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Listopia > Must Read Classics
My favorite books are the classics. I'm always searching for "new" classics to read, ones I've not heard of or have overlooked. Let me know which ones you love!
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A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
| 1 |
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To Kill a Mockingbird
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4.26 avg rating — 6,947,974 ratings
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| 2 |
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Pride and Prejudice
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4.30 avg rating — 4,861,144 ratings
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| 3 |
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1984
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4.20 avg rating — 5,543,619 ratings
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| 4 |
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Jane Eyre
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4.16 avg rating — 2,347,204 ratings
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| 5 |
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The Great Gatsby
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3.93 avg rating — 5,976,055 ratings
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| 6 |
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Animal Farm
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4.02 avg rating — 4,619,326 ratings
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| 7 |
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The Count of Monte Cristo
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4.33 avg rating — 1,036,844 ratings
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| 8 |
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The Lord of the Rings
by
4.54 avg rating — 735,455 ratings
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| 9 |
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Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by
4.17 avg rating — 2,483,525 ratings
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| 10 |
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by
4.14 avg rating — 1,911,004 ratings
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| 11 |
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The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
by
4.30 avg rating — 4,496,526 ratings
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| 12 |
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Wuthering Heights
by
3.90 avg rating — 2,177,309 ratings
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| 13 |
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Hamlet
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4.03 avg rating — 1,062,691 ratings
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| 14 |
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Fahrenheit 451
by
3.97 avg rating — 2,877,210 ratings
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| 15 |
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Lord of the Flies
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3.70 avg rating — 3,228,877 ratings
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| 16 |
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Crime and Punishment
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4.29 avg rating — 1,100,250 ratings
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| 17 |
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The Catcher in the Rye
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3.80 avg rating — 3,923,389 ratings
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| 18 |
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Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
by
3.91 avg rating — 1,924,390 ratings
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| 19 |
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The Diary of a Young Girl
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4.20 avg rating — 4,227,922 ratings
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| 20 |
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Romeo and Juliet
by
3.74 avg rating — 2,840,701 ratings
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| 21 |
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Dracula
by
4.02 avg rating — 1,494,129 ratings
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| 22 |
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Sense and Sensibility
by
4.09 avg rating — 1,306,938 ratings
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| 23 |
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A Christmas Carol
by
4.09 avg rating — 946,663 ratings
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| 24 |
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Great Expectations
by
3.80 avg rating — 879,770 ratings
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| 25 |
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Les Misérables
by
4.21 avg rating — 848,512 ratings
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| 26 |
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Gone with the Wind
by
4.31 avg rating — 1,260,718 ratings
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| 27 |
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck, #2)
by
3.83 avg rating — 1,342,459 ratings
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| 28 |
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The Secret Garden
by
4.17 avg rating — 1,306,912 ratings
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| 29 |
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Persuasion
by
4.15 avg rating — 786,052 ratings
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| 30 |
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A Tale of Two Cities
by
3.88 avg rating — 1,018,403 ratings
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| 31 |
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
by
4.47 avg rating — 11,518,209 ratings
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| 32 |
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The Little Prince
by
4.33 avg rating — 2,511,996 ratings
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| 33 |
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass
by
4.06 avg rating — 613,167 ratings
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| 34 |
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Emma
by
4.05 avg rating — 993,786 ratings
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| 35 |
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Of Mice and Men
by
3.90 avg rating — 2,865,245 ratings
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| 36 |
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The Odyssey
by
3.84 avg rating — 1,206,496 ratings
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| 37 |
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Brave New World
by
3.98 avg rating — 2,097,039 ratings
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| 38 |
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The Grapes of Wrath
by
4.03 avg rating — 1,002,279 ratings
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| 39 |
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Macbeth
by
3.89 avg rating — 1,030,295 ratings
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| 40 |
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Anna Karenina
by
4.10 avg rating — 941,072 ratings
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| 41 |
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The Chronicles of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia, #1-7)
by
4.28 avg rating — 712,188 ratings
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| 42 |
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by
4.20 avg rating — 784,299 ratings
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| 43 |
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Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)
by
4.33 avg rating — 1,123,769 ratings
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| 44 |
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The Scarlet Letter
by
3.44 avg rating — 925,869 ratings
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| 45 |
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Catch-22
by
3.99 avg rating — 891,293 ratings
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| 46 |
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War and Peace
by
4.17 avg rating — 368,864 ratings
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| 47 |
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The Old Man and the Sea
by
3.81 avg rating — 1,328,300 ratings
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| 48 |
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Slaughterhouse-Five
by
4.10 avg rating — 1,494,219 ratings
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| 49 |
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Rebecca
by
4.25 avg rating — 732,006 ratings
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| 50 |
