@@esar71 We all had the same thought, I guess, when he raved about Crime and Punishment, with Brothers K being such a far superior novel (yes, I know he’s reading from a list, but still…)
The list with timestamps 0:59 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 1:21 1984 by George Orwell 1:57 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 2:20 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2:45 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 3:16 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 3:47 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 4:23 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 4:38 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 6:18 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 6:45 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 7:12 Moby-dick by Herman Melville 7:54 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 8:31 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 8:44 Beloved by Toni Morrison 8:56 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 9:17 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 9:31 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas 9:52 The Odyssey by Homer 10:00 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 10:16 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 10:37 The Iliad by Homer 10:48 Ulysses by James Joyce
I've read not quite half of the books on this list. The three that stand out for me as the best are 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Of those that I have read, I rank The Great Gatsby at the bottom. I didn't like it all. That being said, I very much prefer non-fiction to fiction and some of the best are written as well as or better than the best fiction pieces. Among my favorites are: -- The Guns of August, A Distant Mirror (Barbare Tuchman) -- Nine April Days (Burke Davis) -- Iron Men and Saints, The Flame of Islam (Harold Lamb) -- The Last Lion (William Manchester) and most of his other works, -- Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road, and A Stillness at Appomattox (Bruce Catton) -- The Storm Before the Storm (Mike Duncan) -- Seeing in the Dark (Timothy Ferris) -- The Messier Objects (Stephen James O'Meara) and the rest of this series -- The Physicist (C.P. Snow) -- The Pinball Effect (James Burke) I have many other non-fiction favorites, but they aren't within reach of my home computer. 🙂
I really don’t enjoy this list or most of the “classics”. I think a lot them are overrated. As far as I’m concerned, the list needs to be updated. What is the youngest book on the list? Did “classics” stopped being written in the late twentieth century?
@@EdwardPigg-ji4yy The term "classics" refers to older works, so something written 10 years ago is not a classic...at least not yet. Maybe 50 or a hundred years from now it will be. But your take on these books is fair, in my opinion. For instance, The Great Gatsby is not an enjoyable book to read. All of the characters are despicable and the story isn't uplifting or ennobling. However, the technical skill by which it was written is remarkable. Doubly true for Nabokov's work. Pure genius with the language, which btw, English is not his first language. I can't stand Catcher in the Rye and many of the stories from that era reflect a social existence that I find extremely self-centered. My point is, you're not wrong! I have enjoyed the books on this list quite a bit overall, but I get where you're coming from.
@@EdwardPigg-ji4yy totally agree... i have read most of them about 30 years ago and tried re-reading some of them again and most of them were a bit sh1t. 1984 and Frankenstein i still enjoyed but others were quite zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Klavan’s political insight, but I’d be thrilled if we just got an hour of his cultural commentary every week. His opinions on literature, art, film, and Christianity are primary reasons why I tune in every week. Well, that and to remember how to spell Klavan.
Same, I feel like he’d be able to reach a larger audience as well. I watch a lot of book UA-camrs, and klavan could easily be the best if he focused more on the arts. Also be away to help more subtlety influence people into the ideals of conservatism
It's a good novel if you are a psychologist, but honestly I found the tone, subject matter, philosophication on religion etc incredibly dull. Much preferred Crime and Punishment.
@@TheRealRenAmamiya Curiously, I've read Dostoyevski (borthers karamazov, crime and punishment, the gambler), and I just couldn't like it. You can't say I haven't tried! To be fair, The Gambler was fun.
The Count of Monte Cristo is underrated! It's like a 1000 pages long but it moves so fast. Beware abridged editions which are everywhere (and even though they're still like 500-600 pages), especially in the older translations. Unless you can read French, get the Robin Buss translation. It's the best in English. Interestingly there's both a miniseries and a film coming out this year. 😊 Edit. If you love The Count of Monte Cristo and you also love science fiction, see Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination which is a fun sci-fi version of The Count of Monte Cristo.
William S Burroughs 'Junky' is in my top ten, but that's relatability the rest of his and his contemporaries did nothing for me, . C&P is above everything I've read, but I have Brother's Karimozov to read as well as The Grand Inquisitor. Notes from underground' blew me away, and that is considered lesser of his works. Edit never been more disappointed by a writer than Hunter S Thompson, and his end proved my intuition based on the books I read, correct
@@Video81501 If you are a slow reader start with small light novel. But pick those that are of a very high quality. Audiobooks are really no different from tv,film or games. Books are unique and very few people get to experience them. Also finding good quality short stories is a way to learn reading.
On that note, does anyone know of a Conservative Book Club or person to follow on new books? Everything, I mean everything out there from Oprah to NYT is so heavily liberal biased.
My husband appreciates you rereading The Lord of the Rings. He looks forward to your retraction and apology as it takes its rightful place in the S tier.
Totally agree, I’ve tried reading that book at least 3 times now and just can’t figure out what people see in it. I’ve read most of the books on this list and GG would definitely be in last of what I’ve read. Other than that, really good list. I would have had The Brothers K and Blood Meridian on it, but no list is perfect
I thoroughly enjoyed the first 5 minutes of each and every Lord of the Rings Movies. I tried to read the Hobbit. Who are these creatures and does anybody care what happens to them?
@@johnrusche8256 Everybody cares, if you're into a more personalised Jungian story. It's the hero's journey done perfectly. He literally comes back with new wisdom and gold to revitalise the state (village) (the beginning, you know, is that he ventures from the safety of his green valley into the unknown). The Lord of the Rings has driven me towards Christianity more than any other thing. Its greatest piece of single insight, for me, was the notion that 'despair is a sin' (the line is, 'despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.').
1. Curious George, by Margret & H.A. Rey 2. Green Eggs & Ham, by Dr. Seuss 3. Scrooge McDuck comics (with grand-nephews Hughy, Dewey, and Louie) by Carl Banks
Knowles still does his book club each month. So there is always that one. Would be fun if Daily Wire did an actual interactive one though on the Daily Wire app. Maybe a focused video to kick it off (like Knowles does with a different guest for each book) and then a chat conversation with him or someone else to discuss the books as a group.
"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."
So, three of his S-tier are by Russian authors. He put the Lord of the Rings in the A-tier. Therefore, Klavan is clearly a spreader of Russian misinformation. Heck, he probably even knows how to spell Klavan.
I was waiting for Aldous Huxley to appear on there but I was left unfulfilled. "Brave New World" was the first book to ever peak my interest, therefore, I believe it totally rules.
It is a great book. However I was in a book club and the people who choose that book to read had trouble getting through it. I suspect because it was written long time ago and the first 50 pgs are exposition which can be hard to get through. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin is 90% as good and written more recently so an easier read.
@@Scottlp2 nah it's a very smooth read. Maybe they weren't interested enough on the subject to put that little effort in abstraction to visualize its world into their minds. Not that it's so hard, given that it's one inch away from today's reality...
I find Aldous Huxley to be overrated by people with a certain specific ideology who almost always hate george orwell books.... Yeah i get the fact that it's a good book, but isn't even close to 1984 and much less popular to be on this tierlist anyway.
I have been reading books consistently since I was 17 and the only one of these I have read is 1984. I am going to take the initiative and make this a book bucket list. Thank you Drew! ETA, 1984 is my S tier novel. I read in different stages of my life and it always hits just little bit different each time.
@@Le_Samourai Old and everything else. Sometimes fiction sometimes non. I went through some of Dawkins, all of Hitchens, some Hume, all pre 2000's King books. Many Koontz. Huxley. I read a lot apocalypse and zombie books because they are just entertaining. Many many individual books.
@@LJewett well I’m glad ur diving into the western canon. Some of my favs are War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, and Moby-Dick. If you want a bucket list, look into Harold Bloom’s western canon list (the short version, it’s 28 authors I think)
Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Tolkien. That’s the peak of literature. Specifically, “The Brothers Karamazov,” “A Christmas Carol,” and “The Lord of the Rings.” “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson gets the honorable mention
I love Nicholas Nickelby. True to Dicken’s form, it is absolutely hilarious without seeming to try. But A Christmas Carol is extremely packed with meaning, yet is a very short read. When you say Nicholas Nickelby runs circles around it, that is because it takes ten times longer to have as much of an impact.
I love Tolkien but I think Mark Twain is superior. Tolkien to me is probably the greatest storyteller at least of the 20th century, but not the greatest novelist.
I agree that Andrew should do more book and movie reviews. I really want him to do a writers conference with Spencer and Faith( I would be Ok with an appearance by Ben)
The instant dismissal of Morrison's Beloved is drenched in irony. Every other piece gets its time or rationalization where she is just an overrated black woman. As someone who has read all the novels mentioned (barring War and Peace), I wholeheartedly disagree, but at the end of the day, it's just 1 guy's opinion equal to mine.
