Books that everyone should read at least once
Books that encourage thought
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee   4.18 avg rating — 885,530 ratings
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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank 4.02 avg rating — 520,590 ratings
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1984 by George Orwell  4.00 avg rating — 520,660 ratings
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 4.22 avg rating — 556,933 ratings
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Animal Farm by George Orwell  3.69 avg rating — 593,152 ratings
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling 4.29 avg rating — 933,574 ratings
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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 3.73 avg rating — 661,143 ratings
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Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss 4.27 avg rating — 106,646 ratings
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Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 3.73 avg rating — 628,428 ratings
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 3.87 avg rating — 317,243 ratings
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The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 4.10 avg rating — 540,681 ratings
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The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 4.19 avg rating — 136,114 ratings
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 3.70 avg rating — 663,283 ratings
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 4.03 avg rating — 383,204 ratings
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Lord of the Flies by William Golding 3.56 avg rating — 573,866 ratings
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Night by Elie Wiesel 4.22 avg rating — 152,755 ratings
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The Chronicles of Narnia (#1-7) by C.S. Lewis 4.23 avg rating — 115,546 ratings
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The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein 4.36 avg rating — 211,841 ratings
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The Giver (The Giver, #1) by Lois Lowry 4.11 avg rating — 263,132 ratings
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Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 4.07 avg rating — 177,122 ratings
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll 4.03 avg rating — 98,618 ratings
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The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 4.38 avg rating — 108,054 ratings
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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 4.15 avg rating — 510,336 ratings
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Holy Bible: King James Version by Anonymous 4.31 avg rating — 30,638 ratings
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 3.74 avg rating — 508,534 ratings
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 3.71 avg rating — 180,496 ratings
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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 3.86 avg rating — 324,773 ratings
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Little Women (Little Women, #1) by Louisa May Alcott 3.93 avg rating — 472,359 ratings
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Hamlet by William Shakespeare 4.00 avg rating — 130,763 ratings
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The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss 4.07 avg rating — 74,136 ratings
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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 4.16 avg rating — 265,904 ratings
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) by J.K. Rowling 4.50 avg rating — 532,023 ratings
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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 3.71 avg rating — 537,762 ratings
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1) by Douglas Adams 4.06 avg rating — 292,389 ratings
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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 3.95 avg rating — 107,787 ratings
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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Goodreads Author) 4.33 avg rating — 147,641 ratings
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 4.09 avg rating — 89,681 ratings
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker 4.06 avg rating — 86,341 ratings
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3) by J.K. Rowling 4.40 avg rating — 545,086 ratings
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Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 3.92 avg rating — 208,170 ratings
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Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss 4.25 avg rating — 56,814 ratings
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Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein 4.15 avg rating — 484,989 ratings
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Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 4.19 avg rating — 216,785 ratings
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The Odyssey by Homer 3.59 avg rating — 341,576 ratings
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Twilight (Twilight, #1) by Stephenie Meyer 3.67 avg rating — 837,733 ratings
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The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ by Joseph Smith Jr. 4.62 avg rating — 35,783 ratings
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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 3.94 avg rating — 116,353 ratings
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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #2) by C.S. Lewis 4.11 avg rating — 244,559 ratings
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Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut 3.89 avg rating — 311,004 ratings
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 4.12 avg rating — 95,888 ratings
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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 3.86 avg rating — 72,904 ratings
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Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown 4.24 avg rating — 62,007 ratings
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Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1) by L.M. Montgomery 4.21 avg rating — 116,704 ratings
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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez 3.87 avg rating — 235,382 ratings
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Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak 4.28 avg rating — 129,769 ratings
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Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 3.95 avg rating — 476,291 ratings
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Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne 4.30 avg rating — 37,805 ratings
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 3.78 avg rating — 97,485 ratings
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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 3.27 avg rating — 149,021 ratings
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Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom 3.88 avg rating — 138,754 ratings
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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini 4.28 avg rating — 194,724 ratings
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The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Goodreads Author) 3.91 avg rating — 403,139 ratings
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A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 3.65 avg rating — 291,573 ratings
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4) by J.K. Rowling 4.40 avg rating — 536,241 ratings
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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 3.81 avg rating — 135,692 ratings
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) by J.K. Rowling 4.42 avg rating — 515,262 ratings
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The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton 3.95 avg rating — 123,235 ratings
