1. The Iliad by Homer 2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 4. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 5. The Odyssey by Homer 6. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 7. The Oresteia by Aeschylus 8. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 9. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence 10. The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi 11. The Ramayana by Valmiki 12. Hiroshima by John Hersey 13. The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams 14. Walden by Henry David Thoreau 15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 16. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine 17. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 18. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 19. Our Town by Thornton Wilder 20. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 21. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 22. Middlemarch by George Eliot 23. The Dirty Dust by Máirtin Ó Cadhain 24. Chronicles of Jean Froissart 25. Poems of Wang Wei 26. Satires of Juvenal 27. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 28. The Golden Ass by Apuleius 29. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 30. The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White 31. The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon 32. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin 33. One Thousand and One Nights 34. Njal’s Saga 35. The Outermost House by Henry Beston 36. The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre 37. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Bashō 38. The Conference of the Birds by Attar 39. The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton 40. The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours 41. Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke 42. Krieg by Ludwig Renn 43. The Tale of the Heike 44. Antigone by Sophocles 45. Poems of Du Fu 46. The Scholars by Wu Jingzi 47. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 48. Poems of Catullus 49. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 50. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 51. The Aeneid by Virgil 52. Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer 53. A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman 54. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 55. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 56. The Mahabharata by Vyasa 57. Stories of Lu Xun 58. A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume 59. Odes of Horace 60. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon 61. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 62. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 63. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan 64. The Secret History by Procopius 65. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer 66. The Republic by Plato 67. The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth 68. Candide by Voltaire 69. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft 70. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope 71. Roughing It by Mark Twain 72. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin 73. Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell 74. Confessions of Saint Augustine 75. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams 76. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto 77. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius 78. The First Folio of William Shakespeare 79. Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 80. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio 81. The Demons by Heimito von Doderer 82. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin 83. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli 84. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West 85. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman 86. The Once and Future King by T. H. White 87. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides 88. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius 89. Paradise Lost by John Milton 90. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell 91. The Poetic Edda 92. Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus 93. North and South by Elizabeth Bishop 94. Germinal by Émile Zola 95. The Water Margin by Shi Nai’an 96. History of the Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott 97. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 98. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt 99. The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart 100. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Every time I hear about that book, I'm turned off. It might be good. I might be missing out, but It doesn't interest me. What's your take? Is it worth the trouble or self-indulgent to its own detriment?
@@Barklord I liked it when I read it years back. I think I was 23 at the time. Its depiction of addiction really hit me. You can feel the Foster-Wallace snark and self-indulgence come through at times but it didn't put me off. It's like the least Steve book ever though, which is why I mentioned it - I can see why he isn't a fan. The plot is largely unsatisfying and the style is overwritten. But the characters, some of scenes and the themes it grappled with stick with me. I'd look up some excerpts and some of David's writing to see if it gels with you. His essay on Roger Federer is a decent litmus test, I think. Overall I'm happy I read it!
Whoa, no Ovid?! Is this exclusion the biggest twist of all time?! I was also shocked by the lack of Plutarch’s Lives, Herodotus, the King James I Bible, The Praise of Folly, and Montaigne. But I've got over 40 potentially wonderful books to discover so much thanks, Steve!
I think maybe there's a distinction between (1) greatest books (2) favorite books and (3) most influential (seminal) books. _The Bible_ is seminal; Ovid the favored son; _The Iliad_ the greatest.
@@mdavidmullins But how could Ovid's Metamorphoses not make it onto the greatest books of all time? It's objectively one of the great masterpieces of Roman literature. And the Bible is both great (in parts) and important. These exclusions make no sense, damn it! Let's hope Steve sets up one of his live Q&A sessions so we can discover his reasoning.
@@garethreeves6090 Well it's not my list, but I know that Ovid is his favorite writer, so obviously he's distinguishing be things he loves and things he thinks are great. I know that he believe the Bible to to one of the most important and probably the most important book, so again he's distinguishing. Logic dictates that there must then be (1) important/seminal/influential books (2) loved/favorite books (3) great books. Maybe if the list was 101 books then Ovid would have made the cut? He'd have to enter the conversation for us to know for sure.
No sooner had I recovered my senses from the shocking (though admittedly entirely expected) lambasting of my beloved Les Miserables than I was hit with the entirely unexpected shock of no Ovid Metamorphoses. Really keeping us on our toes! 😂
Thank you for taking the time to assemble this list. So far, Dante's Divine Comedy is my all time favorite, with Moby Dick and The Tale of Genji tied for second place. BTW, you are much better at "lists" than the NYTimes!
