Xueqin in mid-18th century to be the top one.
Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn make the top 10 while Lord of the Rings, Frankenstein, and Paradise Lost don't.
Please Watchmojo, stick to Movies, TV and Video Games.
what's wrong with gatsby?
DoctorXander Paradise Lost is an epic poem homie.
Signed,
KG
WatchMojo.com Touché
Templedelagloire It's not a bad book, but I don't think it even compares to LOTR
Frankenstein is great, but maybe too generic as a horror-sci-fi novel, and technically LOTR is not a novel, but a high fantasy legendarium.
This video should have definitely been split up more e.g. Top 10 fantasy, Romanticism, Classicism, Ancient Greek books. 10 is a ridiculously small number for a incredibly large number of absolute classics.
What about "Lord of the Flies" or "Fahrenheit 451"?
That's not really a novel
@@rancor4513 Oxford dictionary definition of novel: "a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism." Which one does not qualify?
Fahrenheit 451 is massively overrated
@@williamfinch1548 What was your least favorite part?
I enjoyed reading Fahrenhiet 451 , great book
And my some must read would be
Brothers Karamazov
Crime and punishment
Ramayana
1984
Ulysses
da fuck ?? where is Crime and Punishment ?
Right
I fucking love that book
Hicham Dini Dude I was thinking the exact same thing.
Thank you! agreed
Hicham Dini If we are talking dostoyevski, karamazov is the greater book
What about Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey?
No.
Look at the reviews.
Fuck those books
Fuck no.
¬¬
Would it be considered too artsy-fartsy to mention Ulysses by James Joyce?
That's why I don't think it made a top ten list. Same with most of the novels I enjoy lol.
+Alexander Riley Perhaps, but _The Catcher in the Rye_ is also polarizing for those who have read it and that didn't stop it from getting mentioned. Holden Caulfield is literary Marmite. (Personally, I hated him and the book when I had to read it in high school. And if it doesn't click with you in high school, then it never will.)
ulysses belong here
Yes.
it's not artsy fartsy - ulysses is talked about more than it's read. it's penetrable - finnigans wake is unreadable. quite literally. i believe the two have been confused with each other. ...ulysses is not artsy fartsy & if you can not read it then it's on you. ...ulysses belongs.
Wow, Tolkien and Dickens get only an honorable mention? And Catcher in the Rye is on this list at all? Just wow.
Is it just me or did anyone else find it weird when they said "It was the best of times it was the worst of times" during War & Peace. Wasn't that from a Tale of Two Cities? I'm sorry I was under the impression they were trying to sneak in a line from the book during the narration of the video. Great vid!
BTW I'm surprised Ulysses didn't make the list.
Gone With the Wind
Rebecca
Drácula
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus
Gone With The Wind,I consider a soap opera read,certainly not literature.
Gone With the Wind should have been included in place of To Kill a Mockingbird which was a politically-correct choice.
For me anyways
1. Hitchhikers Guide/Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
2. LOTR
3. The Metamorphosis
4. Animal Farm
5. Cat's Cradle
6. A Storm Of Swords
7. A Clockwork Orange
8.A Brave New World
9. Something Wicked This Way Comes
10. Hatchet
Metamorphosis was a novella/short story. It's Brave New World, not "A Brave New World". If Hatchet and A Storm of Swords make this list, you need to read more novels (even if they are all Fantasy or Sci-Fi, there is no way those books crack a sensible top 10, opinion or not)
IveGotToast To be clear, the list was greatest novels of all time, not favorite. You do understand there is a difference correct? Ulysses wouldn't be in my top 50 books I have ever read, but is it likely one of the top 10 greatest novels? Most certainly. You can argue that I am a "self-righteous" cunt, but it does not seem to be my problem that you misinterpret lists and seem to think that your preferred (or nostalgic) novels are synonyms with the ones you think are best. Understand that for those that read these books regularly and encourage reading of higher literature by more people, it is disparaging to see people list Hatchet as the 10th best novel of all time. If you had said Grapes of Wrath was in the top 10, I would have disagreed, but it would not have been idiotic and I would not have "discounted" what you had said. What you did was akin to listing Gerald Ford as one of the top 10 greatest leaders of all time. It makes no sense at all to do so. I am not being some stickler about technicalities (yes I corrected you on Brave New World, but if you read the book, you should know the title), I am basically stating the obvious that a book that no one in their right mind would list in the top 5,000 novels of all time is certainly not in the top 10.
mydogdaisy1212 I began my comment with "for me anyways", so it was clear from the beginning that my list was opinionated. It's my list and I would refuse to put a book that i dislike, such as The Grapes Of Wrath on the list no matter how universally acclaimed it is.
Since you can't stand to see a child's novel on the list, I will fix it. I googled "10 best novels of all time" and copied the first list I found.
1. Ulysses
2. The Great Gatsby
3. A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
4. Lolita
5. A Brave New World ;)
6. The Sound And The Fury
7. Catch - 22
8. Darkness At Noon
9. Sons And Lovers
10. The Grapes Of Wrath
Now that's a basic, boring, and unoriginal list that everyone can agree on.