Aside from having read the books listed, this guy has basically no good judgement as for literature. His takes are consistently terrible and he knows very little about the writers of which he talks. Gertrude Stein was actually a prolific novelist (“I don’t think she ever wrote a novel”) and was a fundamental influence on virtually all of our greatest modern novelists (Hemingway and Beckett wouldn’t exist without her). How can you dismiss Moby Dick and love Ulysses? How can you miss the fact that the adventure story is the least important part of the novel? How is The Count of Monte Cristo, a notoriously terrible dime novel, besides Tolstoy? Why isn’t Invisible Man in S or A tier, when it is the quintessential American postmodern novel?
He put Count of Monte Cristo written by Alexandre Dumas, a black man, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in the S Tier. He's calling balls and strikes and he's right.
@@jpm5205 What does the placement of those two books have to do with the fact that he didn't give reasons for Beloved's placement like he did for the others?
@@LJewettI tried reading The Hobbit many years ago and found it so dull it was practically unreadable. I decided to give LOTR a try before the movies came out and could hardly put the books down. Absolutely fantastic, enthralling storytelling. Don't let The Hobbit get between you and Tolkien's masterpiece! Btw after loving LOTR so much I thought maybe I should try The Hobbit again but nope. Still ha ted it.
Tolkien I believe is one of the greatest late modern philosophers. The LOTR is a critique of Modernity from the perspective of a Medievalist, which Tolkien was. It's not a postmodern critique though, which is why they hate it.
While it’s subtly true, Tolkien did come out and say the books were not meant to be topical, but just enjoyed as a great story. Many questioned if they were satirical of WW2, which you could make that argument, but it wasn’t his intent.
The Scouring of the Shire chapter is probably his most explicit cultural critique, denouncing the destruction inherent in centralized power structures like communism.
I love Crime and Punishment (C&P) too! 😊 One of my all time favorites! 1. I only read a bit of Russian, really at the level of a tiny human, aka child, in fact, so I have had to read Dostoevsky in translation. I first read C&P in the Oliver Ready translation, which was amazing, but the Michael Katz translation is also awesome. Generally speaking, I think Katz is better if you prefer American English, Ready if British English. But both are excellent translations. 2. Personally, I find both Ready and Katz far better than the more popular Pevear and Volokhonsky or the older, though still good Constance Garnett. That said, if you like prim and proper Victorian-Edwardian English and sensibilities, then Garnett can be good. Even though Dostoevsky lived in the Victorian era, and he loved Victorian English writers like Charles Dickens, Dostoevsky was almost anything but the stereotypical English Victorian. On the one hand, I'll always be thankful for Garnett (and the husband-wife team of the Maudes) bringing so much of the best of Russian literature to the English speaking world. On the other hand, Garnett is known to have simply elided bits of Russian she didn't quite understand and as such some of Dostoevsky is missing in translation. 3. For P&V problems, see "The Peaverization of Russian Literature" (I think it's called) by Gary Saul Morson, who has also been on the Al Mohler show as well as a couple of other similar podcasts, as well as "Pevear and Volokhonsky are indeed overrated" by John McWhorter. There's also a good article over on First Things about Pevear and Volokhonsky issues, but unfortunately, I can't remember the author or title and I can't be bothered to Google. 4. In Russia, Dostoevsky's greatest works are informally known as his Pentateuch or Five: Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov (which was meant to be the first half of a huge two part work but Dostoevsky died before the second half), The Adolescent aka Raw Youth, The Idiot, and The Demons (which uncannily all but predicted the Russian revolution and all the evil and bloodshed that would follow, I suppose it was good that Dostoevsky didn't live to see his terrible predictions come to pass). Notes from Underground is often considered a kind of prelude to the aforementioned Five. His short stories "White Nights" and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" are also worth reading. Of course, if one can only read one or two of his works, then it'd have to be Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. But the others are valuable literature as well. It's already an amazing feat for an author to pen a single great literary work, but for the same author to pen two or more great literary works is obviously far greater (e.g. Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Steinbeck, Garcia Marquez, Tolstoy). Dostoevsky is among this number. 5. It's an understatement to say Dostoevsky had an incredibly hard life. That doesn't begin to describe all the suffering he endured. See Joseph Frank's biography which is the best biography of Dostoevsky. However, unless you have a lot of time to read, know it's a super long multi-volume work; I'd recommend his own shorter one volume version, which is still like 1000 pages in length. Briefly, Dostoevsky was born and grew up in a hospital for the poor. He lived and grew up seeing sick and dying patients. His father likely was murdered by peasants, and that's quite likely why murder and even patricide are often main plot points and central themes in his writings such as in The Brothers Karamazov. As a young man, he was almost executed for treason against the tsar because he participated in a revolutionary group; the worst he did in this group was publicly read a banned work and make inflammatory remarks against the then-regime. At the last minute, just as he (alongside his compatriots) was blind-folded and about to be shot dead by a firing squad, the execution was called off. It had been a mock execution to put the fear of the tsar into the revolutionaries as well as to witness the tsar's mercy. Instead Dostoevsky was sent off to Siberia for something like almost a decade of his life living and working in abysmal conditions that would make Dickens's worst described social ills in England look like child's play. Dostoevsky also had his first wife and at least one child die (e.g. his 3 year old son Alyosha whom he loved with his whole life fell off a tall building and died). It may say something about Dostoevsky that he named his worst characters "Fyodor" and his best characters "Alyosha". In any case, Dostoevsky was an increasingly committed and devout Russian Orthodox Christian through his life and especially later in his life, though he was an imperfect man (e.g. he possibly had an affair, he struggled with a gambling addiction, he was anti-Semitic though sadly this was commonplace in Europe and Russia at the time and even the affable Charles Dickens had characters like Fagin and the coming popularity of The Protocols of the Elders was not far off). Nevertheless Dostoevesky lived a difficult life, wrestling with the most fundamental questions in life, especially suffering and evil, and his art reflects his pains. Edit: Typos, minor errors.
I read a review of Chekhov stories by Pevear and Volokonsky in First Things that cracked me up. The whole article was praising Chekhov(who I adore) and talking him up and quoting him. Then it ends with saying “don’t get this translation! It sucks”
I actually read the introduction to _The Idiot,_ which included information about the character of Myshkin in an early draft. Apparently he started out as a cad who wanted to reform. This leads me to believe that the whole book is an exploration of the theme, "OK, so if a guy could love as purely as _Jesus Christ Himself_ could he love two women at the same time without things going horribly wrong?" The whole "what would Jesus do, 19th century Russia edition" was just something he kept filling chapters with because his audience loved it.
I knew a Russian immigrant Jew who said that Pasternak was much superior to Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsen, both of whom I have read but not P. All I can say is that the movie of Zhivago is my favorite after Godfather.
The best play I ever saw was “The Brothers Karamazov”. The Lord of the Rings book is way way better than the movies. LOTR is NOT an action story; the movies turned it into an action story. LOTR is full of subtlety, the movies are in your face. LOTR is one of the greatest books ever written; the movies look good but put in too much emotion and drag out the scenes.
I had never watched before a video of this guy, I speak spanish and I can not communicate in English because I don't understand what I hear, but I hear this man's voice and I can understand perfectly, he has great pronunciation ❤
Having recently taken a bigger interest in reading and writing, I love these Klavan segments! It's refreshing having a conservative figure discuss literature.
As much as I hate the "woke" approach to art criticism I have to vehemently disagree that Beloved is only acclaimed because it was written by a black woman. Morrison's prose has that Faulknerian incantatory power to its rhythm and lyricism, and it's one of the only "haunted house" stories that's genuinely haunting. I view it as a companion piece to Faulkner's Light in August as being among the only novels that strike the right aesthetic note about America's racist past in a way that's not sententious as, say, To Kill a Mockingbird unfortunately is. I was so struck by it I read it twice over the span of two days. As for Moby Dick I also disagree, but I also understand this criticism more. I think Moby Dick's greatest triumph is in its breadth, from the comedy (people sleep on how funny a book it is) to the transcendental to the psychological character detail to the didactic... it has a little bit of everything in its pages and I remember being struck by how I could never predict where it was going next. It's also one of those books that's a joy to reread and endlessly interpret, full of all kinds of detail you miss on the first or second reads. As much as I love Austen I'd actually give George Eliot the title of "greatest female novelist." Two very different styles, but I appreciate Eliot's combination of realism and philosophical reflection/depth over Austen's more subtle, understated, satirical style. I also think Middlemarch belongs on this list (and Emma over Pride & Prejudice, IMHO). Noticeably absent from the list is anything by Faulkner, arguably America's greatest novelist. I understand his best works are considered "difficult," but his output from The Sound and the Fury to Absalom! Absalom! is perhaps the most remarkably creative period for any novelist throughout history. If anything it's difficult to just single out one. Most would nominate The Sound and the Fury but I have a soft spot for As I Lay Dying, and it's among the more accessible of his masterpieces. I'm not a big Dostoevsky fan, but I get why so many connect with him. I like Dostoevsky best when he's leaning into the proto-noir suspense and drama of his psychologically warped characters like Rask, but dislike him tremendously when he's trying to manipulatively peddle Christianity as a salve for his reactionary fever dream of what people will be like if they embrace these newfangled philosophers he didn't like or understand. The problem is that Dosto didn't grasp that morality is social transmitted, and the people in a position in life to contemplate and embrace abstruse philosophical positions like nihilism and rationalism and utilitarianism aren't those going out and committing murders; the latter is far more a product of economic hardships (something Dosto toys with in the novel but doesn't explore enough) than their philosophical dispositions, religious or otherwise.