Thanks, Steve! 🙂 Great list! Also please consider doing a list of your top 100 favorite books? (Whether that's all non-fiction, all fiction, a mix of both, or entirely separate lists.) I just can't get enough of your lists! Please and thank you, good sir.
So many books on your list I haven't read! How exciting! And some I've read just this year and loved like War and Peace, The Pillow Book, and Mrs. Dalloway. Thank you for putting this list together, I'm excited to research more about the many titles I'm not familiar with.
Thanks for the list Steve! I'll be digging at it for a long time to come. I'd have never guessed that The Magic Mountain won't feature at all here though, you always called it the greatest novel of the 20th century, and there many other novels of that century here except that one..
I saw a stage production of The Oresteia two years ago, exactly 2,480 years after its debut. It played at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and seeing it was one of the highlights of my theater-going life.
" Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, an immensely beautiful novel.. Anna Karenina is one of my most loved books. How many times I have read it I can’t remember. I mean the number of times - I remember the book perfectly well, I can relate the whole book. If I was drowning in the ocean and had to choose just one novel out of all the millions of novels in the world, I would choose Anna Karenina. It would be beautiful to be with that beautiful book. It has to be read and read again; only then you can feel it, smell it, and taste the flavor. It is no ordinary book. Leo Tolstoy failed as a saint, just as Mahatma Gandhi failed as a saint, but Leo Tolstoy was a great novelist. Mahatma Gandhi succeeded as - and will remain forever - a pinnacle of sincerity. I don’t know of any other man in this century who was so sincere. When he wrote to people ‘sincerely yours’ he was really sincere. When you write ‘sincerely yours’, you know, and everybody else knows, and the person to whom you are writing also knows, that it is all bullshit. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to really be ‘sincerely yours’. That’s what makes a person religious - sincerity. Leo Tolstoy wanted to be religious but could not be. He tried hard. I feel great sympathy with his effort, but he was not a religious person. He has to wait at least a few more lives. In a way it is good that he was not a religious man ; otherwise we would have missed Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and dozens more beautiful, immensely beautiful books. nobody is more worthy of a Nobel Prize than Leo Tolstoy. His creativity is immense, he was unsurpassed by anyone. He was nominated, but refused by the committee because of his unorthodox stories on Christianity. The Prize committee opens its records every fifty years. When records were opened in 1950, researchers rushed to see whose names were nominated and cancelled and for what reason. Leo Tolstoy was nominated, but never given the prize as he is not an orthodox Christian." Another book by Leo Tolstoy: one of the greatest in all the languages of the world, War and Peace. Not only the greatest but also the most voluminous...thousands of pages, so big, so vast, they make you afraid. But Tolstoy’s book has to be vast, it is not his fault. War and Peace is the whole history of human consciousness - the whole history; it cannot be written on a few pages. Yes, it is difficult to read thousands of pages, but if one can one will be transported to another world. One will know the taste of something classic. Yes, it is a classic."
Thank you, Steve. This series of videos has been enjoyable and educational. Today, John Hersey's Hiroshima arrived from Amazon but there are plenty of others that are now on my radar.
I just read Odyssey and Tale of Genji in the last few months. Both of them were very good. Tale of Genji was way better than I expected, I read the Washburn translation. I also read War and Peace last year, and it was very difficult to finish. However, it is excellent, and I think of it often. I definitely wanna reread it. I am about to start the Divine Comedy this month, and I cannot wait. I need to read the Iliad soon. Adding it to my TBR next year.
Thanks for your videos. An undertaking of this sort is certainly subjective by its very nature. Many great books listed. Unfortunately, many great books not listed. Not my list, but still very illuminating.
The good news is I have read 2/3 of the books on this list although many are probably due for a re-read. I will put these on my draconian TBR. Mark, over at Booktube with Elvis, your "younger, sexier competition" is back. His words, not mine. (I keep my own counsel on such matters.)❤
I think Lawrence was devastated by the treatment of the Arabs following the war. Not surprisingly as he praised their bravery and honor… I loved that book, I’m glad it made it on your list! And i will go back and see your earlier episodes
It's wonderful to see the Shahnameh in the top ten! There is a little-known translation from more than 100 years ago that is my favorite; it's by Arthur and Edmond Warner and done in blank iambic pentameter. It's also joyously archaic in its English, but I like that. A flock of British scholars back then learned Persian because it was not only intrinsically worthwhile, but because it was still a major literary language of British India.