Now if you'll excuse me Vikings is on, and I have a date with a bunch of actors with bad accents. You probably don't care though. You strike me as someone who thinks TV is beneath you.
IveGotToast You have good taste in literature my friend.
IveGotToast You should read C.S. Lewis's "An Experiment in Criticism" captures the un-literary spirit of the so called literary experts so well. People who read books merely to criticize, and who bring things out of the work to match their own view on life rather than emptying all expectations going into a work and receiving whatever is to be had from the experience in and of itself. Read what you enjoy reading, not what others say you should enjoy
One of the best things about these beloved novels as that even though the acclaimed authors who wrote them are long gone, but the stories are immortal and continue to delight and inspire readers to this very day.
where the fuck is ulysses?? it should easily be number 1 but its not even in the honorable mention here
Ulysses is a poem.....
Chandler Sanchez Ulysses is a novel.
Chandler Sanchez lol no
+Stephano619 Templedelagloire
It's clsssified as an "epic poem," like the divine comedy by Dante. Just because it's long doesn't make it a book.
Chandler Sanchez You have the Ulysses, written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which is a poem. But you have also Ulysses, which is a novel, written by James Joyce... So you both are correct :p
The Fact that Blood Meridian, Gravity's Rainbow, White Noise, The Brothers Karamazov, Infinite Jest, among others are not on here is absolutely criminal.
Blood Meridian better be on the top of the twentieth Century. that books is the essential book.
This list is definately made by white American arts college students
Szabó Gergely I know, right? I was expecting more lit-nerds raging, tho.
Canadians...they are Canadians. With a predominant list of British, French and Russian books.
Luis Montano except that the "predominant" is a group of countries not just one, 40% of the books are american and the other 60% is between other nations...
Why the fuck does it even matter if they're American? That is like saying, I don't like China because there's too many Chinese people there.
but they are Canadian, just like you muffin...
Wow ! Not a single Jane Austen book on the list. And what about Thomas Hardy with Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Of all the authors of prescribed texts for my high school and university studies, Thomas Hardy is the most vividly remembered regardless of whether or not he should be considered a great novelist. Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles had a massive emotional and moral impact on me. Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice will also always be remembered for their impact.
Admittedly, it's pretty futile making a list of the 10 greatest novels. Many English-speaking nationalities would not even know anything about great Asian authors through the centuries. As for more contemporary writers, we shouldn't be intimidated in acknowledging somebody like Stephen King or Margaret Atwood just because they are popular. They should make the top 500 list!
Love Thomas Hardy,have you read Jude The Obscure? It made me cry
Tess of the d'Urbervilles is amazing. This book brought me to love classic literature.
This one SHOULD be required reading in High School!
The absence of Crime and Punishment is criminal... *ba dum tss*
or the brothers karamavoz..
yes
The magic mountain, Hundred years of solitud, The Stranger, Hunger, On the road, Ulyses, Tropic of cancer.
My personal list:
10 - A Christmas Carol
9 - Don Quixote
8 - Pride & Prejudice
7 - Grapes of Wrath
6 - Catcher in the Rye
5 - 1984
4 - Crime & Punishment
3 - Beloved
2 - The Great Gatsby
1 - The Count of Monte Cristo
Honorable Mentions (in no order):
- Cat’s Cradle
- One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
- Brave New World
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Wuthering Heights
- Kindred
- Gravity’s Rainbow
Can you explain me how any of these is better than lord of the rings???
@@סטסאנטיפוב-ק9ב personal taste
@@samhartje723 maybe in test but objectively nothing better than lotr
@@סטסאנטיפוב-ק9ב objectivity doesn’t apply to subjective, personal lists like this. You sound like a fucking dweeb.
@@סטסאנטיפוב-ק9בtry Malazan
M. Bulgakov's novel "the Master and Margarita" is a very bright and optimistic . The main characters in it are love and creativity as the main exponents of the forces of Good on earth. That is why, perhaps, I advise everyone to read this work. The novel is mystical, exciting and life-affirming, as it raises such issues that have always worried man: good and evil, courage and cowardice, unbelief and faith, creative and free personality, lies and truth, indifference and love, the problem of power, the theme of personal responsibility and personal destiny. Critics have made an analogy of Bulgakov's novel and the history of Faust, only in the "Master and Margarita" the situation is presented in an inverted form. Faust sold his soul to the devil and betrayed the love of Marguerite for the sake thirst for knowledge, and in the novel Bulgakov Margarita makes a deal with the devil for the love of the Master.
Why the fuck was Lord of The Rings not on the list J. R. R. Tolkien formed high fantasy as we know it today its one of the most influential and best selling novels of all time,
why should it be?