The list is missing, To the light house, The Brothers Karamazov, Animal Farm, Heart of Darkness, The Grapes of Wrath, Mrs Dallaway, Madame Bovari, the Trial, The Castle, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Tale, Les Miserables, A Passage to India, the Sound and the Fury, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Germinal, The Stranger.
Not to be rude, but I just can’t say that Tolkien created all of the fantasy troupes that we see today. The reason being is the writers that influenced him. Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and C. S. Lewis came before him, and influenced his work. Lewis more so because they were friends.
Was surprised to find I have read 20 of these…. Also surprised that most of them were read while before I graduated from college, and as best I can remember, 12 were required reading in high school. Saddened that studies show most high school students today have not read a single book.
The Trial by Franz Kafka Of Mice and Men by J. Steinbeck All Quiet on the Western Front by Gabriel Maria Remarque Night by Eli Wiesel Animal Farm by G. Orwell
As he says in the video, this list was given to Andrew Klavan, it's not his own list. If this was his own list, it's absolutely certain at least one Shakespeare play would be on it. 😊
@@le13579agreed. How many books have contributed a word to the lexicon, especially such a useful word? Orwell maybe for his name, Orwellian. And Kafka.
I actually did something like this a while ago, it was fun, one of the best parts of reading is after your done and you can think about it. Also Klavan's opnions of books are like the gospel to me, I listen very carefully.
SAMMMEEE! I read it three times in one week, I could hardly put it down. Even now after like 8 full read throughs I still discover so much new information in it.
That Hideous Strength deserves to be included in this list, or at the very least honorably mentioned. It's one of the most prophetic novels of the 20th century, and Lewis' cosmology is a great antidote for our modern materialist view of the universe
It shows both the strengths and weaknesses of allegory though. The underlying message is great, but a lot of bits -- with Merlin and such -- get really weird.
@@jimluebke3869I felt the other books, particularly Perelandra, worked better because they weren't trying to fit the weirdness into the everyday world.
Good in that it reflects what we are going through now but I think it's the weakest of the trilogy. I like Out of the Silent Planet the most. When We Had Faces is my favourite C.S. Lewis
I can understand why, but only from a purely intellectual POV. I read it in college, or, I should say, slugged through it. Glad I read it but won't be reading it again or writing home about it.
This hurts my soul to read. Fitzgerald’s prose are normally sensational, but in Gatsby they are off the freaking charts. To me it is the best American novel.
The greatest book of all time is Bhagwat Gita . This book is timeless anf if one reads it in earnest and is willing to embrace its teachings , it would make him immortal .....yes !
9:24 the magic of the catcher in the rye is that it is a book that only makes sense when you are young. As a kid it was my favorite book, as an adult I could not connect with it, and that is part of the experience.
Love the list. For me, the best is Of Mice and Men. More important today than when it was written, as our society continues to lose a sense of community. We are incredibly social creatures, and when we lose that to as we drift apart, bringing on the loneliness our modern society creates.
@@Video81501 this is purely an ideological opinion. Nobody who thinks she was an awful writer is even libertarian-leaning, and almost always a hardcore lefty. In reality, her books are excellent popular fiction with a unique style. They certainly don’t reach the lofty heights of the best literature but they’re great for what they are.
I’ve read Tolstoy’s War and Peace 5 times, Anna Karenina 4 times, Hadji Murad 3 times, Kreutzer Sonata 4 times, Resurrection 3 times, Father Sergius 3 times, and so on. I adore Tolstoy!
As I wrote elsewhere, it’s rather a novella (too short for a novel). If it was top 10 novellas, it would definitely be there (in my view), together with Zweig’s Chess, and Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea.
Fun fact count monte cristo was put on the list of books prohibited by Catholic Church. I read it and I really liked it and still can’t figure out what was the problem with it.
That is a list for the English readers. I am surprised that Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is not part of it, nor are the Tales of the Arabian Nights. What about 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez or the disturbing The Trial by Franz Kafka and the complex À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust. I was forgetting the old Perceval ou le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes. Where are Molière and Shakespeare? There’s also all the Asian and African master pieces that we never heard of. For me, only Joyce, Cervantes and Homer should be on that list.
Americans really struggle to understand that there's an entire world outside America/UK, not mere bits of Russia, Germany and France. And videos like this don't help.
@@paladin1726I look forward to reading it. The bad comments on this page seem to come from people who think "adventure books" shouldn't be considered.
@@ryanthelion408 Klavan lost me when he placed The Count of Monte Cristo in the S category…LOTR is far superior IMO. Egad I found Monte Cristo boring. But this is his personal list, his opinion, of course. I just watched his ranking of best tv shows as well, and his focus is on settings in the real world, for the most part, historical fiction, crime. I just think he’s much of a fantasy guy.
Best book on Ontology (metaphysics) is on the best ontology in 2,600 years developed by the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. The best summery of Dooyeweerd work (in English) is in ch 11-13 of “The Myth of Religious Neutrality” by Roy A Clouser (should read ch 1-10 to understand ch 11-13). Dooyeweerd did not develop an Epistemology but “Knowing with the Heart” by Roy Clouser presents the summery of an epistemology that would be compatible with Dooyeweerd's ontology by tacking the hardest question in epistemology “is God real?” and how do you KNOW.
I have read all of those books. Why you didn't include 100 years of solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez? It's in every list of the best books in history. I'm curious.
Typical list for the American self-centered bubble. These are the best of the best? Where are, for instance, the great Russian, French and German works of world literature?
For a list compiled from some group of randos on the internet, I would say they did pretty well. I got started early (which made my first days of school complicated, but that’s a different conversation), and when my parents gave me a copy of Treasure Island, that was IT. I read everything I could get my hands on. If I was inside, I was with my book and my dictionary. The list I’d like to see is “books I love even though I’d never claim they were great literature”. Childhood’s End, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Under the Net, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Godfather, The Collected Works of Conan-Doyle, about a bazillion others…
Glad to see the best 2 in there - Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina. All in all a great list even if I'm not too sure about that school favourite, Mockingbird and that definitely not a school favourite, Lolita. Morrison? You've got to be joking. Isn't A Christmas Carol, Dickens' best? Tom Sawyer is miles better than Huck Finn.
I'm very impressed. A few minutes in I realized that I was hearing some interesting takes and perspectives for the first time, such as viewing Frankenstein as about men attempting to reproduce without women. Yes, this is someone to engage with, to get perspectives I'd not otherwise encounter. Then I hear the bit on Beloved. Uhhg. It was actually painful. Someone I perceive of as ingenious, perceptive and as so deeply insightful on matters of the soul, dismissed so lightly. Did he actually say that her acclaim is derived from her being a Black woman? Oh well. To differ is to be challenged and hopefully to grow and learn. Perhaps my feedback will contribute to him glimpsing what he's missing. As I will absolutely try seeing things from other perspectives. An interesting and different voice for me. And a different basis for analysis of several of these works.
@@josepha.r5839 yeah, maybe I would as well. But considering the amount of great novels that plausibly deserve a top 20 place (10 from Russia alone probably!) it's not that controversial to leave it out.
I’ve read a handful of McCarthy’s novels, and he’s in a sense like Joyce, putting almost undue emphasis on style and effect. In my opinion, the greatest authors write complex books with immense depth, but the complexity doesn’t smack one in the face. It’s there, it’s hidden for the attentive reader to discover it. Joyce and McCarthy are in one’s face: Joyce with his riddles, McCarthy with his unanchored POV and strange sentence structure. It’s added complexity, in a sense it’s trying too hard. Don’t get me wrong, it’s clever and I enjoyed it, those are great books, but true genius lies elsewhere.