Great List. Tale of Genji is my all-time favorite book. I was also really moved by Mrs Dalloway and Death in Venice. Thank God for Penguin Books! The Iliad is really up there for me. I've read 53 of your 100, so there's plenty left. I'm on a Roman History kick right now, so that will hit a few more on your list. So fun!
I recently finished War and Peace and i absolutely loved it one of the best things ive ever read. I have a soft spot for The Oresteia as well, i played Clytemnestra when I was in drama school. Wonderful experience
I just finished reading my second translation of The Iliad. I plan on reading another translation next year. The great works are worthy of reading over and over again.
It was a wonderful experience gping through this top 100! I have to say i am very surprised at the lack of The Brothers Karamazov and The Magic Mountain, but whether they were oversights or jusy not included, wonderful effort!
I'm sad to say I've dropped the Oresteia about halfway through, as short as it is. I will pick it up and finish it soon just because it pains me to abandon reads, but I know it will be grueling. I wish my taste would encompass works such as this, maybe I still have to mature as a reader! Thanks for this 100 ranking in any case, it's been great to listen to!
Clearly, your knowledge of Greek tragedy is miles beyond mine, so I was thrilled to see one of my favorites, The Oresteia, on your list. I did wonder, though, about Iphigenia in Aulis; she provides both the beginning to the war, and the reason for Clytemnestra's revenge. Can her story be separated from The Oresteia? (I know these are written by two different playwrights.) Sorry if the answer here is obvious -- I'm a fan of the Greek plays, but not a scholar.
You know where I stand! I want you (to return to BookTube); I lust after you (making new videos, that is); I yearn for you (to rejoin the fun, obviously)! Just turn on the camera and make a quick video telling me what you've been reading lately! Take 15 minutes out of your busy SHEDUULE!
While many of my favorites books did not make your list (no surprise there), the only glaring omission I see from the Western canon is Shakespeare (not to minimize the absence of Ovid who has many vociferous champions in the comments). I’d love to know why you left out The Bard.
I am rather surprised to find out that of your very inclusive list I’ve read The Tale of Genji, The Odyssey, War and Peace, and The Iliad. My TBRs include A Room of One’s Own and The Divine Comedy. Currently reading Canterbury Tales.
Did I hear correctly? The crapola that is Les Miserables? 😂 You certainly are more well-read than I, but I would really like to know why, as I was planning on reading this.
The Literature nerds or English professors or Intellectuals who reside on the East Coast lean towards the Russian, Greek, and feminist authors but a lot of old literature was really dense and usually centered around religion or was vanguard questioning religion, pointing out hypocrisy like with Voltaire. The Devine Comedy is elusive to the modern reader who only notices the gory details because the author was ostracized and bitter over politics. I find a lot of the idolized literature works to be overrated. It’s like high brow people who are into classical music. I didn’t follow the entire list but Sinbad, Arabian Nights. The travel narratives are fun. Surprised to see The Canterbury Tales in the top 10 because it’s very Middle Ages spoken in Middle English. The King James Bible is worth mentioning because it is moral compass, fable and very well written, sure it’s cryptic and open to interpretation but that’s what also gives it longevity since everyone has an opinion. This is also true for conspiracy books like Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper. Younger people would probably tolerate reading Beowulf over War and Peace. The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort and Behind The Flying Saucers by Frank Scully; Strieber’s Communion are worth mentioning. Probably not Top 10.
Hunger games you might lol - but it's the only that tried to teach kids about propaganda ,I like pulp. President Snow was an intellectual in it, put your glasses on = Fight a war.
The Divine Comedy is three books, Oresteia is not a book and if it was it would be like the Divine Comedy (three books), and Heart of Darkness is not a 'book'.
And I suppose next you'll be saying this isn't a dumb asshole comment you've made? By all means, though, thanks for the rude reminder that I'm a high school freshman! I'm always forgetting
"Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world. If one has to decide on 10 great novels in all the languages of the world, one will have to choose at least 3 novels of Dostoevsky in those 10. Dostoevsky’s insight into human beings and their problems is greater than your so-called psychoanalysts, and there are moments where he reaches the heights of great mystics. His book BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is so great in its insights that no BIBLE or KORAN or GITA comes close. In another masterpiece of Dostoevsky, THE IDIOT, the main character is called ‘idiot’ by the people because they can’t understand his simplicity, his humbleness, his purity, his trust, his love. You can cheat him, you can deceive him, and he will still trust you. He is really one of the most beautiful characters ever created by any novelist. The idiot is a sage. The novel could just as well have been called THE SAGE. Dostoevsky’s idiot is not an idiot; he is one of the sanest men amongst an insane humanity. If you can become the idiot of Fyodor Dostoevsky, it is perfectly beautiful. It is better than being cunning priest or politician. Humbleness has such a blessing. Simplicity has such benediction."
