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Ultimate Best Books

28,319

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Ultimate Best Books

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

Tristes Tropiques

Tristes Tropiques

Claude Lévi-Strauss

5.0 (1)

I hate travelling and explorers. Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs.

#261
RANK
81
1 expert lists
Reviews
Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber

Tsao Hsueh-Chin

5.0 (1)

When the Goddess Nugua undertook to repair the Dome of Heaven, she fashioned at the Great Mythical Mountain under the Nonesuch Bluff 36,501 pieces of stone, each 120 feet high and 240 feet around. (Part 1 - Chapter One)

#262
RANK
81
2 expert lists
Reviews
Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion

5.0 (3)

This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.

#263
RANK
80
1 expert lists
Reviews
Old Goriot

Old Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

3.75 (4)

Madame Vauquer (<i>nee</i> De Conflans) is an elderly person who for the past forty years has kept a lodging house in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.

#264
RANK
80
2 expert lists
Reviews
Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

3.5 (2)

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.

#265
RANK
80
2 expert lists
Reviews
The Interrogation

The Interrogation

J. M. G. Le Clezio

4.0 (1)

#266
RANK
79
1 expert lists
Reviews
Appointment in Samarra

Appointment in Samarra

John O'Hara

4.0 (1)

Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L. for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats.

#267
RANK
79
1 expert lists
Reviews
A House for Mr.Biswas

A House for Mr.Biswas

V. S. Naipaul

4.0 (1)

Ten weeks before he died, Mr. Mohun Biswas, a journalist of Sikkim Street, St. James, Port of Spain, was sacked.

#268
RANK
79
1 expert lists
Reviews
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Patrick Suskind

4.27 (11)

In eighteenth century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.

#269
RANK
78
2 expert lists
Reviews
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J. K. Rowling

4.59 (27)

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.

#270
RANK
78
1 expert lists
Reviews