I respect Klavan and love most of his commentary. However, neither Melville nor Hawthorne are American Transcendentalists. He is obviously a well educated man and might know that Hawthorne once live with Ralph Waldo Emerson but that is not because they shared philosophical, literary, or theological outlooks. Never mind the history, no one can read Moby Dick and make an argument that it is of the same vein as Emerson or Thoreau. Furthermore, the length of Moby Dick is necessary for the central metaphor of hoping that there is some identity responsible for existence. Love Klavan, but he is objectively wrong by claiming Transcendentalism and very arguably wrong about his ranking of the American epic. P.S Moby Dick is way more of Naturalism like Jack London, most scholars call it Romantic though.
Amazing, but short. It’s a novella, not a full fledged novel. If we’re talking novellas, TOMATS would be in my top 10 together with Stefan Zweig’s Chess, The Little Prince by de Saint-Exupèry and a couple of others.
I've recently committed to reading more classic literature. I took a look at the "100 greatest novels of all time" according to the Library of Congress about five years ago and realized that I had only read a few of them. At the time I was a taxi driver and Audible helped me start chipping away. I've read or listened to about a dozen off this list. I'm in love with Anna Karenina, although thanks to Audible and Maggie Gyllenhaal's voice, I may be biased.
I re-read 'The Catcher in the Rye " recently, at an older age & found it boring. Couldn't finish it. Dickens, if he were alive today, would be writing for TV soaps.
@@michaelnewsham1412 Yes. A novel like “Bleak House” combines vivid characters in a vast social panorama and an atmosphere you can cut with a knife. He expanded the scope of the novel.
Also couldn't finish it. Maybe (as I've read) it's more 'relevant' if you're young but I doubt if I had read it in my youth I still would have been bored.
Jane Eyre should be in the highest category. It changed the world. The horrible school she suffered through was torn down and the entire British educational system was transformed.
Better yet, read The Silmarillion. Anyone who writes that much detail about other realms is mad out of his fucking mind, but we are all the better for it. Pure genius.
I am a huge LOTR fan but absolutely there are some spots that could be smoothed out. For example, book 1 of the Fellowship of the Ring has a narrative loop that greatly slows down the story. The process of the hobbits finding each other and then finding their way to Bree has four instances of them running from the black riders and taking shelter in someone’s home. It is essentially the same plot device used four times and nearly all the introduced characters have no relevance to the following narrative push of LOTR.
To be fair he said it's been a while since he read it. Also on a first read the style is definitely a bit jarring, the books seems more perfect with familiarity
100% Agree! The "wordiness" only feels wordy if you arent paying attention to it. If you do pay attention, it creates a level of detail and immersion I have not found in any other book to this day. It also has remarkable complexity and depth that so often comes from the little moments and small seemingly insignificant "wordy" sections that end up being very important and interesting.
ive tried to read Ulysses a few times-it begins so well but becomes increasingly difficult-i find if i am not enjoying a book any more even if i am near the end -i stop
The Brothers Karamazov is conspicuously absent.
Safe to assume he didn’t rate every book he thinks highly of. Also, this a list of books he was given to rate anyway.
@@MikeDinduyeah, they're from a list on the internet. As he said...
Was coming here to say the same thing
@@MikeDinduyes, it's still absent
@@esar71 We all had the same thought, I guess, when he raved about Crime and Punishment, with Brothers K being such a far superior novel (yes, I know he’s reading from a list, but still…)
The list with timestamps
0:59 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1:21 1984 by George Orwell
1:57 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
2:20 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2:45 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3:16 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3:47 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4:23 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4:38 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
6:18 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
6:45 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
7:12 Moby-dick by Herman Melville
7:54 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
8:31 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8:44 Beloved by Toni Morrison
8:56 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
9:17 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
9:31 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
9:52 The Odyssey by Homer
10:00 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
10:16 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
10:37 The Iliad by Homer
10:48 Ulysses by James Joyce
I've read not quite half of the books on this list. The three that stand out for me as the best are 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Of those that I have read, I rank The Great Gatsby at the bottom. I didn't like it all.
That being said, I very much prefer non-fiction to fiction and some of the best are written as well as or better than the best fiction pieces. Among my favorites are:
-- The Guns of August, A Distant Mirror (Barbare Tuchman)
-- Nine April Days (Burke Davis)
-- Iron Men and Saints, The Flame of Islam (Harold Lamb)
-- The Last Lion (William Manchester) and most of his other works,
-- Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road, and A Stillness at Appomattox (Bruce Catton)
-- The Storm Before the Storm (Mike Duncan)
-- Seeing in the Dark (Timothy Ferris)
-- The Messier Objects (Stephen James O'Meara) and the rest of this series
-- The Physicist (C.P. Snow)
-- The Pinball Effect (James Burke)
I have many other non-fiction favorites, but they aren't within reach of my home computer. 🙂
Thanks!
I really don’t enjoy this list or most of the “classics”. I think a lot them are overrated. As far as I’m concerned, the list needs to be updated. What is the youngest book on the list? Did “classics” stopped being written in the late twentieth century?
@@EdwardPigg-ji4yy The term "classics" refers to older works, so something written 10 years ago is not a classic...at least not yet. Maybe 50 or a hundred years from now it will be. But your take on these books is fair, in my opinion. For instance, The Great Gatsby is not an enjoyable book to read. All of the characters are despicable and the story isn't uplifting or ennobling. However, the technical skill by which it was written is remarkable. Doubly true for Nabokov's work. Pure genius with the language, which btw, English is not his first language. I can't stand Catcher in the Rye and many of the stories from that era reflect a social existence that I find extremely self-centered. My point is, you're not wrong! I have enjoyed the books on this list quite a bit overall, but I get where you're coming from.
@@EdwardPigg-ji4yy totally agree... i have read most of them about 30 years ago and tried re-reading some of them again and most of them were a bit sh1t. 1984 and Frankenstein i still enjoyed but others were quite zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Klavan’s political insight, but I’d be thrilled if we just got an hour of his cultural commentary every week. His opinions on literature, art, film, and Christianity are primary reasons why I tune in every week. Well, that and to remember how to spell Klavan.
There are no Es in Klavan
@@Meyer-gp7nq he just makes it look this easy
Same, I feel like he’d be able to reach a larger audience as well. I watch a lot of book UA-camrs, and klavan could easily be the best if he focused more on the arts. Also be away to help more subtlety influence people into the ideals of conservatism
To be honest, I could do without his political opinions. His cultural insights are 10/10
AND SO SAY ALL OF US!!!!
Brothers Karamazov is the best book ever written.
Certainly one of the very best along with Crime and Punishment.
It's a good novel if you are a psychologist, but honestly I found the tone, subject matter, philosophication on religion etc incredibly dull. Much preferred Crime and Punishment.
@@KevinSmith-wp9qs I teach psychology, religion and philosophy, so I guess I'm a bit biased 😄
@@EricusXIV
🤣👍
The master and the margarita
War and Peace is so, so, so good. It seems more real than reality itself. Tolstoi is on another level
That's right, Russian authors are some of the best
@@TheRealRenAmamiya Curiously, I've read Dostoyevski (borthers karamazov, crime and punishment, the gambler), and I just couldn't like it. You can't say I haven't tried!
To be fair, The Gambler was fun.
@@polvoazul oh, you should try the Idiot. That's a nice book
Confessions is another good book by Tolstoi
Even his Anna Karenin can't believe a one person wrote another masterpiece after dropping War and peace
The Count of Monte Cristo is underrated! It's like a 1000 pages long but it moves so fast. Beware abridged editions which are everywhere (and even though they're still like 500-600 pages), especially in the older translations. Unless you can read French, get the Robin Buss translation. It's the best in English. Interestingly there's both a miniseries and a film coming out this year. 😊
Edit. If you love The Count of Monte Cristo and you also love science fiction, see Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination which is a fun sci-fi version of The Count of Monte Cristo.
I'm so happy somebody said it. Such a great novel.
William S Burroughs 'Junky' is in my top ten, but that's relatability the rest of his and his contemporaries did nothing for me, .
C&P is above everything I've read, but I have Brother's Karimozov to read as well as The Grand Inquisitor.
Notes from underground' blew me away, and that is considered lesser of his works.
Edit never been more disappointed by a writer than Hunter S Thompson, and his end proved my intuition based on the books I read, correct
The Stars My Destination - I know it as 'Tiger! Tiger!' Oh, man, I have to read it again. Thanks for reminding me.
Agreed. I feel like it is relatively unknown by a lot of people nowadays, but it became my personal favorite book.
I remember being in like 7th grade reading it. Not even as well read as I’d like to be but it was just that easy to get into
Nixorus - where secret books await (you can thank me later).
Care to explain why its worth my money?