Really bad list. The best book on there is Genji, but even that is very simplistic compared to modern literature's best. Greek plays don't compare to Shakespeare who doesn't compare to the Modern Masters. Prob the earliest book that can be considered one of the greatest is Don Quixote. In a similar way there is no book in this list that comes close to Moby Dick in daring and complexity/ Most influential or seminal works for human lit is a list these belong to, but the Oresteia pales to O'Neill or August Wilson's Decades plays. There is nothing on this list as immersive as A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. There is nothing as funny and politically pointed as Slaughterhouse 5. Again greatness is a wholly different quality than seminality.
What a bunch of nonsense 😂 .. I can’t believe you consider yourself a better playwright than Shakespeare.. I watched your dumbo videos. You’re delusional and full of bs. Someone who likes to feel important.
@@MadmanGoneMad2012 If memory serves, Steve described him as an illiterate yokel, who acted as a front for the brilliant Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
@@Tolstoy111 A very ignorant and narrow minded statement. Also a testament to the pedestrian Western arrogance and bias. Knowing next to nothing, assuming everything and passing it off as global public consensus. If the two Indian epics had been scrutinised, exposed to even a 10th of what Western Canon works are this conversation wouldn't be happening.
@@Tolstoy111 Kindly name them and reiterate what you understood!! And compare it with the number and reach of Iliad and Oddyssey. Ignorance with stubbornness is a deadly combination. I am pretty sure you haven't even read a proper translation or even read the two classics. But still are arguing for the sake of it. There's nothing in Iliad or Oddyssey that can even hold a candle to the vast epic and philosophical scope of Maharashtra's poetry or the heartwarming virtuous beauty of Ramayana. A fact that will remain till the end of time despite the ignorant deniers like you.
1. The Iliad by Homer
2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
5. The Odyssey by Homer
6. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
7. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
8. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
9. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
10. The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
11. The Ramayana by Valmiki
12. Hiroshima by John Hersey
13. The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
14. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
16. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
17. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
18. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
19. Our Town by Thornton Wilder
20. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
21. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
22. Middlemarch by George Eliot
23. The Dirty Dust by Máirtin Ó Cadhain
24. Chronicles of Jean Froissart
25. Poems of Wang Wei
26. Satires of Juvenal
27. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
28. The Golden Ass by Apuleius
29. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
30. The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White
31. The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
32. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
33. One Thousand and One Nights
34. Njal’s Saga
35. The Outermost House by Henry Beston
36. The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre
37. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Bashō
38. The Conference of the Birds by Attar
39. The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
40. The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours
41. Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
42. Krieg by Ludwig Renn
43. The Tale of the Heike
44. Antigone by Sophocles
45. Poems of Du Fu
46. The Scholars by Wu Jingzi
47. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
48. Poems of Catullus
49. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
50. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
51. The Aeneid by Virgil
52. Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer
53. A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman
54. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
55. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
56. The Mahabharata by Vyasa
57. Stories of Lu Xun
58. A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
59. Odes of Horace
60. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
61. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
62. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
63. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
64. The Secret History by Procopius
65. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
66. The Republic by Plato
67. The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
68. Candide by Voltaire
69. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
70. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
71. Roughing It by Mark Twain
72. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
73. Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
74. Confessions of Saint Augustine
75. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
76. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
77. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
78. The First Folio of William Shakespeare
79. Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
80. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
81. The Demons by Heimito von Doderer
82. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
83. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
84. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
85. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
86. The Once and Future King by T. H. White
87. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
88. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius
89. Paradise Lost by John Milton
90. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
91. The Poetic Edda
92. Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus
93. North and South by Elizabeth Bishop
94. Germinal by Émile Zola
95. The Water Margin by Shi Nai’an
96. History of the Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott
97. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
98. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
99. The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart
100. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Thanks for summarizing the entire list for everyone! 😊
Thank you very much for this
Thanks for doing this.
59 odes of Horace
@@zmaxwell9548 thank you very much, but where is King, he is going to be somewhere?
Infinite Jest takes the number-one spot! Staggering.