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Don Quixote
by
3.91 avg rating — 307,984 ratings
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| 51 |
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The Three Musketeers
by
4.10 avg rating — 348,428 ratings
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| 52 |
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Lolita
by
3.87 avg rating — 954,564 ratings
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| 53 |
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by
3.92 avg rating — 1,026,008 ratings
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| 54 |
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The Outsiders
by
S.E. Hinton (Goodreads Author)
4.15 avg rating — 1,625,930 ratings
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| 55 |
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by
3.94 avg rating — 582,254 ratings
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| 56 |
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A Clockwork Orange
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 776,034 ratings
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| 57 |
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The Brothers Karamazov
by
4.39 avg rating — 393,516 ratings
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| 58 |
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The Iliad
by
3.93 avg rating — 515,081 ratings
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| 59 |
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by
4.30 avg rating — 517,378 ratings
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| 60 |
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All Quiet on the Western Front
by
4.11 avg rating — 524,780 ratings
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| 61 |
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The Importance of Being Earnest
by
4.17 avg rating — 408,593 ratings
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| 62 |
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Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by
3.84 avg rating — 304,369 ratings
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| 63 |
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Treasure Island
by
3.85 avg rating — 544,724 ratings
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| 64 |
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East of Eden
by
4.44 avg rating — 654,136 ratings
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| 65 |
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Mansfield Park
by
3.86 avg rating — 382,494 ratings
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| 66 |
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Moby-Dick or, The Whale
by
3.57 avg rating — 620,489 ratings
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| 67 |
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Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)
by
4.09 avg rating — 507,995 ratings
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| 68 |
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Flowers for Algernon
by
4.24 avg rating — 806,995 ratings
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| 69 |
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
by
4.12 avg rating — 1,116,482 ratings
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| 70 |
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Madame Bovary
by
3.71 avg rating — 378,756 ratings
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| 71 |
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Night
by
4.38 avg rating — 1,375,018 ratings
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| 72 |
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The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)
by
4.01 avg rating — 261,791 ratings
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| 73 |
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The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso
by
4.09 avg rating — 174,244 ratings
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| 74 |
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Much Ado About Nothing
by
4.06 avg rating — 259,944 ratings
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| 75 |
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The Holy Bible: King James Version
by
4.45 avg rating — 321,152 ratings
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| 76 |
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Northanger Abbey
by
3.85 avg rating — 458,919 ratings
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| 77 |
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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
by
4.24 avg rating — 3,172,610 ratings
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| 78 |
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by
4.16 avg rating — 2,119,427 ratings
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| 79 |
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
by
4.22 avg rating — 2,031,312 ratings
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| 80 |
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Dune (Dune, #1)
by
4.29 avg rating — 1,645,955 ratings
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| 81 |
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The Metamorphosis
by
3.91 avg rating — 1,458,358 ratings
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| 82 |
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The Crucible
by
3.61 avg rating — 467,731 ratings
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| 83 |
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Atlas Shrugged
by
3.69 avg rating — 408,387 ratings
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| 84 |
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Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I
by
4.47 avg rating — 27,372 ratings
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| 85 |
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Siddhartha
by
4.08 avg rating — 886,641 ratings
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| 86 |
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Heart of Darkness
by
3.43 avg rating — 562,938 ratings
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| 87 |
|
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
by
4.41 avg rating — 3,179,599 ratings
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| 88 |
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Charlotte’s Web
by
4.21 avg rating — 2,061,772 ratings
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| 89 |
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by
3.89 avg rating — 278,844 ratings
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| 90 |
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The Bell Jar
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4.05 avg rating — 1,245,375 ratings
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| 91 |
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The Kite Runner
by
Khaled Hosseini (Goodreads Author)
4.36 avg rating — 3,523,210 ratings
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| 92 |
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The Stranger
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4.03 avg rating — 1,431,626 ratings
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| 93 |
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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3.92 avg rating — 243,928 ratings
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| 94 |
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The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)
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4.40 avg rating — 468,343 ratings
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| 95 |
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Aesop’s Fables
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4.05 avg rating — 130,073 ratings
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| 96 |
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Wuthering Heights, Agnès Grey & Villette
by
4.01 avg rating — 3,404 ratings
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| 97 |
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The Scarlet Pimpernel
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4.07 avg rating — 142,367 ratings
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| 98 |
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The Giver (The Giver, #1)
by
Lois Lowry (Goodreads Author)
4.12 avg rating — 2,832,812 ratings
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| 99 |
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The Sound and the Fury
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3.86 avg rating — 197,387 ratings
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| 100 |
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The Woman in White
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4.02 avg rating — 167,287 ratings
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Tags:
classic, literary-fiction
1765 likes · Like
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.
