List :: Top 100 Books by Newsweek

  • War and Peace

    #1

    War and Peace

    by Leo Tolstoy

    (11 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 35

    357 points

    "Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. (Maude/Maude)

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    #2

    Nineteen Eighty-Four

    by George Orwell

    (68 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 3

    946 points

    "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

  • Ulysses

    #3

    Ulysses

    by James Joyce

    (13 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 4

    925 points

    "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."

  • Lolita

    #4

    Lolita

    by Vladimir Nabokov

    (35 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 5

    856 points

    "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth."

  • The Sound and the Fury

    #5

    The Sound and the Fury

    by William Faulkner

    (15 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 9

    703 points

    "Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

  • Invisible Man

    #6

    Invisible Man

    by Ralph Ellison

    (16 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 15

    640 points

    "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—...

  • To the Lighthouse

    #7

    To the Lighthouse

    by Virginia Woolf

    (14 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 14

    642 points

    "Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.

  • The Odyssey

    #8

    The Odyssey

    by Homer

    (10 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 188

    102 points

    "By now the other warriors, those that had escaped headlong ruin by sea or in battle, were safely home.Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once..."

  • Pride and Prejudice

    #9

    Pride and Prejudice

    by Jane Austen

    (30 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 19

    540 points

    "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

  • Commedia

    #10

    Commedia

    by Dante Alighieri

    (4 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 106

    180 points

    "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,/chè la diritta via era smarrita.Mildway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the..."