@@milanberghout9854 There are a few things that are not mainstream, if it's not expensive for you, I recommend it.
@@milanberghout9854because it’s free! hope that helps ❤
@@milanberghout9854because it’s free! hope that helps ❤
No...
This should be a series so that we get a definitive Andrew Klavan ranking over time.
We need a Klavan book club. Maybe monthly for all of us slow readers.
I "read" audio books because I'm a slow reader.
Agreed. I remember Ben did a book club (not sure how that went since I wasn’t a part of it), but a Klavan book club seems like a no-brainer.
@@Video81501
If you are a slow reader start with small light novel. But pick those that are of a very high quality. Audiobooks are really no different from tv,film or games. Books are unique and very few people get to experience them. Also finding good quality short stories is a way to learn reading.
Yes, id like that
On that note, does anyone know of a Conservative Book Club or person to follow on new books? Everything, I mean everything out there from Oprah to NYT is so heavily liberal biased.
My husband appreciates you rereading The Lord of the Rings. He looks forward to your retraction and apology as it takes its rightful place in the S tier.
This made me chuckle
Totally agree, I’ve tried reading that book at least 3 times now and just can’t figure out what people see in it. I’ve read most of the books on this list and GG would definitely be in last of what I’ve read. Other than that, really good list. I would have had The Brothers K and Blood Meridian on it, but no list is perfect
S Tier for sure, with The Count of Monte Cristo.
Meanwhile, I put the Great Gatsby in the C tier down by Moby Dick.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first 5 minutes of each and every Lord of the Rings Movies. I tried to read the Hobbit. Who are these creatures and does anybody care what happens to them?
@@johnrusche8256 Everybody cares, if you're into a more personalised Jungian story. It's the hero's journey done perfectly. He literally comes back with new wisdom and gold to revitalise the state (village) (the beginning, you know, is that he ventures from the safety of his green valley into the unknown). The Lord of the Rings has driven me towards Christianity more than any other thing. Its greatest piece of single insight, for me, was the notion that 'despair is a sin' (the line is, 'despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.').
1. Curious George, by Margret & H.A. Rey
2. Green Eggs & Ham, by Dr. Seuss
3. Scrooge McDuck comics (with grand-nephews Hughy, Dewey, and Louie) by Carl Banks
I want a Klavan book club and discussion group.
Excellent idea
Absolutely. They gave Walsh a judge show ffs, they should definitely give Drew a book show!
@@LJewettShapiro had (has?) a book club. Klavan deserves that 1000% more.
Knowles still does his book club each month. So there is always that one. Would be fun if Daily Wire did an actual interactive one though on the Daily Wire app. Maybe a focused video to kick it off (like Knowles does with a different guest for each book) and then a chat conversation with him or someone else to discuss the books as a group.
"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."
"CRIME AND PUNISHMENT" is superrrrr
Tolstoï is a better writer
I have a fondness for "A Tale of Two Cities" because it was the first novel I ever read. Thank you Mrs. Faye!
man with a yellow hat and a monkey friend, in a tiny mobile library, was my first experience with books.
Yeah, I'd have that above Great Expectations if I wanted to include a DIckens novel in the list.
So, three of his S-tier are by Russian authors. He put the Lord of the Rings in the A-tier. Therefore, Klavan is clearly a spreader of Russian misinformation.
Heck, he probably even knows how to spell Klavan.
Lol, and the amazing thing is he doesn’t even have the greatest Russian novel of all time, the Brothers K, as an option to choose from
@@kierankehoe2275disagree, crime and punishment is the better novel
love Russian classic literature. The best tbh
@@franciscomap75Discipline and punish even better
@@franciscomap75 love that book too. I reckon we can just agree to disagree
I was waiting for Aldous Huxley to appear on there but I was left unfulfilled. "Brave New World" was the first book to ever peak my interest, therefore, I believe it totally rules.
It is a great book. However I was in a book club and the people who choose that book to read had trouble getting through it. I suspect because it was written long time ago and the first 50 pgs are exposition which can be hard to get through. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin is 90% as good and written more recently so an easier read.
pique
@@Scottlp2 nah it's a very smooth read. Maybe they weren't interested enough on the subject to put that little effort in abstraction to visualize its world into their minds. Not that it's so hard, given that it's one inch away from today's reality...
I find Aldous Huxley to be overrated by people with a certain specific ideology who almost always hate george orwell books.... Yeah i get the fact that it's a good book, but isn't even close to 1984 and much less popular to be on this tierlist anyway.
@@AdamSappenfield pique
Great Expectations is absolutely Dickens at his best. But “The Brothers Karamazov” is the big absence here. And Middlemarch
Absolutely agree
hey pip
Gone with the Wind I think is one of the best novels ever, but the Count of monte Cristo is the best.
Thank you for correctly categorizing the count of monte cristo
I have been reading books consistently since I was 17 and the only one of these I have read is 1984. I am going to take the initiative and make this a book bucket list. Thank you Drew! ETA, 1984 is my S tier novel. I read in different stages of my life and it always hits just little bit different each time.
Man. Read Tolstoi. It is insanelly good.
Also: If This Is a Man, by primo levi.
How old are you? What have you been reading?
@@Le_Samourai Old and everything else. Sometimes fiction sometimes non. I went through some of Dawkins, all of Hitchens, some Hume, all pre 2000's King books. Many Koontz. Huxley. I read a lot apocalypse and zombie books because they are just entertaining. Many many individual books.
@@LJewett well I’m glad ur diving into the western canon. Some of my favs are War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, and Moby-Dick.
If you want a bucket list, look into Harold Bloom’s western canon list (the short version, it’s 28 authors I think)
Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Tolkien. That’s the peak of literature. Specifically, “The Brothers Karamazov,” “A Christmas Carol,” and “The Lord of the Rings.” “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson gets the honorable mention
Correct authors but you got the wrong book for Dickens. David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby run circles around Christmas Carol.
I love Nicholas Nickelby. True to Dicken’s form, it is absolutely hilarious without seeming to try. But A Christmas Carol is extremely packed with meaning, yet is a very short read. When you say Nicholas Nickelby runs circles around it, that is because it takes ten times longer to have as much of an impact.
i hated treasure island. read it for summer reading as a child.
I love Tolkien but I think Mark Twain is superior. Tolkien to me is probably the greatest storyteller at least of the 20th century, but not the greatest novelist.
Proust, Joyce, Melville, Beckett and Sterne I’d put above them.
I agree that Andrew should do more book and movie reviews. I really want him to do a writers conference with Spencer and Faith( I would be Ok with an appearance by Ben)
Bishop Barron got his start online doing movie reviews.
this is my favorite type of Klavan content. love it when he talks about books.
And movies too
The instant dismissal of Morrison's Beloved is drenched in irony. Every other piece gets its time or rationalization where she is just an overrated black woman. As someone who has read all the novels mentioned (barring War and Peace), I wholeheartedly disagree, but at the end of the day, it's just 1 guy's opinion equal to mine.
Yeah, that was not a good look on Klavan's part. That's impressive that you've read all but one. What's your favorite?
@@mbb-- Don Quixote, I love the work and de Cervantes' story
Aside from having read the books listed, this guy has basically no good judgement as for literature. His takes are consistently terrible and he knows very little about the writers of which he talks.
Gertrude Stein was actually a prolific novelist (“I don’t think she ever wrote a novel”) and was a fundamental influence on virtually all of our greatest modern novelists (Hemingway and Beckett wouldn’t exist without her). How can you dismiss Moby Dick and love Ulysses? How can you miss the fact that the adventure story is the least important part of the novel? How is The Count of Monte Cristo, a notoriously terrible dime novel, besides Tolstoy? Why isn’t Invisible Man in S or A tier, when it is the quintessential American postmodern novel?
He put Count of Monte Cristo written by Alexandre Dumas, a black man, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in the S Tier. He's calling balls and strikes and he's right.
@@jpm5205 What does the placement of those two books have to do with the fact that he didn't give reasons for Beloved's placement like he did for the others?
LOTR is S, always.
I hope it is. I tried reading the Hobbit once and didn't like it.
Yeah, it's "wordy" because it's written to be read aloud, almost like an epic poem.
@@LJewettI tried reading The Hobbit many years ago and found it so dull it was practically unreadable. I decided to give LOTR a try before the movies came out and could hardly put the books down. Absolutely fantastic, enthralling storytelling. Don't let The Hobbit get between you and Tolkien's masterpiece!
Btw after loving LOTR so much I thought maybe I should try The Hobbit again but nope. Still ha ted it.
@@johnny12022
It is wordy because it is a complex deep story.
Yes, and don't forget about Harry Potter.
More of these please! I've never understood why Klavan has never done a book club! I would up my membership just to listen to him discuss books.