Jenny
1784 books
75 friends
75 friends
Kathryn
581 books
128 friends
128 friends
Brooke
109 books
21 friends
21 friends
Antoine
949 books
177 friends
177 friends
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads
3388 books
851 friends
851 friends
Erin
563 books
65 friends
65 friends
Mary
1199 books
28 friends
28 friends
Jill
1716 books
98 friends
98 friends
More voters…
Comments Showing 1-50 of 73 (73 new)
message 1:
by
Silvana
(new)
Sep 04, 2008 07:03PM
there are two "to kill a mockingbird". how to delete one?
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Silvana wrote: "there are two "to kill a mockingbird". how to delete one?"there are three wuthering heights - i voted for 'em all
You've a bit of Russian lit on here. If you enjoy it, and you've not read these already, you might try: Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita"
Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls"
The team of Pevear and Volokhonsky is my current favorite for Russian to English translation whenever I can find them. They do very well capturing the "flavor" and sensibilities of the original Russian.
I give it a week before the Bible or Book of Mormon supplants Camus as number one.
This is a great list! Eventually I'll work my way through it...lol
It's nice to know someone else is enjoying these books besides me! If only I could find someone in High School who enjoys them this much! Love your list and will hopefully be able to make it through all 456 books!!!
Emily, I love these books. Some strange ones slipped in this list but I really like them on the whole.
Some of these are not classics yet.
Great list! I'm a lover of classics myself, and if you haven't read them already, I highly recommend "La dame aux camelias" by Alexandre Dumas fils and "Manon Lescaut" by L'Abbe Prevost. They are some really great books that have been much neglected by readers. These two stories are similar but not alike.
Anne wrote: "Great list! I'm a lover of classics myself, and if you haven't read them already, I highly recommend "La dame aux camelias" by Alexandre Dumas fils and "Manon Lescaut" by L'Abbe Prevost. They are ..."
Anne, I just downloaded Manon Lescaut from Project Gutenberg. I could not find Dumas' La Dame aux Camelias. Thank you for the suggestions. I will find it somewhere else.
Anne, I just downloaded Manon Lescaut from Project Gutenberg. I could not find Dumas' La Dame aux Camelias. Thank you for the suggestions. I will find it somewhere else.
And diary of a wimpy kid dog days! What on earth?
Charlotte's web should be on that list. Its a true classic.
There are several repeats, I noticed The Bible, "To Kill a Mockingbird," "I capture the Castle," and "Metamorphosis." They are the different formats of the same book on here twice.... Can it be fixed?
Librarians' can change it, I think.
I removed diary of a wimpy kid from the list, but I am not sure if I should remove Harry Potter or not since I don't know how old a book can be before it is deemed a "classic."
I tried to do a check for duplicates but some of the books are wierd. For example, there is a 7 in one book for the Chronicles of Narnia, but there is also the first two in separate places on the list. Unfortunately, those can't be combined and if I delete one than votes will be lost, also being on the delete book page scares me, because if I delete something I shouldn't than my librarian privileges could be revoked. I value my librarian status too much to risk that.
Danielle wrote: "I removed diary of a wimpy kid from the list, but I am not sure if I should remove Harry Potter or not since I don't know how old a book can be before it is deemed a "classic.""I know that it has been a while but I agree with your decision to keep Harry Potter. It may not be a classic now, exactly, but I believe that one day it will be.
