aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

List: Top 100 Books by Harvard Book Store

The Odyssey

The Odyssey

Homer

4.18 (11)

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 he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.

#40
RANK
14,649
POINTS
0 votes on this list
Commedia

Commedia

Dante Alighieri

3.17 (6)

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 straightforward pathway had been lost.

#218
RANK
3,153
POINTS
0 votes on this list
The Histories

The Histories

Herodotus

4.5 (2)

This is the showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos so that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.

#282
RANK
2,049
POINTS
0 votes on this list
Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman

4.33 (6)

#202
RANK
3,555
POINTS
0 votes on this list
Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

4.33 (6)

This is the tale of a meeting of two lonely, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

#157
RANK
4,792
POINTS
0 votes on this list
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Michael Chabon

4.57 (6)

In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

#246
RANK
2,668
POINTS
0 votes on this list
A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

4.0 (12)

It was a dark and stormy night.<br> In her attic bedroom Meg Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.

#72
RANK
10,570
POINTS
0 votes on this list
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.

#415
RANK
1,044
POINTS
0 votes on this list
Sea of Poppies

Sea of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh

5.0 (1)

The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream: how could she have, living as she did in northern Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast?

#484
RANK
677
POINTS
0 votes on this list
Mountains Beyond Mountains

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Tracy Kidder

5.0 (1)

Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, "We met because of a beheading, of all things."

#439
RANK
959
POINTS
0 votes on this list