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The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 4.08 avg rating — 135,645 ratings
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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 3.93 avg rating — 73,226 ratings
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Life of Pi by Yann Martel 3.78 avg rating — 214,252 ratings
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The Little House Collection (Little House, #1-9) by Laura Ingalls Wilder 4.34 avg rating — 32,132 ratings
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 3.96 avg rating — 78,382 ratings
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The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) by J.R.R. Tolkien 4.19 avg rating — 445,092 ratings
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Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 3.85 avg rating — 85,154 ratings
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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 3.78 avg rating — 203,044 ratings
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The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Goodreads Author) 3.62 avg rating — 357,255 ratings
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 4.20 avg rating — 85,300 ratings
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Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 3.67 avg rating — 35,343 ratings
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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand 3.76 avg rating — 72,688 ratings
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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 3.48 avg rating — 107,788 ratings
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The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver 3.87 avg rating — 234,182 ratings
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The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 3.67 avg rating — 75,753 ratings
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All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 3.73 avg rating — 52,060 ratings
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 3.79 avg rating — 32,833 ratings
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The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom 4.42 avg rating — 36,201 ratings
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The Stranger by Albert Camus 3.86 avg rating — 93,492 ratings
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The Stand by Stephen King 4.26 avg rating — 93,609 ratings
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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 3.91 avg rating — 82,712 ratings
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The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck 3.86 avg rating — 59,977 ratings
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The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch 4.15 avg rating — 59,512 ratings
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Quran / القرآن الكريم by Anonymous 4.32 avg rating — 7,784 ratings
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War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 4.02 avg rating — 35,493 ratings
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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author) 3.95 avg rating — 130,249 ratings
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 3.96 avg rating — 47,980 ratings
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 3.31 avg rating — 203,330 ratings
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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 4.25 avg rating — 39,905 ratings
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Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl 4.31 avg rating — 25,512 ratings
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The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand 3.81 avg rating — 80,949 ratings
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Macbeth by William Shakespeare 3.83 avg rating — 112,856 ratings
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A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Goodreads Author) 4.17 avg rating — 73,206 ratings
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3,871 books ·
16,401 voters ·
list created July 11th, 2008
by Deth Graham (votes).
Tags:
fiction and non-fiction
Lists are re-scored approximately every 500 seconds.
Comments (showing 1-50 of 213) (213 new)
Of course you can get Uncle tom's Cabin... why wouldn't you be able to.? It's required reading in many school districts.
Not only can you still get it, there's a handsome new illustrated and annotated edition, published in 2007, with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
I am absolutely delighted by this great list of books. A thousand thanks. I have read quite a few of these myself. Right now I'm into an Indian philosophy phase!Try these Epic Indian philosophical books if you find the time> The BHAGAVAD GITA, The MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA.
Keep on reading folks! It's the best way to be healthy and have a sound mind! Cheers to all!
Regards,
Robbie
About the tenacity and the strength of the human heart. About true courage and goodness in the face of horror and evil. About the reason for living, about life and love, about enduring rock solid faith tried to the limit of endurance and yet unshaken.
I skimmed through this list and there are some very horribly written books on it. Like Twilight and the Bible for instance.
Faera wrote: "I skimmed through this list and there are some very horribly written books on it. Like Twilight and the Bible for instance."No matter your personal opinion about those books, there are good reasons why they're on this list. The fact is that both of them are very influential to people, and the Bible has been influential in shaping the way people and societies act for centuries. Even if you hate it the whole way through, it behooves you to read it at least once.
As for Twilight, I personally hate it. But it's at least something to be familiar with, since it's such a cultural phenomenon. I would agree with you, though, that Twilight is an abysmally written book. It and its sequels are some of the worst things I've ever read. I did read them, though, because I think I'm better off informed.
Tony wrote: "About the tenacity and the strength of the human heart. About true courage and goodness in the face of horror and evil. About the reason for living, about life and love, about enduring rock solid f..."Thank you Tony, I couldn't have put it better myself. I have found all these in the Books I recommended. It is pocket of fresh air to say the least. The mind behind these writings is fantastic! Cheers again for the great review!
Debbie wrote: "i dnot think you can get a copy of uncle toms cabin any more"
Um. Yes you can, I have one. Try going to Barnes and Noble.
Um. Yes you can, I have one. Try going to Barnes and Noble.
Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged are absolutely books you must read AT THIS TIME in the USA before it is too late to change our path
Mary wrote: "Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged are absolutely books you must read AT THIS TIME in the USA before it is too late to change our path"I've been saying this about Atlas Shrugged to a lot of my friends for years and they seem to think i'm just trying to proselytise about objectivism but seriously. It's downright uncanny. You can practically use it as a play book now. It is both terrifying and uplifting to read this novel at this time in our history.
Melynna wrote: "Faera wrote: "I skimmed through this list and there are some very horribly written books on it. Like Twilight and the Bible for instance."
No matter your personal opinion about those books, there ..."
I have to agree with you on twilight and once again i would like to emphaisze the bile. I think the bible is one of the greatest worsk of fiction i have ever read, and has a lot of good moral stories in it. Killing people is bad, be nice to your neighbors, don't be a dickhead. All of these lessons are taught in the bible just like in Aseop's fables using rich enigmatic characters. It's just when you take it is Literal infallible truth no questions asked that the battle begins, you know?