Kinda surprised not to see Brothers Karamazov there.
Yeah, very surprised. For me, if Crime & Punishment is an S, Brothers Karamazov is an easy S+.
Surprised Middlemarch didn't get a mention. It is often referred to as "the greatest English novel."
Adam Bede is a great book.
Middlemarch is such a great novel. I've read it several times.
"Silas Marner' (along with 'David Copperfield') is a perfect novel, which is different from being a great novel.
Tolkien I believe is one of the greatest late modern philosophers. The LOTR is a critique of Modernity from the perspective of a Medievalist, which Tolkien was. It's not a postmodern critique though, which is why they hate it.
While it’s subtly true, Tolkien did come out and say the books were not meant to be topical, but just enjoyed as a great story. Many questioned if they were satirical of WW2, which you could make that argument, but it wasn’t his intent.
The Scouring of the Shire chapter is probably his most explicit cultural critique, denouncing the destruction inherent in centralized power structures like communism.
"A Tale of Two Cities" is the most wonderful novel I've ever read. IT is the perfect story.
It's the most over-the-top sentimental presentation of Peterson's emphasis on sacrifice.
@@jimluebke3869wut? Go sit down, fool.
I love Crime and Punishment (C&P) too! 😊 One of my all time favorites!
1. I only read a bit of Russian, really at the level of a tiny human, aka child, in fact, so I have had to read Dostoevsky in translation. I first read C&P in the Oliver Ready translation, which was amazing, but the Michael Katz translation is also awesome. Generally speaking, I think Katz is better if you prefer American English, Ready if British English. But both are excellent translations.
2. Personally, I find both Ready and Katz far better than the more popular Pevear and Volokhonsky or the older, though still good Constance Garnett. That said, if you like prim and proper Victorian-Edwardian English and sensibilities, then Garnett can be good. Even though Dostoevsky lived in the Victorian era, and he loved Victorian English writers like Charles Dickens, Dostoevsky was almost anything but the stereotypical English Victorian. On the one hand, I'll always be thankful for Garnett (and the husband-wife team of the Maudes) bringing so much of the best of Russian literature to the English speaking world. On the other hand, Garnett is known to have simply elided bits of Russian she didn't quite understand and as such some of Dostoevsky is missing in translation.
3. For P&V problems, see "The Peaverization of Russian Literature" (I think it's called) by Gary Saul Morson, who has also been on the Al Mohler show as well as a couple of other similar podcasts, as well as "Pevear and Volokhonsky are indeed overrated" by John McWhorter. There's also a good article over on First Things about Pevear and Volokhonsky issues, but unfortunately, I can't remember the author or title and I can't be bothered to Google.
4. In Russia, Dostoevsky's greatest works are informally known as his Pentateuch or Five: Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov (which was meant to be the first half of a huge two part work but Dostoevsky died before the second half), The Adolescent aka Raw Youth, The Idiot, and The Demons (which uncannily all but predicted the Russian revolution and all the evil and bloodshed that would follow, I suppose it was good that Dostoevsky didn't live to see his terrible predictions come to pass). Notes from Underground is often considered a kind of prelude to the aforementioned Five. His short stories "White Nights" and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" are also worth reading. Of course, if one can only read one or two of his works, then it'd have to be Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. But the others are valuable literature as well. It's already an amazing feat for an author to pen a single great literary work, but for the same author to pen two or more great literary works is obviously far greater (e.g. Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Steinbeck, Garcia Marquez, Tolstoy). Dostoevsky is among this number.
5. It's an understatement to say Dostoevsky had an incredibly hard life. That doesn't begin to describe all the suffering he endured. See Joseph Frank's biography which is the best biography of Dostoevsky. However, unless you have a lot of time to read, know it's a super long multi-volume work; I'd recommend his own shorter one volume version, which is still like 1000 pages in length. Briefly, Dostoevsky was born and grew up in a hospital for the poor. He lived and grew up seeing sick and dying patients. His father likely was murdered by peasants, and that's quite likely why murder and even patricide are often main plot points and central themes in his writings such as in The Brothers Karamazov. As a young man, he was almost executed for treason against the tsar because he participated in a revolutionary group; the worst he did in this group was publicly read a banned work and make inflammatory remarks against the then-regime. At the last minute, just as he (alongside his compatriots) was blind-folded and about to be shot dead by a firing squad, the execution was called off. It had been a mock execution to put the fear of the tsar into the revolutionaries as well as to witness the tsar's mercy. Instead Dostoevsky was sent off to Siberia for something like almost a decade of his life living and working in abysmal conditions that would make Dickens's worst described social ills in England look like child's play. Dostoevsky also had his first wife and at least one child die (e.g. his 3 year old son Alyosha whom he loved with his whole life fell off a tall building and died). It may say something about Dostoevsky that he named his worst characters "Fyodor" and his best characters "Alyosha". In any case, Dostoevsky was an increasingly committed and devout Russian Orthodox Christian through his life and especially later in his life, though he was an imperfect man (e.g. he possibly had an affair, he struggled with a gambling addiction, he was anti-Semitic though sadly this was commonplace in Europe and Russia at the time and even the affable Charles Dickens had characters like Fagin and the coming popularity of The Protocols of the Elders was not far off). Nevertheless Dostoevesky lived a difficult life, wrestling with the most fundamental questions in life, especially suffering and evil, and his art reflects his pains.
Edit: Typos, minor errors.
I read a review of Chekhov stories by Pevear and Volokonsky in First Things that cracked me up. The whole article was praising Chekhov(who I adore) and talking him up and quoting him. Then it ends with saying “don’t get this translation! It sucks”
I actually read the introduction to _The Idiot,_ which included information about the character of Myshkin in an early draft. Apparently he started out as a cad who wanted to reform.
This leads me to believe that the whole book is an exploration of the theme, "OK, so if a guy could love as purely as _Jesus Christ Himself_ could he love two women at the same time without things going horribly wrong?"
The whole "what would Jesus do, 19th century Russia edition" was just something he kept filling chapters with because his audience loved it.
I knew a Russian immigrant Jew who said that Pasternak was much superior to Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsen, both of whom I have read but not P. All I can say is that the movie of Zhivago is my favorite after Godfather.
My favourite Dostoevsky's book is " The Humiliated and the Offended".
@@rogerpropes7129Pasternak is tremendously overrated by Jews. Russian people don't like the novel- it is absolutely weak and helpless.
Wish Klavan would rank books by category and genre, like Thrillers, Westerns, Classics, Horror, Mystery etc.
The best play I ever saw was “The Brothers Karamazov”.
The Lord of the Rings book is way way better than the movies. LOTR is NOT an action story; the movies turned it into an action story. LOTR is full of subtlety, the movies are in your face. LOTR is one of the greatest books ever written; the movies look good but put in too much emotion and drag out the scenes.
Take your great literature cues from someone who hawks skincare potions.
Excellent list, but I think I'd have a John Steinbeck one on there.
I had never watched before a video of this guy, I speak spanish and I can not communicate in English because I don't understand what I hear, but I hear this man's voice and I can understand perfectly, he has great pronunciation ❤
Ulysses is the definition of a book that is universally lauded but barely read.
It's fantastic. Very much worth the effort.
Because it's booooring 🥱
@@miguel.a.d.6078 it’s hilarious. And in the end moving.
@@Tolstoy111 It's a great book...but boring 😉
@@miguel.a.d.6078 I did not find it boring
Having recently taken a bigger interest in reading and writing, I love these Klavan segments! It's refreshing having a conservative figure discuss literature.
I want Klavan's list of the best books of all time. He's read them all! Do this, please!
As much as I hate the "woke" approach to art criticism I have to vehemently disagree that Beloved is only acclaimed because it was written by a black woman. Morrison's prose has that Faulknerian incantatory power to its rhythm and lyricism, and it's one of the only "haunted house" stories that's genuinely haunting. I view it as a companion piece to Faulkner's Light in August as being among the only novels that strike the right aesthetic note about America's racist past in a way that's not sententious as, say, To Kill a Mockingbird unfortunately is. I was so struck by it I read it twice over the span of two days.
As for Moby Dick I also disagree, but I also understand this criticism more. I think Moby Dick's greatest triumph is in its breadth, from the comedy (people sleep on how funny a book it is) to the transcendental to the psychological character detail to the didactic... it has a little bit of everything in its pages and I remember being struck by how I could never predict where it was going next. It's also one of those books that's a joy to reread and endlessly interpret, full of all kinds of detail you miss on the first or second reads.
As much as I love Austen I'd actually give George Eliot the title of "greatest female novelist." Two very different styles, but I appreciate Eliot's combination of realism and philosophical reflection/depth over Austen's more subtle, understated, satirical style. I also think Middlemarch belongs on this list (and Emma over Pride & Prejudice, IMHO).
