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Ultimate Best Books

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Ultimate Best Books

Ranked by points from the world's most prestigious book lists. How many have you read?

Atonement

Atonement

Ian McEwan

4.1 (10)

The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.

#111
RANK
176
3 expert lists
Reviews
Nostromo

Nostromo

Joseph Conrad

3.8 (5)

In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.

#112
RANK
173
3 expert lists
Reviews
The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

4.5 (6)

Selden paused in surprise.

#113
RANK
172
4 expert lists
Reviews
The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.56 (9)

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened just thirteen years ago, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. (Garnett, 1912)Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner of our district, extremely well known in his time (and to this day still remembered in these parts) on account of his violent and mysterious death exactly thirteen years ago, the circumstances of which I shall relate in due course. (Avsey 1994)Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Garnett, Great Books, 1952)Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. (Pevear/Volokhonsky, 1990)

#114
RANK
168
2 expert lists
Reviews
The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier

Ford Madox Ford

3.57 (7)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

#115
RANK
168
3 expert lists
Reviews
The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco

4.08 (12)

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

#116
RANK
166
3 expert lists
Reviews
The Shipping News

The Shipping News

Annie Proulx

3.63 (8)

Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.

#117
RANK
164
1 expert lists
Reviews
The Woman in White

The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins

4.43 (7)

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

#118
RANK
164
4 expert lists
Reviews
Herzog

Herzog

Saul Bellow

3.0 (3)

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

#119
RANK
162
2 expert lists
Reviews
The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters

Andre Gide

4.2 (5)

"The time has now come for me to hear a step in the passage," said Bernard to himself.

#120
RANK
162
2 expert lists
Reviews