Every time I hear about that book, I'm turned off. It might be good. I might be missing out, but It doesn't interest me. What's your take? Is it worth the trouble or self-indulgent to its own detriment?
@@Barklord I liked it when I read it years back. I think I was 23 at the time. Its depiction of addiction really hit me.
You can feel the Foster-Wallace snark and self-indulgence come through at times but it didn't put me off.
It's like the least Steve book ever though, which is why I mentioned it - I can see why he isn't a fan. The plot is largely unsatisfying and the style is overwritten. But the characters, some of scenes and the themes it grappled with stick with me.
I'd look up some excerpts and some of David's writing to see if it gels with you. His essay on Roger Federer is a decent litmus test, I think.
Overall I'm happy I read it!
Whoa, no Ovid?! Is this exclusion the biggest twist of all time?! I was also shocked by the lack of Plutarch’s Lives, Herodotus, the King James I Bible, The Praise of Folly, and Montaigne. But I've got over 40 potentially wonderful books to discover so much thanks, Steve!
Yeh wtf I thought Ovid’s Metamorphoses was his fav!
I think maybe there's a distinction between (1) greatest books (2) favorite books and (3) most influential (seminal) books. _The Bible_ is seminal; Ovid the favored son; _The Iliad_ the greatest.
@@mdavidmullins But how could Ovid's Metamorphoses not make it onto the greatest books of all time? It's objectively one of the great masterpieces of Roman literature. And the Bible is both great (in parts) and important. These exclusions make no sense, damn it! Let's hope Steve sets up one of his live Q&A sessions so we can discover his reasoning.
@@garethreeves6090 Well it's not my list, but I know that Ovid is his favorite writer, so obviously he's distinguishing be things he loves and things he thinks are great. I know that he believe the Bible to to one of the most important and probably the most important book, so again he's distinguishing. Logic dictates that there must then be (1) important/seminal/influential books (2) loved/favorite books (3) great books. Maybe if the list was 101 books then Ovid would have made the cut? He'd have to enter the conversation for us to know for sure.
Plutarch's Lives should be required reading FOR EVERYONE.
This list will guide my reading for many years to come. Thank you Steve!
No sooner had I recovered my senses from the shocking (though admittedly entirely expected) lambasting of my beloved Les Miserables than I was hit with the entirely unexpected shock of no Ovid Metamorphoses. Really keeping us on our toes! 😂
Couldn't agree more about 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. An amazing tale. Epic, as you said. Almost mythic. And written beautifully.
Thank you! Your presentation is very nice and allows me to understand your love of each book
Thank you Steve. I've really enjoyed this countdown. Lots to think about and choose my picks for my TBR.
Thank you for taking the time to assemble this list. So far, Dante's Divine Comedy is my all time favorite, with Moby Dick and The Tale of Genji tied for second place. BTW, you are much better at "lists" than the NYTimes!
Thanks, Steve! 🙂 Great list! Also please consider doing a list of your top 100 favorite books? (Whether that's all non-fiction, all fiction, a mix of both, or entirely separate lists.) I just can't get enough of your lists! Please and thank you, good sir.
So many books on your list I haven't read! How exciting! And some I've read just this year and loved like War and Peace, The Pillow Book, and Mrs. Dalloway. Thank you for putting this list together, I'm excited to research more about the many titles I'm not familiar with.
Thanks for the list Steve! I'll be digging at it for a long time to come. I'd have never guessed that The Magic Mountain won't feature at all here though, you always called it the greatest novel of the 20th century, and there many other novels of that century here except that one..
I saw a stage production of The Oresteia two years ago, exactly 2,480 years after its debut. It played at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and seeing it was one of the highlights of my theater-going life.
Ok, Ok! I will read The Iliad! 😃 Great list.
" Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, an immensely beautiful novel.. Anna Karenina is one of my most loved books. How many times I have read it I can’t remember. I mean the number of times - I remember the book perfectly well, I can relate the whole book.
If I was drowning in the ocean and had to choose just one novel out of all the millions of novels in the world, I would choose Anna Karenina. It would be beautiful to be with that beautiful book. It has to be read and read again; only then you can feel it, smell it, and taste the flavor. It is no ordinary book.
Leo Tolstoy failed as a saint, just as Mahatma Gandhi failed as a saint, but Leo Tolstoy was a great novelist. Mahatma Gandhi succeeded as - and will remain forever - a pinnacle of sincerity. I don’t know of any other man in this century who was so sincere. When he wrote to people ‘sincerely yours’ he was really sincere. When you write ‘sincerely yours’, you know, and everybody else knows, and the person to whom you are writing also knows, that it is all bullshit. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to really be ‘sincerely yours’. That’s what makes a person religious - sincerity.