Noticeably absent from the list is anything by Faulkner, arguably America's greatest novelist. I understand his best works are considered "difficult," but his output from The Sound and the Fury to Absalom! Absalom! is perhaps the most remarkably creative period for any novelist throughout history. If anything it's difficult to just single out one. Most would nominate The Sound and the Fury but I have a soft spot for As I Lay Dying, and it's among the more accessible of his masterpieces.
I'm not a big Dostoevsky fan, but I get why so many connect with him. I like Dostoevsky best when he's leaning into the proto-noir suspense and drama of his psychologically warped characters like Rask, but dislike him tremendously when he's trying to manipulatively peddle Christianity as a salve for his reactionary fever dream of what people will be like if they embrace these newfangled philosophers he didn't like or understand. The problem is that Dosto didn't grasp that morality is social transmitted, and the people in a position in life to contemplate and embrace abstruse philosophical positions like nihilism and rationalism and utilitarianism aren't those going out and committing murders; the latter is far more a product of economic hardships (something Dosto toys with in the novel but doesn't explore enough) than their philosophical dispositions, religious or otherwise.
I have recently read Jane Austen for the first time. Amazing. Her prose is unbelievably lean and the story just keeps moving.
The list is missing, To the light house, The Brothers Karamazov, Animal Farm, Heart of Darkness, The Grapes of Wrath, Mrs Dallaway, Madame Bovari, the Trial, The Castle, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Tale, Les Miserables, A Passage to India, the Sound and the Fury, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Germinal, The Stranger.
Not to be rude, but I just can’t say that Tolkien created all of the fantasy troupes that we see today. The reason being is the writers that influenced him. Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and C. S. Lewis came before him, and influenced his work. Lewis more so because they were friends.
The Gulags Archipelago by Alxandr Zolsenitsyn
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
When I’m at a book store I pull up JPs reading list and see if they have anything I don’t have
@@Digital_PeterGriffin JPs reading list are great read.
I know Russian woman who agrees with you about Bulgakov, but I didn't read it. IMO 'The First Circle' is much better than Gulag.
I think people skip over Solzhenitsen simply because he is hard to spell, as they do about Russian names in general.
I totally agree with you about The Master and Margarita. I love Dead Souls as well...
Was surprised to find I have read 20 of these…. Also surprised that most of them were read while before I graduated from college, and as best I can remember, 12 were required reading in high school. Saddened that studies show most high school students today have not read a single book.
interesting list, a little surprised that names like Steinbeck, Hemingway and Faulkner didn't show up.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Of Mice and Men by J. Steinbeck
All Quiet on the Western Front by Gabriel Maria Remarque
Night by Eli Wiesel
Animal Farm by G. Orwell
I do agree but Erich Maria Remarque.
As he says in the video, this list was given to Andrew Klavan, it's not his own list. If this was his own list, it's absolutely certain at least one Shakespeare play would be on it. 😊
"Catch 22" Joseph Heller "Blood Meridian" Cormac McCarthy "Rabbit,Run" John Updike A pleasant weekend to all.
Catch 22 is my no 1.
@@le13579agreed. How many books have contributed a word to the lexicon, especially such a useful word? Orwell maybe for his name, Orwellian. And Kafka.
I actually did something like this a while ago, it was fun, one of the best parts of reading is after your done and you can think about it. Also Klavan's opnions of books are like the gospel to me, I listen very carefully.
My favorite book is "The Silmarillion". I devoured that book. That's the kind of freak I am.
SAMMMEEE! I read it three times in one week, I could hardly put it down. Even now after like 8 full read throughs I still discover so much new information in it.
Oh you FREAKY freaky
That Hideous Strength deserves to be included in this list, or at the very least honorably mentioned. It's one of the most prophetic novels of the 20th century, and Lewis' cosmology is a great antidote for our modern materialist view of the universe
YES. I love sci-fi and CS Lewis, so that book was one of my favorites when I read it
It shows both the strengths and weaknesses of allegory though. The underlying message is great, but a lot of bits -- with Merlin and such -- get really weird.
@@jimluebke3869I felt the other books, particularly Perelandra, worked better because they weren't trying to fit the weirdness into the everyday world.
Good in that it reflects what we are going through now but I think it's the weakest of the trilogy. I like Out of the Silent Planet the most.
When We Had Faces is my favourite C.S. Lewis
@@MicahMicahel Agree. Till We Have Faces is Lewis's best work. It perfectly illustrates the themes of his great nonfiction work The Four Loves.
I hate the Great Gatsby. I cannot understand why people love it so much.
Agreed.
Is it the words, or the message?
I can understand why, but only from a purely intellectual POV. I read it in college, or, I should say, slugged through it. Glad I read it but won't be reading it again or writing home about it.
Same
This hurts my soul to read. Fitzgerald’s prose are normally sensational, but in Gatsby they are off the freaking charts. To me it is the best American novel.
The greatest book of all time is Bhagwat Gita . This book is timeless anf if one reads it in earnest and is willing to embrace its teachings , it would make him immortal .....yes !
9:24 the magic of the catcher in the rye is that it is a book that only makes sense when you are young. As a kid it was my favorite book, as an adult I could not connect with it, and that is part of the experience.
I loved Catcher in the Rye in high school and college, but 50 years later I did not think it was that great. Your comment is so good.
Love the list. For me, the best is Of Mice and Men. More important today than when it was written, as our society continues to lose a sense of community. We are incredibly social creatures, and when we lose that to as we drift apart, bringing on the loneliness our modern society creates.
What?! No Ayn Rand? She at least deserves an E.
Her books are in the A is A tier
You kidding me? Having read "Atlas Shrugged", I have no desire to read another word she wrote.
@@Video81501 Maybe you should read it again. It was brilliant.
Ayn Rand is so average
@@Video81501 this is purely an ideological opinion. Nobody who thinks she was an awful writer is even libertarian-leaning, and almost always a hardcore lefty.
In reality, her books are excellent popular fiction with a unique style. They certainly don’t reach the lofty heights of the best literature but they’re great for what they are.
I found Beloved really over-hyped as well.
I’ve read Tolstoy’s War and Peace 5 times, Anna Karenina 4 times, Hadji Murad 3 times, Kreutzer Sonata 4 times, Resurrection 3 times, Father Sergius 3 times, and so on. I adore Tolstoy!
I started with _The Cossacks,_ which provides an interesting perspective on Russia v Chechnya.
Resurrection is an underrated masterpiece.
Kreutzer Sonata...a wonderful book!
The dismissal of Beloved by saying that it’s only praised because she’s black is such a gross reduction of Morrisons writing. Terrible.
Oh wow. Daily wire. It all makes sense now. Fuck this guy.
No body reads it
I didn't know It existed
I agree. I read it. But also are we really surprised?
For me it’s The Little Prince. Broadly valuable for all ages and cultures.
As I wrote elsewhere, it’s rather a novella (too short for a novel).
If it was top 10 novellas, it would definitely be there (in my view), together with Zweig’s Chess, and Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea.
LOTR is one I read EVERY YEAR. Each fall, much like a Hobbit, I feel that call.
I read DUNE every year....all 6.
Would like to know what novels weren't mentioned that Klavan would have put in S-tier, if he could think of any, which I'm sure he could've.
Cien años de soledad, Brothers Karamazov, Aeneid, Inferno, A Tale of Two Cities or Oliver Twist (don’t think he’d put both up there)
Fun fact count monte cristo was put on the list of books prohibited by Catholic Church. I read it and I really liked it and still can’t figure out what was the problem with it.
That is a list for the English readers. I am surprised that Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is not part of it, nor are the Tales of the Arabian Nights. What about 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez or the disturbing The Trial by Franz Kafka and the complex À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust. I was forgetting the old Perceval ou le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes. Where are Molière and Shakespeare? There’s also all the Asian and African master pieces that we never heard of. For me, only Joyce, Cervantes and Homer should be on that list.
The Leopard.
Americans really struggle to understand that there's an entire world outside America/UK, not mere bits of Russia, Germany and France. And videos like this don't help.
What work would you suggest that has transcended its culture language?
Moby Dick, everything you never wanted to know about whales, but were afraid to ask. Good grief, it does go on and on.
I’ve read most of these.
No Steinbeck? Hemingway? It's a hard list to narrow down, for sure, but those two are essential.
Between this, the ben shapiro interview and the top 10 reads video, ive got my literature cut out for me for quite awhile
I was getting upset that Monte Cristo wasn't on anyone's list but we finally made it
We who love the Count of Monte Cristo are very passionate about its rightful praise.
@@paladin1726I look forward to reading it. The bad comments on this page seem to come from people who think "adventure books" shouldn't be considered.
