Comments on Best Books Ever - page 49

It's also a pretty broad catagory, it includes all books from any genre and fiction or non-fiction. I have never found myself in agreement on any such list but there are some real stinkers on this one.

I think I might as well just leave this site after seeing this list; the majority of users are clearly uneducated on the meaning of what a good novel is. I thought this was a website that promoted 'Good reads', but it just promotes utter trash like Twilight; and as much fun as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter are, they are nowhere near 'Best Book Ever' material. They are merely 'popular books' that have been made into movies and therefore have spawned a fan base of prepubescent teenagers who have no knowledge of literature, philosophy or deeper meaning; just predictable fairy tales, magic & homosexual vampires.

The sight is great, but it's also open to anyone. The lists are simply popularity contests. Find a group or groups that like to discuss what you're interested in. Everyone finds these lists and many have the same first reaction (I know I did). They see Twilightlight getting voted as "The Best Book Ever" and go..."what?".

There are plenty of discerning readers here who love all types of lit. Just take some time to look around the sight. Most interesting conversations take place in the groups.

Did I seriously just see twilight as the best book ever?

Perhaps someone should just amend the title of the list to read "Best Book Ever for adolescent girls" - that should fix the amount of outrage (me included) expressed here.

Jen wrote: "Perhaps someone should just amend the title of the list to read "Best Book Ever for adolescent girls" - that should fix the amount of outrage (me included) expressed here."

I like that idea.

I maybe the first person in 5 years to visit through here.

Rena wrote: "I maybe the first person in 5 years to visit through here." No, you simply did not see the other 51 pages after 2008

my best book ever is pride and prejudice

Twilight really sucks. It is hands down the worst book ever written. The Hobbit is the most amazing book ever written this is the original fantasy book.this book rocks my socks. With out this there wouldn't be any other good books. So Twilight is shit and The Hobbit is AWESOME

Jazmine wrote: "Twilight is the best book I've read in my entire life! It is awemazing! I love the whole saga and Edward Cullen!"

BS twilight is terrible! no one cares about it anymore

Twilight is on top yet Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska aren't even on the next page? Really, people?

Jazmine wrote: "Twilight is the best book I've read in my entire life! It is awemazing! I love the whole saga and Edward Cullen!"
I know, I love the way Stephanie Meyers writes!

i adore stephanie meyer but there are other book deserve to be acknowledge stephanie is an amazing writer but come on

unusual list

twilight is bull *****, if you really wanna read something, then read something meaningful, meaning which'll change your life in some sense, read some thing which make some holy sense,

Deanna wrote: "i haven't gotten a chance to look through this thing, it would take FOREVER, but is tuesdays with morrie on here? if not, it SHOULD be. i don't care if he's a sports writing, mitch album's book is ..."

Hi, I've read his books too. Very inspiring indeed and kinda like his style base on real life experience. :)

Hmmm... seems a lot of the "Best Books of All Time were written in the last few decades! How can this be? Perhaps a lot of readers don't give the older classics a chance! I mean I did love Harry Potter, but ...

And now for some triviality...push twilight off the throne, please!! This makes me so sad.

This is officially shit now, in my opinion. Time to make a new one...

I don't understand how Twilight and the Hunger Games can be above Harry Potter. Harry Potter is simply the best. NO. NOT JUST BECAUSE I GREW UP WITH IT. Harry Potter is the only book out of HG and Twilight that had SUCH a twisted plot and was well-written, whereas HG (ok I don't really know, I'm just listening to my sister who has read the series) and Twilight (tried to read; boring, skimmed) just had a straight-through plot.

Twilight Saga? I tried to read it...TWICE. I'm not giving it a third chance. *shudders* too much description of nothing AND greatly unimportant body parts. Whiny, selfish brat throughout story...I'm good.

And I mean, like..almost every single person I encountered in my so-far life has read the Hunger Games and say it's better than Harry Potter but never read it because "the books are too big." /Disappoint

I haven't read Hunger Games YET, I'll admit, but I'm PRETTY sure it's not as good as Harry Potter's twisted plots.

Where is the Bible on this list?

Twilight!?!?! Are you serious.... Harry Potter and Pride & Prejudice are way better books.

Kirsten wrote: "I'm annoyed with Twilight. Extremely

And where is The Shack?"

"The Shack" is on this list.

I've seen "Twilight" on this list and reaction like "I don't wanna live on this planet anymore" is the only one possible...

You seriously putting Twilight as the BEST BOOK EVER?

Twilight?!? I have to admit that the books are better than the films but they are NOT the best book s ever. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Hunger Games are my faves.

Honestly a book can be judged simply by the mood you're in when reading it. No "best or worst" but simply preference. I do have to ask who edited for Stephenie Meyer, I mean really!

