aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

All Novels

Explore rankings, reviews, and reader lists for every book in the catalog.

Tristes Tropiques

Tristes Tropiques

Claude Lévi-Strauss

5.0 (1)

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

#539
RANK
477
POINTS
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)

#511
RANK
568
POINTS
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
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.

#354
RANK
1,536
POINTS
Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

3.5 (2)

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

#403
RANK
1,170
POINTS
The Interrogation

The Interrogation

J. M. G. Le Clezio

4.0 (1)

#549
RANK
451
POINTS
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.

#445
RANK
916
POINTS
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.

#442
RANK
953
POINTS
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.

#180
RANK
4,184
POINTS
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.

#20
RANK
22,499
POINTS