Can anyone recommend a publisher of hard cover classics? Or a book club where I can purchase them? I'd like to begin a library to pass on to my family's future generations. Thank you.
Classics are just phenomenal! They are basis of books today and a reason why I keep reading!
Anne wrote: "Great list! I'm a lover of classics myself, and if you haven't read them already, I highly recommend "La dame aux camelias" by Alexandre Dumas fils and "Manon Lescaut" by L'Abbe Prevost. They are ..."It is impossible I have finally got somenone who loves La dame aux camelias, this story is one of the best love stories EVER>
It's pretty easy to add books to lists; at the top of the list, at the tab next to "all votes."
Susanna wrote: "It's pretty easy to add books to lists; at the top of the list, at the tab next to "all votes.""How does #181 Isn't It Pretty To Think So? qualify for this list?
Because those same 12 people have spammed it on 27 pages of Listopias! (Was 28, but I removed it from a few, like "Time's Top 10 Novels of 2012," which it wasn't.)
Removed, because a book published in 2012 is not a classic in the terms of this list:Isn't It Pretty To Think So?
some books are not classics and so should be removed
Dorothy wrote: "Can anyone recommend a publisher of hard cover classics? Or a book club where I can purchase them? I'd like to begin a library to pass on to my family's future generations. Thank you."Great idea - building a library to pass on to future generations. Thanks for the idea!
The Godfather is a classic? I liked it but a classic?
The movie is a classic. Haven't read the book.
I read the book and the part about the horse was much too graphic. I would not call it a classic yet but I am not sure how that is determined.
Is there a list for classic movies? (will search)
thanks
Is there a list for classic movies? (will search)
thanks
There are several for movies, don't know if there's a list for that or not, though. (There's at least one of all of these, though: book and movie both good, book better than movie, movie better than book.)
My definition of "classic" is about as liberal as you're going to find. In going through this list, I found and removed some titles published within the last ten-fifteen years:The Fault In Our Stars
The Book Thief
The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Dear John
Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope (this is a YA modernization of the classic Austen novel)
Code Name Verity
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... And It's All Small Stuff
Looking For Alaska
I Know This Much Is True
Angela's Ashes
Many of these books are good, but it's too soon to say whether they'll become classics for future readers.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia-Marques is the greatest novel of the twentieth century IMHO.Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis is a great cycle of poetry.
The Illustrated Man by the late Ray Bradbury is excellent as are ANY OF HIS WRITINGS!
Other good reads:
The Devil's Storybook by Natalie Babbitt
Hawaii by James Mitchener
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
i have just retired an want a place to start reading,i have read a lot but want to read classics at this point, why? because i want to see what the great thinkers and writes had to draw on to get where they got with the knowledge they saw before them
I am very surprised to see The Scarlet Pimpernel on the list. Although Baroness Orczy should be credited for creating the disguised-hero-alter-ego oeuvre, I don't think that she had any talent!
One of the best non-fiction short stories I ever read was Jack London's People of the Abyss. It is a harrowing sociological study of the East End of London around the time of Jack the Ripper. This is a great classic and one that most people should read if for no other reason than to put that time frame in context. You will be thanking God that you live in this time as opposed to that time after reading this book. It is available to download on gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688
Bruce wrote: "i have just retired an want a place to start reading,i have read a lot but want to read classics at this point, why? because i want to see what the great thinkers and writes had to draw on to get w..."Hi Bruce, I retired from "corporate America" recently but am doing lots of different things now. I too am catching up on my reading. I think this list is a pretty good place to start. I've read seven of the top ten and Jane Eyre is next!
This list is way too long. A lot of these aren't classics, especially the books on the latter pages.
Greg wrote: "Bruce wrote: "i have just retired an want a place to start reading,i have read a lot but want to read classics at this point, why? because i want to see what the great thinkers and writes had to dr..."Bruce, I read Jane Eyre. Worst book I've ever read. IF you dare read it, don't say I didn't warn you.
what definition is being used for "classic" ? i'd say some are too recent to be included.
I checked for duplicates and removed 17.
I went and typed this out on a spreadsheet & removed duplicates. The Harry Potter series is in there at least three times, still.
From the 1046 I have 956 non-duplicated books.
I love the classics for sure, but I just don't get the fascination with Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye... just because it's old doesn't make it a classic.
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