Templedelagloire As I've said its formed high fantasy as we know it, Everything Fantasy has been based of Tolkien universe and it "is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold" So the real question is why the fuck isn't it on the list
***** neither of those reasons - influential to its genre and best-selling - are good enough to make it one of the best novels of all time
Templedelagloire
But since they have "invented" words that now are in the Oxford dictionary and have a huuuge fanbase (talking about the books, not the films) amongst all ages and both genders it should be on this list. And it is considered one of the best novels of all time
Not everyone is a fat geek that says Lord of The Rings is the best best selling book of all time.
come on, Lord of the Flies should've been at least an honorable mention
FlyDie heart of darkness >
But kids are naturally clanish and pick on each other without mercy and without being stranded, so the introduction of stabilizing power not just laws was the message of order overcoming organized brutality. A foundation of affectual government.
It was honestly an amazing book. It needs recognition on a Top 10 Novels of All Time list.
WatchMojo, I think you must read more foreign literature. There are too many american novels on this list
Ed Barros Alot of these writer's aren't even American ..... 😒
Four authors are Americans and Nabokov wrote Lolita in English.
Ed Barros The American literary canon has surpassed that of any other country, adequate competition coming only from England and Russia.
Ed Barros why are you associating it being written english with it being american
You must be kidding, greatest literute is French. Sartre, Camus, Proust, Hugo, Saint-Exupéry, Stendhal and many, many others. USA had the same quality of literature only from 20th century, when french literature was great already before america has been discovered.
Lord of the flies. Becomes more and more relevant all the time...
I disagree , Google the Tongan boys who were marooned on an island for over a year in very similar circumstances to the novel . The outcome was very different and very positive . Real life circumstances that make the novel seem somewhat irrelevant .
It’s always been relavant
God I hate Whiner in the Rye so much. And before I get shit, know I understand why people like the book: they can relate to Holden Caulfield, or at least some of his problems. I however cannot, and as a result, the book is just a lot of whining to me.
Where do I mail your Medal for best comment on youtube?
Never had I read someoe complain so much.
In my personal list, it's one of the worst books I've ever read.
completely agree with everything you say. Its more of an influential book than a great book.
As a big fan of the book, i totally respect your opinion. I say this because i hate alot of people who liked it, try to turn it around on alot of other people and bash people into liking it. Gives us fans of the book a bad name. It's a really subjective book
He's complaining mostly because of his fucked up mental problems like him being suicidal, his brother dying, his father abusing him, and losing innocence. He wanted to be "the catcher in rye" because his innocence was lost and wanted to save his sister's innocence.
It is one of the worst lists I've seen.
My favorite book, of course, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
best book ever, in my opinion...
It is perfectly understood the great influence of Russian literature and the great impact it has on these dates, but something that I disagree is that there are better works compared to Nabokov and Lolita, nobody says it is bad because it is not, but does not deserve to be located in the top taking into account that no mention was made to Hemingway or Kafka.
1) Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 2) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 4) Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon 5) Ulysses - James Joyce 6) The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann 7) Don Quixote - Cervantes 8) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky 9) Beloved - Toni Morrison 10) Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
Don Quixote really should be #1... Truly a renaissance masterpiece
no mention of Joyce or Dostoevsky or Kafka.
instead a montage of books which could provide convenient Hollywood film clips.
"1984" should have been first, because it examines society as a whole, looking at our base instincts for the pursuit of power and self-survival. Intense, horrifying, prophetic.
In what way does 1984 examine our pursuit of power and self-survival?
@@evanreichelt8745 it’s overrated asf
I’m surprised no one ever attempted to make a movie adaptation of “Catcher In The Rye”.
Oh, Billy Wilder once wanted to
Derek Roberts it would probably ruin it. The catcher in the rye is a beautiful book by itself it doesn't need a movie to go with it
That's because its illegal
Shreyan Karki why is it illegal?
@@Foxy-ve1oh Salinger refused to sell the movie rights or something like that
the Picture of Dorian Gray
I read and liked this book of Oscar Wilde very much
People need to read it because movies screw it up every time.
Total Masterpiece.
Also Mauppassant is amazing. Try his short stories
I think it's very difficult to produce a Top 10 of greatest novels - particularly with the silent addition "with film adaptations where we can show the clips". What is less important than people agreeing is people thinking. My main criticism would be that "1984" only got "an also ran",. The strength of the prose, the universality of Winston Smith's situation, the ever increasing relevance for our own time makes this novel an essential read for everyone on the planet. It still packs an incredible punch as a novel in its own right.S.x.
I can't believe none of the books listed have pictures in them
I am glad that my second favourite writer Leo Tolstoy is in this top 10 greatest novels of all time. According to my opinion Crime and punishment by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky is also one of the best novels of all time.
You should have split it up in all the different genres or time periods.
Steinbeck should've been on here somewhere...
Grapes of Wrath
Only Californians care I think.
Of Mice and Men!
I can not be the only one who was severely affected growing up by Jane Eyre. Jane was a smart, bright eyed young girl, who had been through a lot and in niway was perfect, and she knew it. But she was also not pretty, and she fell in love with a man who wasn't handsome, and both would freelyvadmit this about themselves.
This barely scratches the surface of how much this book is incredibe