Leo Tolstoy wanted to be religious but could not be. He tried hard. I feel great sympathy with his effort, but he was not a religious person. He has to wait at least a few more lives. In a way it is good that he was not a religious man ; otherwise we would have missed Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and dozens more beautiful, immensely beautiful books.
nobody is more worthy of a Nobel Prize than Leo Tolstoy. His creativity is immense, he was unsurpassed by anyone. He was nominated, but refused by the committee because of his unorthodox stories on Christianity. The Prize committee opens its records every fifty years. When records were opened in 1950, researchers rushed to see whose names were nominated and cancelled and for what reason. Leo Tolstoy was nominated, but never given the prize as he is not an orthodox Christian."
Another book by Leo Tolstoy: one of the greatest in all the languages of the world, War and Peace. Not only the greatest but also the most voluminous...thousands of pages, so big, so vast, they make you afraid.
But Tolstoy’s book has to be vast, it is not his fault. War and Peace is the whole history of human consciousness - the whole history; it cannot be written on a few pages. Yes, it is difficult to read thousands of pages, but if one can one will be transported to another world. One will know the taste of something classic. Yes, it is a classic."
Great list! glad to see The Shahnameh and War & Peace on the list.
Now make the list of 100 overrated books of all time...just for fun!
Wonderful. Thank you for this amazing list.
Thank you, Steve. This series of videos has been enjoyable and educational. Today, John Hersey's Hiroshima arrived from Amazon but there are plenty of others that are now on my radar.
Thank you for doing this list Steve!
Wow Stephen King is in top 10! Amazing.
😂😂joke of the century 🤣😆 Steve will sue you 😁
I just read Odyssey and Tale of Genji in the last few months. Both of them were very good. Tale of Genji was way better than I expected, I read the Washburn translation. I also read War and Peace last year, and it was very difficult to finish. However, it is excellent, and I think of it often. I definitely wanna reread it. I am about to start the Divine Comedy this month, and I cannot wait. I need to read the Iliad soon. Adding it to my TBR next year.
Thanks for your videos. An undertaking of this sort is certainly subjective by its very nature. Many great books listed. Unfortunately, many great books not listed. Not my list, but still very illuminating.
The good news is I have read 2/3 of the books on this list although many are probably due for a re-read. I will put these on my draconian TBR.
Mark, over at Booktube with Elvis, your "younger, sexier competition" is back. His words, not mine.
(I keep my own counsel on such matters.)❤
I think Lawrence was devastated by the treatment of the Arabs following the war. Not surprisingly as he praised their bravery and honor… I loved that book, I’m glad it made it on your list! And i will go back and see your earlier episodes
It's wonderful to see the Shahnameh in the top ten! There is a little-known translation from more than 100 years ago that is my favorite; it's by Arthur and Edmond Warner and done in blank iambic pentameter. It's also joyously archaic in its English, but I like that. A flock of British scholars back then learned Persian because it was not only intrinsically worthwhile, but because it was still a major literary language of British India.
Great List. Tale of Genji is my all-time favorite book. I was also really moved by Mrs Dalloway and Death in Venice. Thank God for Penguin Books! The Iliad is really up there for me. I've read 53 of your 100, so there's plenty left. I'm on a Roman History kick right now, so that will hit a few more on your list. So fun!
I recently finished War and Peace and i absolutely loved it one of the best things ive ever read. I have a soft spot for The Oresteia as well, i played Clytemnestra when I was in drama school. Wonderful experience
I read The Iliad in my early 20s. The translation was in prose. It blew my mind. I’m primarily a SciFi reader, but I agree that it tops the list.
I just finished reading my second translation of The Iliad. I plan on reading another translation next year. The great works are worthy of reading over and over again.
Watched them all and enjoyed it immensely. Probably didn't convince me to read any of those I haven't, but thank you for the experience.
Well, a) I wasn't trying to convince you, and b) you should give everything on this list a try
I thought Ovid's Metamorphoses was going to be number 1. I imagine though, how daunting a task this can be with the huge amount of books you have read
It was a wonderful experience gping through this top 100! I have to say i am very surprised at the lack of The Brothers Karamazov and The Magic Mountain, but whether they were oversights or jusy not included, wonderful effort!
Ohhhh, my favorite epic of all time is out of your list, I'm so sad, I 'd love to see Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate up there with the best!