I just read through this "Best Books" list and now there's a gun in my mouth - really demoralizing to see this

great list - for 12 year olds and soccer moms - here's a serious reader's - I've kept it to novels/book-length fiction

1. The Molloy Trilogy - Samuel Beckett
2. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
3. Ulysses - James Joyce
4. Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
5. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
6. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
7. The Sound & the Fury - William Faulkner
8. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
9. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
10. Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
11. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
12. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
13. The Recognitions - William Gaddis
14. V. - Thomas Pynchon
15. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
16. The Possessed - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
17. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude - G.G. Marquez
19. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
20. The Fall - Albert Camus
21. The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
22. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
23. Beloved - Toni Morrison
24. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
25. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
26. Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence
27. Blindness - Jose Saramago
28. Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29. The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
30. The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
31. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
32. Correction - Thomas Bernhard
33. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
34. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
35. The Trial - Franz Kafka
36. Ada - Vladimir Nabokov
37. Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann
38. Petersburg - Andrey Biely
39. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
40. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
41. The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino
42. The Temple of the Golden Pavillion
43. Fathers & Sons - Ivan Turgenev
44. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
45. The Sufferings of Young Werthere - Goethe
46. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
47. Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
48. Middlemarch - George Eliot
49. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
50. The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
51. The Voyeur - Alberto Moravia
52. The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell
53. Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
54. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine
55. Mulligan Stew - Gilbert Sorrentino
56. Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess
57. The Counterfeiters - Andre Gide
58. The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
59. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
60. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
61. Aunt Julia & the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa
62. The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
63. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
64. Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec
65. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
66. The Death of Virgil - Hermann Broch
67. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
69. The Stranger - Albert Camus
70. The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
71. The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk
72. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
73. Zeno's Conscience - Italo Svevo
74. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
75. War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy
76. Monsieur Teste - Paul Valery
77. The Great Gatsby - F. Scot Fitzgerald
78. The Mustache - Emmanuel Carrere
79. Men of Maize - Miguel Angel Asturias
80. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
81. Murphy - Samuel Beckett
82. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
83. Ocean, Sea - Alessandro Baricco
84. JR - William Gaddis
85. Too Loud a Solitude - Bohumil Hrabal
86. Impressions of Africa - Raymond Roussel
87. Pussy, King of the Pirates - Kathy Acker
88. The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
89. The Stream of Life - Clarice Lispector
90. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
91. Wittgenstein's Mistress Quartet - David Markson
92. Do You Hear Them? - Nathalie Sarraute
93. The Joke - Milan Kundera
94. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
95. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
96. The Shipyard - Juan Carlos Onetti
97. Thomas the Obscure - Maurice Blanchot
98. The Possibility of an Island - Michel Houellebecq
99. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf - Viktor Pelevin
100. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe

How did TWILIGHT become number 1?!?!

Kirsten wrote: "I'm annoyed with Twilight. Extremely

And where is The Shack?"

I agree. I was at one time in love with the saga, but when you go back and read you realize how there is no true plot. The 1st book should have been the only book, the rest were stupid and there are so many holes in her story especially whole evolution of the werewolves. The last book was based entirely on sex, wtf?

I'm so incredibly disappointed to see Twilight at the top of this list. The only positive that I can find in the fact that it's so high up is that young adults are actually READING and taking the time to discuss books.

A lot of people new to this list have the same reaction. It's one of the main reasons I lost interest in most of the lists. Open a list on any subject and it wanders off topic or fan groups move in. Still there are great discussion groups on the site.

What happened to reading just for the joy of it? The stretching of your imagination, or just immersing oneself in the writers words? Why after reading a book is it neccesary to pick it apart? I ask, where did the love go?

Looks like there's a recency effect in play here.

nicola wrote: "proof that the truth is not democratic =/

seriously, jane austen? errughhh."

You might not like them, but Jane Austen's books are still recognized as novels of quality, whether you agree or not.

I want to read twilight just to know what it is about but I'm not a fan of twilight

nicola wrote: "proof that the truth is not democratic =/

seriously, jane austen? errughhh."
Are you being serious?
Jane Austen was a great writer and now a days she's one of the most recognized woman writer in the whole world

Florencia wrote: "nicola wrote: "proof that the truth is not democratic =/

seriously, jane austen? errughhh."
Are you being serious?
Jane Austen was a great writer and now a days she's one of the most recognized wo..."

Just goes to show you that we all have different taste. I have tried to read her several times and just couldn't get through them. While I recognize her as a great and influencia lwriter, I find her work drek.

It can be hard to get into the "classics" as most call them the writing & english are very different from today.We live in a slang world,to each his/her own. Everyone has different tastes and what books each prefers reflects that taste. Happy Reading.

In response to Jade:
It is one thing to put Twilight on the list but it is insulting to all of the capable/good/fantastic authors and to all of the self-respecting readers out there for it to be number one. Is this the only book these voters have ever read?!

I respect other people's opinions but anyone who thinks that Twilight is the best book ever is undereducated, completely stupid, a philistine or has been paid by some ridiculous fan club of Meyer's.

Where is "A child called it"?

Twilight #1? Seriously? wow...

this list...the first 10 books or so are not the best books ever written...

Greg wrote: "Wow, some of these folks need to read more. Or age more. Or go to school, or something. I mean, really."

*thumbs up*

TWILIGHT? HOW? HOW IN A MILLION YEARS IS THAT DUMB BOOK NUMBER ONE? The majority of the people I know hate it. I hate it. The only people that like it are teenage girls that are all into Pop-culture. Twilight is a terrible, terrible book. Seriously, a vampire ROMANCE? Stupid. Here's the way the list should be!
1: The Bible
2: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
3: The Lord of the Rings
Honourable mentions: The Hunger Games, The Help.

Twilight? TWILIGHT? You've got to be KIDDING ME!

How is that book both at the top spot for BEST and WORST books?

I love how almost everyone is appalled at Twilight and then demands to know where their favourite book is. Granted, I was the same, but I still find that hilarious.

Long live Looking for Alaska!

Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac's novel On The Road - "That isn't writing at all, it's typing."- just like the current crop of novels that occupy the top of the "best books ever" list.

Chris