The Greatest Books: The Best Books of All Time - 1 to 50 50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years In compiling the books on this list, the editors at SuperScholar have tried to provide a window into the culture of the last 50 years. Ideally, if you read every book on this list, you will know how we got to where we are today. Not all the books on this list are “great.” The criterion for inclusion was not greatness but INFLUENCE. All the books on this list have been enormously influential. The books we chose required some hard choices. We also tried to keep a balance between books that everyone buys and hardly anyone reads versus books that, though not widely bought and read, are deeply transformative. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 45.
The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual history written by Martin Seymour-Smith, a British poet, critic, and biographer.[1] The list included the books such as, Upanishads, Hebrew Bible, I Ching, Kabbalah, Candide, The World as Will and Idea, among others. See also[edit] References[edit] Jump up ^ Seymour-Smith, Martin (1998). The 100 most influential books ever written : the history of thought from ancient times to today. External links[edit] The list
50 Books That Changed the World For centuries, books have been written in an attempt to share knowledge, inspiration, and discoveries. Sometimes those books make such an impact that they change the way the world thinks about things. The following books have done just that by providing readers an education in politics and government, literature, society, academic subjects such as science and math, and religion. Politics and Government These books represent some of the most important works that examine politics, economics, and philosophy that affect government. The Republic by Plato. Literature From creating characters and stories that have become ingrained in cultures around the world to upsetting censorship to inspiring the imagination of many, these works of literature have all touched the world in significant ways. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Society These books have made an impact on society with views on racism, feminism, individualism, and scholarship. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Religion
The Novel 100: The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time Multiple Listings:9 authors wrote two of the books listed on TIME Magazine's list of the best English-language novels published since 1923: Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited; A Handful of Dust) George Orwell (1984; Animal Farm) Graham Greene (The Heart of the Matter; The Power and the Glory) Philip Roth (American Pastoral; Portnoy's Complaint) Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog) Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity's Rainbow) Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse) Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita; Pale Fire) William Faulkner (Light in August; The Sound and the Fury) Authors on Two Separate ListsTIME Magazine's list of "100 Best Movies" released since 1923 is a companion to TIME Magazine's list of "100 Best Novels" (written in English) published since 1923. A total of 92 authors are represented on the "Best Novels" list. About 500 directors, writers and starring actors are noted in the "100 Best Movies" list. Notes about how the list was created
The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors “Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,” Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers’ success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.” Of the 544 separate titles selected, each is assigned a reverse-order point value based on the number position at which it appears on any list — so, a book that tops a list at number one receives 10 points, and a book that graces the bottom, at number ten, receives 1 point. In introducing the lists, David Orr offers a litmus test for greatness:
Great Books of the Western World The Great Books (second edition) Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the Great Books in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes. The original editors of the series chose three criteria for inclusion: a book must be relevant to contemporary issues, and not only important in its historical context; it must reward rereading; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas," relevant to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas identified by the editors. History[edit] After debates about what to include and how to present it, with an eventual budget of $2,000,000, the project was ready. Sales were initially poor. With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of E-book readers, many of these texts are available online.[4] Volumes[edit] Volume 1 The Great Conversation Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6
Top 10 Best Novels of the Last 20 Years Books The ten novels on this list all substantiate the belief that books are the most elastic, introspective, human and entertaining form of media that exist. Not movies, not music, not art, not the theatre. A famous author once said that novels are the best way for two human beings to connect with each other. I believe this, and I believe that people who do not find pleasure in words have never had the opportunity to read one of the great novels. Music for Torching by A.M. First Sentence: ”It is after midnight on one of those Friday nights when the guests have all gone home and the host and hostess are left in their drunkenness to try and put things right again.” As the only woman on the list, A. Homes makes this common enough theme of suburban ennui feel real with her shining prose, a secondary cast of interesting plots and characters, and lack of a fairy-tale ending. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996) Of course, Palahniuk had to be on this list. House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (2000)