I have read 5, my favorite of those being either War and Peace or Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Yay. Shahnemh made the list ❤
Phew I was worried when I thought you chose The Odyssey over The Illiad 😅
Thank you ❤
Surprised to find that I have read five out of your list of ten!!
I'm sad to say I've dropped the Oresteia about halfway through, as short as it is. I will pick it up and finish it soon just because it pains me to abandon reads, but I know it will be grueling. I wish my taste would encompass works such as this, maybe I still have to mature as a reader!
Thanks for this 100 ranking in any case, it's been great to listen to!
Sad not to see The Recognitions in this list!
I was really expecting MEG to be number 1.
Clearly, your knowledge of Greek tragedy is miles beyond mine, so I was thrilled to see one of my favorites, The Oresteia, on your list. I did wonder, though, about Iphigenia in Aulis; she provides both the beginning to the war, and the reason for Clytemnestra's revenge. Can her story be separated from The Oresteia? (I know these are written by two different playwrights.) Sorry if the answer here is obvious -- I'm a fan of the Greek plays, but not a scholar.
So you are keeping Ulysses in your GOD TIER list. Can't wait for that video.
23/100, not too bad haha (you're making me consider a return to booktube for a response video 😅)
You know where I stand! I want you (to return to BookTube); I lust after you (making new videos, that is); I yearn for you (to rejoin the fun, obviously)! Just turn on the camera and make a quick video telling me what you've been reading lately! Take 15 minutes out of your busy SHEDUULE!
BBC Wales production of War and Peace.What do you think of it.l thought it was great...
Your left eyebrow is my patronus.
Quite possibly the comment of the century
What do you think of The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa?
Biggest surprise for me is no Ovid. Followed by the King James Bible and Mann.
I hope that it's on the high school reading list at least for seniors.Well,at least one of them lol
But . . . but . . . Where's Ovid?
While many of my favorites books did not make your list (no surprise there), the only glaring omission I see from the Western canon is Shakespeare (not to minimize the absence of Ovid who has many vociferous champions in the comments). I’d love to know why you left out The Bard.
I am rather surprised to find out that of your very inclusive list I’ve read The Tale of Genji, The Odyssey, War and Peace, and The Iliad. My TBRs include A Room of One’s Own and The Divine Comedy. Currently reading Canterbury Tales.
Tale of Genji is my favorite work of fiction… unbelievable book
You are the first person other than Steve to say that. So many people have DNF'd that one that I am hesitant to dive in.
Where's LOTR and the books of the Bible?
Nice list. Surprised no Ulysses.
He hates Ulysses
Did I hear correctly? The crapola that is Les Miserables? 😂 You certainly are more well-read than I, but I would really like to know why, as I was planning on reading this.
The cat has entered the chat.
I knew he wouldn't choose Fifty Shades of Grey.
The Literature nerds or English professors or Intellectuals who reside on the East Coast lean towards the Russian, Greek, and feminist authors but a lot of old literature was really dense and usually centered around religion or was vanguard questioning religion, pointing out hypocrisy like with Voltaire. The Devine Comedy is elusive to the modern reader who only notices the gory details because the author was ostracized and bitter over politics. I find a lot of the idolized literature works to be overrated. It’s like high brow people who are into classical music. I didn’t follow the entire list but Sinbad, Arabian Nights. The travel narratives are fun. Surprised to see The Canterbury Tales in the top 10 because it’s very Middle Ages spoken in Middle English. The King James Bible is worth mentioning because it is moral compass, fable and very well written, sure it’s cryptic and open to interpretation but that’s what also gives it longevity since everyone has an opinion. This is also true for conspiracy books like Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper. Younger people would probably tolerate reading Beowulf over War and Peace. The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort and Behind The Flying Saucers by Frank Scully; Strieber’s Communion are worth mentioning. Probably not Top 10.
Where's Debbie does Dallas?
No Don Quijote is unacceptable
It’s # 49
I stand corrected - thanks!
So many tantalizing titles for my list - but no Proust?!
surprised James Joyce didn't make the list
Joyce BROTHERS has a better shot
@@saintdonoghue not a fan of Ulysses i take it
@@jameshendrix8217look at his Daily Penguin videos for Joyce
I'm surprised Ulysses wasn't in the top ten, Steve.
Is shahname just poems¿
Hunger games you might lol - but it's the only that tried to teach kids about propaganda ,I like pulp. President Snow was an intellectual in it, put your glasses on = Fight a war.
Whose list is this?
???
