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Fan of Fiction: Updating the Best Novels Meta-Lists

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I’ve added four recent “best novels” lists to the Best Novels meta-lists. As you will see, the definition of “novel” is flexible. Some listers have included books that don’t fit within the most strict definitions of the form, such as, for example, A Thousand and One Nights, a collection of stories with a framing story. Here are the links:

Best Novels of All Time – Ranked
Best Novels of All Time – Chronological

Here are the top 10 novels:

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia, 1967). By Gabriel García Márquez (on 25 lists)
The Great Gatsby (US, 1925). By F. Scott Fitzgerald (on 24 lists)
Lolita (USSR/US, 1955). By Vladimir Nabokov (on 22 lists)
Anna Karenina (Russia, 1877). By Leo Tolstoy (on 21 lists)
Madame Bovary (France, 1856). By Gustave Flaubert (on 20 lists)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (US, 1884). By Mark Twain (on 20 lists)
Don Quixote (Spain, Pt. 1: 1605; Pt. 2: 1615). By Miguel de Cervantes (on 19 lists)
Wuthering Heights (UK, 1847). By Emily Bronte (on 19 lists)
Moby-Dick (US, 1851). By Herman Melville (on 19 lists)
Crime and Punishment (Russia, 1866). By Fyodor Dostoyevsky (on 19 lists)

The Best Novels lists contain 297 books (or, in some cases, series of books). The great majority of the novels on the list were originally written in English. If you’re looking for more diversity, check out the Best Literature lists.  For your convenience, I’ve included a list of the 239 novels (or, in some cases, works of prose fiction that may not meet the definition of a novel) on the Best Literature list that are not on the Best Novels list (in chronological order):