If you think Lord of the Rings could be cut in half, then you don’t understand Lord of the Rings.
Another comment which implies the commenter has superior intelligence/insight without having to prove it
@@ryanthelion408 Klavan lost me when he placed The Count of Monte Cristo in the S category…LOTR is far superior IMO. Egad I found Monte Cristo boring. But this is his personal list, his opinion, of course. I just watched his ranking of best tv shows as well, and his focus is on settings in the real world, for the most part, historical fiction, crime. I just think he’s much of a fantasy guy.
*isn’t much of a fantasy guy, that is. It’s late. Good night.
One wonders if War and Peace would have been so popular if it had been published under it's original title, _War, What is it Good For._
I thought the original title was _Napoleon in Russia: WTF Just Happened?_
Absolutely nothin!
The fact that there’s no Thomas Hardy on this list is a massive injustice
You could say it's ... Madd(en)ING!!! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!!!
Completely agree!
His novels were about sex!
Best book on Ontology (metaphysics) is on the best ontology in 2,600 years developed by the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. The best summery of Dooyeweerd work (in English) is in ch 11-13 of “The Myth of Religious Neutrality” by Roy A Clouser (should read ch 1-10 to understand ch 11-13). Dooyeweerd did not develop an Epistemology but “Knowing with the Heart” by Roy Clouser presents the summery of an epistemology that would be compatible with Dooyeweerd's ontology by tacking the hardest question in epistemology “is God real?” and how do you KNOW.
I have read all of those books. Why you didn't include 100 years of solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez? It's in every list of the best books in history. I'm curious.
He only included the list that was provided.
Probably because it's overrated and trendy
Great list.
East of Eden by Steinbeck is missing.
Thanks very much for the great list! Can you do one on the greatest films of all time?
Typical list for the American self-centered bubble. These are the best of the best? Where are, for instance, the great Russian, French and German works of world literature?
Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece that transcends the crime novel genre.
Ok I get it, you would have to create a new tier for brothers Karamazov
I cant tell you how much i despise Great Gasby, probably because the year i read it in english I had an insufferable teacher
For a list compiled from some group of randos on the internet, I would say they did pretty well. I got started early (which made my first days of school complicated, but that’s a different conversation), and when my parents gave me a copy of Treasure Island, that was IT. I read everything I could get my hands on. If I was inside, I was with my book and my dictionary. The list I’d like to see is “books I love even though I’d never claim they were great literature”. Childhood’s End, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Under the Net, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Godfather, The Collected Works of Conan-Doyle, about a bazillion others…
Crime and Punishment:
That’s a hard read for me. It took me forever to get past the murder. But you’re right, a great novel.
Glad to see the best 2 in there - Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina.
All in all a great list even if I'm not too sure about that school favourite, Mockingbird and that definitely not a school favourite, Lolita.
Morrison? You've got to be joking.
Isn't A Christmas Carol, Dickens' best?
Tom Sawyer is miles better than Huck Finn.
I’m scared I’m dyslexic cause I saw “Best Boobs Ranked” and was thinking where’s Christina Hendricks and Kat Dennings?
That's not dyslexia bud🤦♂️
And you forget Pamela Anderson at that😅
Thats some great taste 😂 😂
I'm very impressed. A few minutes in I realized that I was hearing some interesting takes and perspectives for the first time, such as viewing Frankenstein as about men attempting to reproduce without women. Yes, this is someone to engage with, to get perspectives I'd not otherwise encounter.
Then I hear the bit on Beloved. Uhhg. It was actually painful. Someone I perceive of as ingenious, perceptive and as so deeply insightful on matters of the soul, dismissed so lightly. Did he actually say that her acclaim is derived from her being a Black woman?
Oh well. To differ is to be challenged and hopefully to grow and learn. Perhaps my feedback will contribute to him glimpsing what he's missing. As I will absolutely try seeing things from other perspectives.
An interesting and different voice for me. And a different basis for analysis of several of these works.
No Blood Meridian? You can’t have a list of greatest books without Cormac McCarthy.
well you can if you're only dealing with the top 20!
@@stephenglasse2743 Personally, I would put in among my top 20.
@@josepha.r5839 yeah, maybe I would as well. But considering the amount of great novels that plausibly deserve a top 20 place (10 from Russia alone probably!) it's not that controversial to leave it out.
@@stephenglasse2743 Yes.
I’ve read a handful of McCarthy’s novels, and he’s in a sense like Joyce, putting almost undue emphasis on style and effect.
In my opinion, the greatest authors write complex books with immense depth, but the complexity doesn’t smack one in the face. It’s there, it’s hidden for the attentive reader to discover it.
Joyce and McCarthy are in one’s face: Joyce with his riddles, McCarthy with his unanchored POV and strange sentence structure.
It’s added complexity, in a sense it’s trying too hard.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s clever and I enjoyed it, those are great books, but true genius lies elsewhere.
I respect Klavan and love most of his commentary. However, neither Melville nor Hawthorne are American Transcendentalists. He is obviously a well educated man and might know that Hawthorne once live with Ralph Waldo Emerson but that is not because they shared philosophical, literary, or theological outlooks. Never mind the history, no one can read Moby Dick and make an argument that it is of the same vein as Emerson or Thoreau. Furthermore, the length of Moby Dick is necessary for the central metaphor of hoping that there is some identity responsible for existence. Love Klavan, but he is objectively wrong by claiming Transcendentalism and very arguably wrong about his ranking of the American epic.
P.S Moby Dick is way more of Naturalism like Jack London, most scholars call it Romantic though.
The Old Man and the Sea.
Excellent book but not on the internet list.
Reading this right now
How could anybody not LOVE that book!
Totally agree. It is almost scriptural in its simplicity and beauty of story.
Amazing, but short. It’s a novella, not a full fledged novel.
If we’re talking novellas, TOMATS would be in my top 10 together with Stefan Zweig’s Chess, The Little Prince by de Saint-Exupèry and a couple of others.
I've recently committed to reading more classic literature. I took a look at the "100 greatest novels of all time" according to the Library of Congress about five years ago and realized that I had only read a few of them. At the time I was a taxi driver and Audible helped me start chipping away. I've read or listened to about a dozen off this list. I'm in love with Anna Karenina, although thanks to Audible and Maggie Gyllenhaal's voice, I may be biased.
I re-read 'The Catcher in the Rye " recently, at an older age & found it boring. Couldn't finish it. Dickens, if he were alive today, would be writing for TV soaps.
Soaps are one dimensional character in cliched situations. That’s not Dickens at all
@@Tolstoy111 Are you sure?
@@michaelnewsham1412 Yes. A novel like “Bleak House” combines vivid characters in a vast social panorama and an atmosphere you can cut with a knife. He expanded the scope of the novel.
Also couldn't finish it. Maybe (as I've read) it's more 'relevant' if you're young but I doubt if I had read it in my youth I still would have been bored.
Jane Eyre should be in the highest category. It changed the world. The horrible school she suffered through was torn down and the entire British educational system was transformed.
Anyone who says LOTR is "too wordy" and "could be cut in half" has not read LOTR.
Dude, it's mostly about a camping trip.
Better yet, read The Silmarillion. Anyone who writes that much detail about other realms is mad out of his fucking mind, but we are all the better for it. Pure genius.
I am a huge LOTR fan but absolutely there are some spots that could be smoothed out. For example, book 1 of the Fellowship of the Ring has a narrative loop that greatly slows down the story. The process of the hobbits finding each other and then finding their way to Bree has four instances of them running from the black riders and taking shelter in someone’s home. It is essentially the same plot device used four times and nearly all the introduced characters have no relevance to the following narrative push of LOTR.
To be fair he said it's been a while since he read it. Also on a first read the style is definitely a bit jarring, the books seems more perfect with familiarity
100% Agree! The "wordiness" only feels wordy if you arent paying attention to it. If you do pay attention, it creates a level of detail and immersion I have not found in any other book to this day. It also has remarkable complexity and depth that so often comes from the little moments and small seemingly insignificant "wordy" sections that end up being very important and interesting.
How dare you, The Internet? Where is Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita?
ive tried to read Ulysses a few times-it begins so well but becomes increasingly difficult-i find if i am not enjoying a book any more even if i am near the end -i stop
You’re not alone.😊
😂😂😂same here
Wow, what a total misogynist and racist rant.
Peace out
No brothers karamazov?
Must be American
Fahrenheit 451 is the best and most prescient dystopian novel ever written.
In a modern version, Montag would be setting fire to aspiring TikTok influencers.
And what about "the betrothed" by Manzoni, "Madame Bovary" by Flobert, "Wahlverwandtschaften" by Goethe etc.