aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

All Novels

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

A handful of dust

A handful of dust

Evelyn Waugh

4.25 (4)

"Was anyone hurt?"

#390
RANK
1,254
POINTS
The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody

George Grossmith

2.67 (3)

My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway -- a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour.

#418
RANK
1,034
POINTS
The Stain

The Stain

Rikki Ducornet

3.0 (1)

#568
RANK
389
POINTS
Snow Country

Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata

3.25 (4)

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

#469
RANK
740
POINTS
The Bone People

The Bone People

Keri Hulme

3.5 (2)

He walks down the street.

#451
RANK
876
POINTS
The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

4.0 (6)

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.Maj je v Ajemenemu vroč, morast mesec.

#231
RANK
2,966
POINTS
Zazie dans le Métro

Zazie dans le Métro

Raymond Queneau

5.0 (1)

Doukipudonktan, se demanda Gabriel excédé. (In English: "Howcanyastinksotho, wondered Gabriel, exasperated.")

#547
RANK
452
POINTS
Lord Jim

Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad

3.5 (2)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

#265
RANK
2,260
POINTS
Neuromancer

Neuromancer

William Gibson

3.0 (5)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

#272
RANK
2,177
POINTS
Treasure Island

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

3.55 (11)

Squire Trelawny, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admiral Benbow" inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

#91
RANK
9,073
POINTS