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Ultimate Best Books

All Novels

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

Oblomov

Oblomov

Ivan Goncharov

4.33 (3)

Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov was lying in bed one morning in his flat in Gorohovy Street, in one of the big houses that had almost as many inhabitants as a whole country town.

#502
RANK
602
POINTS
O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!

Willa Cather

4.0 (4)

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.

#353
RANK
1,551
POINTS
Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course

Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course

Delia Smith

5.0 (1)

#531
RANK
503
POINTS
Romancero Gitano

Romancero Gitano

Federico García Lorca

3.0 (1)

#578
RANK
349
POINTS
Holes

Holes

Louis Sachar

4.44 (9)

There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.

#93
RANK
8,998
POINTS
Under the Net

Under the Net

Iris Murdoch

3.0 (2)

When I saw Finn waiting for me at the corner of the street I knew at once that something had gone wrong. Finn usually waits for me in bed, or leaning up against the side of the door with his eyes closed.

#495
RANK
627
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Darconville's Cat

Darconville's Cat

Alexander Theroux

5.0 (1)

#607
RANK
285
POINTS
Waverley

Waverley

Walter Scott

3.5 (2)

The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the prudent.

#529
RANK
504
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Maigret and the Enigmatic Letter

Georges Simenon

4.0 (1)

#558
RANK
424
POINTS
The Death of the Heart

The Death of the Heart

Elizabeth Bowen

3.5 (2)

That mornining's ice, no more than brittle film, had cracked and was now floating in segments.

#530
RANK
504
POINTS