His own. Who else’s?
I honestly thought The Bible would have been your number one pick
Don´t forget about the great Russian composers!
No Dan Brown? JK Rowling? L Ron Hubbard? Scandalous.
The Divine Comedy is three books, Oresteia is not a book and if it was it would be like the Divine Comedy (three books), and Heart of Darkness is not a 'book'.
And I suppose next you'll be saying this isn't a dumb asshole comment you've made? By all means, though, thanks for the rude reminder that I'm a high school freshman! I'm always forgetting
@@saintdonoghue If you're smart enough to read the books and opine on the books then...
“Book” is a general term. Dante’s Comedy is one work that’s published as one book. The Oresteia is a united “work”. HOD is a novella - another book.
Isn't The Seven Pillars of Wisdom a dudebro pick? You know that Grammaticus will be doing back flips now 🤭
Am I not the King of Dudebros?
@@saintdonoghue Of course your royal dudeness. 👑
"Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world. If one has to decide on 10 great novels in all the languages of the world, one will have to choose at least 3 novels of Dostoevsky in those 10. Dostoevsky’s insight into human beings and their problems is greater than your so-called psychoanalysts, and there are moments where he reaches the heights of great mystics. His book BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is so great in its insights that no BIBLE or KORAN or GITA comes close.
In another masterpiece of Dostoevsky, THE IDIOT, the main character is called ‘idiot’ by the people because they can’t understand his simplicity, his humbleness, his purity, his trust, his love. You can cheat him, you can deceive him, and he will still trust you. He is really one of the most beautiful characters ever created by any novelist. The idiot is a sage. The novel could just as well have been called THE SAGE. Dostoevsky’s idiot is not an idiot; he is one of the sanest men amongst an insane humanity. If you can become the idiot of Fyodor Dostoevsky, it is perfectly beautiful. It is better than being cunning priest or politician. Humbleness has such a blessing. Simplicity has such benediction."
John Bunyan-'Pilgrim's Progress '(1678/1688) is wonderful, better than anything to come out of Russia.
A piece of trolling so completely, obviously insane that it ends up being fun! Thanks!
Really bad list. The best book on there is Genji, but even that is very simplistic compared to modern literature's best. Greek plays don't compare to Shakespeare who doesn't compare to the Modern Masters. Prob the earliest book that can be considered one of the greatest is Don Quixote. In a similar way there is no book in this list that comes close to Moby Dick in daring and complexity/
Most influential or seminal works for human lit is a list these belong to, but the Oresteia pales to O'Neill or August Wilson's Decades plays. There is nothing on this list as immersive as A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. There is nothing as funny and politically pointed as Slaughterhouse 5.
Again greatness is a wholly different quality than seminality.
Hilarious
@@saintdonoghue It is an unintentionally funny list.
@@cosmoetica It certainly is funny! "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" being better than the Iliad is still making me chuckle
Was this a parody of cultural obliviousness?
What a bunch of nonsense 😂 .. I can’t believe you consider yourself a better playwright than Shakespeare.. I watched your dumbo videos. You’re delusional and full of bs. Someone who likes to feel important.
Therefore, Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town' is better than all the plays of Shakespeare?
Shakespeare who?
@@MadmanGoneMad2012 If memory serves, Steve described him as an illiterate yokel, who acted as a front for the brilliant Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
The First Folio is on the list, yes?
Ramayana is way too high on this list.
Have you even read it??? It is beyond Iliad and Oddyssey.
@@PGChemistry-s2ythis list isn’t ranked. But nobody outside of India regards it as a greater than Homer.
@@Tolstoy111 A very ignorant and narrow minded statement. Also a testament to the pedestrian Western arrogance and bias. Knowing next to nothing, assuming everything and passing it off as global public consensus. If the two Indian epics had been scrutinised, exposed to even a 10th of what Western Canon works are this conversation wouldn't be happening.
@@PGChemistry-s2y There’s nothing stopping anyone from scrutinizing them. And plenty of scholars in the West have.
@@Tolstoy111 Kindly name them and reiterate what you understood!! And compare it with the number and reach of Iliad and Oddyssey. Ignorance with stubbornness is a deadly combination.
I am pretty sure you haven't even read a proper translation or even read the two classics. But still are arguing for the sake of it. There's nothing in Iliad or Oddyssey that can even hold a candle to the vast epic and philosophical scope of Maharashtra's poetry or the heartwarming virtuous beauty of Ramayana. A fact that will remain till the end of time despite the ignorant deniers like you.
No Meg?