John wrote: "[b:The Name of the Rose including Postscript to the Name of the Rose|119073|The Name of the Rose including Postscript to the Name of the Rose|Umberto Eco|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512..."
when i click on this it comes up as an error...
the book of mormon and twilight? you've got to be kididng me, now i do like twilight but not to be put aside with to kill a mocking bird or the catcher and the rye. shouldnt even be in this list, and dont get me started on the book of mormon, uuuuuughhh
LOL! I agree with you about the book of Mormon! But altho I had to read To Kill a Mockingbird it bored me, however, I could barely put Twilight down!!! Much more entertaining IMO.
Then I had to buy the next 3 and I was never bored.
Then I had to buy the next 3 and I was never bored.
I love that Dr Suess made it onto the list, and more than once! And the Tao of Pooh. However I'm disappointed that One Hundred Years of Solitude made it onto the list, and not Love in the Time of Cholera. Ah well, different strokes.
Poe wrote: "I love that Dr Suess made it onto the list, and more than once! And the Tao of Pooh. However I'm disappointed that One Hundred Years of Solitude made it onto the list, and not Love in the Time of C..."
Well, you can certainly add it, can't you?
Well, you can certainly add it, can't you?
Canary Alice wrote: "Poe wrote: "I love that Dr Suess made it onto the list, and more than once! And the Tao of Pooh. However I'm disappointed that One Hundred Years of Solitude made it onto the list, and not Love in t..."
i'm adding it right now...
James McBride's Song Yet Sung should be added to the list.
Regarding the books already on the list...it doesn't that they are necessarily well written or fiction/non-fiction...the group is "Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once - Books that Impact Thinking." Quality is not required...however, enlightenment might be, which does not require agreement. Live a little!
Debbie wrote: "James McBride's Song Yet Sung should be added to the list.
Regarding the books already on the list...it doesn't that they are necessarily well written or fiction/non-fiction...the group is "Book..."
AMEN!
Debbie wrote: "James McBride's Song Yet Sung should be added to the list.
Regarding the books already on the list...it doesn't that they are necessarily well written or fiction/non-fiction...the group is "Book..."
oh and i'm adding your book...
Debbie wrote: "i dnot think you can get a copy of uncle toms cabin any more"
I just got a copy a few months ago at Barnes and Nobel in thier classic books for under $10.
From Beirut to Jerusalem
Thomas Friedman can take the most complicated subject (here the Arab/Israeli conflict) and make it read like a novel. This is my favorite of his books but all are worth reading.
TURQOISE* wrote: "You must remove those comercial books, like HP and Twilight"
i don't think you can, once they are on there, they're on there.
Erg. Why does every one always feel the need to share how much they hate Twilight in these types of lists? All these books are so popular that there are tons of people who like and dont like them. Twilights popular. Get over it.
Wendy wrote: "Of course you can get Uncle tom's Cabin... why wouldn't you be able to.? It's required reading in many school districts. "
in addition to uncle tom's cabin u might be interested in "To Master, A Long Goodnight" by Brion Gysin a bio ov josiah henson thee "real" uncle tom and on an unrelated matter read ANTICHRIST SUPERSTUD painless at scribd.com
Debbie wrote: "i dnot think you can get a copy of uncle toms cabin any more"
Yes, you can get Uncle Tom's Cabin. My daughter had to read it last year in school. I got a copy from the library and then bought a copy as well at Barnes and Noble.
Amazing list - I've realised, that I already read quite a few if them and that I have a lot of them on my to-read list. But as many of you said before, it's weird which books also find their place in this list - Bible I understand and Mormon book also. But Twilight? Weird. I'm just waiting to find Asterix and Obelix up here...
41: Erg. Why does every one always feel the need to share how much they hate Twilight in these types of lists? All these books are so popular that there are tons of people who like and dont like them. Twilights popular. Get over it.it's quite simple really. as long as there are people out there who rave and rant about how great twilight is (and nominating it for best book of ______), you're going to have a backlash. get used to it.
but to be fair, i agree that it should be on this list, so people can read it and realise how bad it is.
Melynna wrote: "Faera wrote: "I skimmed through this list and there are some very horribly written books on it. Like Twilight and the Bible for instance."
No matter your personal opinion about those books, there ..."
I am glad someone else dislikes Twlight, I really hated it.
Debbie wrote: "i dnot think you can get a copy of uncle toms cabin any more"are you serious? check out some used-book stores
Recently I went searching for this very enlightening book by Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, only to find that it has been out of print for ages...BTW, my friends here, please be very careful what you read. Books changes life and society. Reading books like Twilight will send the human mind back to the days of stones and cavalry, if not amoebas.
m wrote: "Mary wrote: "Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged are absolutely books you must read AT THIS TIME in the USA before it is too late to change our path"I've been saying this about Atlas Shrugged to a lot..."
Same goes with Nineteen Eightyfour. This is the age of distortion, not reason. America and the world need another Thomas Paine.
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