  1. The Panchatantra (linked stories) (India, c. 300 BCE) – Vishnu Sharma (attrib.)
  2. Satyricon (Roman Empire, c.27-66 CE) – Petronius
  3. The Golden Ass (Roman Empire, c. 158-180 CE) – Apuleius
  4. Water Margin (Outlaws of the Marsh) (China, c. 1296-1372) – Shi Nai’an (attrib.)
  5. The Decameron (linked stories) Italy, 1350-1353) – Giovanni Boccaccio
  6. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (China, c. 1380-1400) – Luo Guanzhong
  7. The Book of the City of Ladies (Italy/France, 1405) – Christine de Pizan
  8. Le Morte d’Arthur (linked stories) (England, 1485) – Thomas Malory
  9. Utopia (England, 1516) – Thomas More
  10. Journey to the West (Monkey) (China, c. 1540-1560) – Wu Cheng’en
  11. The Heptameron (linked stories) (France, 1558) – Marguerite de Navarre
  12. The Plum in the Golden Vase (China, 1600) – Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng
  13. New Atlantis (England, 1623-1626, pub. 1627) – Francis Bacon
  14. Simplicius Simplicissimus (Germany, 1668) – Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelhausen
  15. The Princess of Cleves (France, 1678) – Madame de La Fayette
  16. Oroonoko (England, 1688) – Aphra Behn
  17. Manon Lescaut (France, 1731) – Abbé Prévost
  18. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (Great Britain, 1740) – Samuel Richardson
  19. The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (Great Britain, 1742) – Henry Fielding
  20. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (novella) (Great Britain, 1759) – Samuel Johnson
  21. The Castle of Otranto (Great Britain, 1765) – Horace Walpole
  22. Jacques the Fatalist (France, 1765-1780) – Denis Diderot
  23. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (Great Britain, 1771) – Tobias Smollett
  24. Evelina (Great Britain, 1778) – Fanny Burney
  25. Dangerous Liaisons (France,1782) – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
  26. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Germany, 1796) – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  27. Castle Rackrent (UK, 1800) – Maria Edgeworth
  28. Sense and Sensibility (UK,1811) – Jane Austen
  29. Mansfield Park (UK, 1814) – Jane Austen
  30. Waverley (UK, 1814) – Walter Scott
  31. Ivanhoe (UK, 1820) – Walter Scott
  32. Melmoth the Wanderer (Ireland, 1820) – Charles Maturin
  33. The Betrothed (Italy, 1827) – Alessandro Manzoni
  34. The Wild Ass’s Skin (France, 1831) – Honoré de Balzac
  35. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (France, 1831) – Victor Hugo
  36. Louis Lambert (France, 1832) – Honoré de Balzac
  37. The Girl with the Golden Eyes (France, 1833) – Honoré de Balzac
  38. Eugénie Grandet (France, 1833) – Honoré de Balzac
  39. The Pickwick Papers (UK, 1837) – Charles Dickens
  40. A Hero of Our Time (Russia, pub. 1840, revised 1841) – Mikhail Lermontov
  41. The Deerslayer (US, 1841) – James Fenimore Cooper
  42. Ursule Mirouet (France, 1841) – Honoré de Balzac
  43. A Christmas Carol (UK, 1843) – Charles Dickens
  44. A Harlot High and Low (France, 1847) – Honoré de Balzac
  45. Mary Barton (UK, 1848) – Elizabeth Gaskell
  46. Hard Times (UK, 1854) – Charles Dickens
  47. North and South (UK, 1854-1855) – Elizabeth Gaskell
  48. The Warden (UK, 1855) – Anthony Trollope
  49. Barchester Towers (UK, 1857) – Anthony Trollope
  50. Little Dorrit (UK, 1857) – Charles Dickens
  51. Adam Bede (UK, 1859) – George Eliot
  52. First Love (Russia, 1860) – Ivan Turgenev
  53. The Woman in White (UK, 1860) – Wilkie Collins
  54. The Mill on the Floss (UK, 1860) – George Eliot
  55. Our Mutual Friend (UK, 1864) – Charles Dickens
  56. The Last Chronicle of Barset (UK, 1867) – Anthony Trollope
  57. Thérèse Raquin (France, 1867) – Émile Zola
  58. Phineas Finn (UK, 1869) – Anthony Trollope
  59. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (France, 1870) – Jules Verne
  60. Through the Looking Glass (and What Alice Found There) (UK, 1871) – Lewis Carroll
  61. Erewhon (UK, 1872) – Samuel Butler
  62. Around the World in Eighty Days (France, 1873) – Jules Verne
  63. Far from the Madding Crowd (UK, 1874) – Thomas Hardy
  64. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (US, 1876) – Mark Twain
  65. L’Assommoir (France, 1877) – Émile Zola
  66. Ben-Hur (US, 1880) – Lew Wallace
  67. Nana (France, 1880) – Émile Zola
  68. The Red Room (Sweden, 1880) – August Strindberg
  69. Little Novels of Sicily (Italy, 1883) – Giovanni Verga
  70. Treasure Island (UK, 1883) – Robert Louis Stevenson
  71. The Bostonians (US/UK, 1886) – Henry James
  72. Kidnapped (UK, 1886) – Robert Louis Stevenson
  73. The Mayor of Casterbridge (UK, 1886) – Thomas Hardy
  74. Fortunata and Jacinta (Spain, 1887) – Benito Pérez Galdós
  75. The People of Hemsö (Sweden, 1887) – August Strindberg
  76. The Maias (Portugal, 1888) – José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
  77. The Master of Ballantrae (UK, 1889) – Robert Louis Stevenson
  78. News from Nowhere (UK, 1890) – William Morris
  79. The House by the Medlar Tree (Italy, 1890) – Giovanni Verga
  80. Hunger (Norway, 1890) – Knut Hamsun
  81. Billy Budd (novella) (US, c. 1891, pub. 1924) – Herman Melville
  82. Diary of a Nobody (UK, 1892) – George & Weedon Grossmith
  83. The Time Machine (UK, 1895) – H.G. Wells
  84. Effi Briest (Germany, 1896) – Theodor Fontane
  85. Misericordia (Spain, 1897) – Benito Pérez Galdós
  86. The Invisible Man (UK, 1897) – H.G. Wells
  87. The Way of All Flesh (UK, c. 1899) – Samuel Butler
  88. The Kreutzer Sonata (novella) (Russia, 1899) – Leo Tolstoy
  89. The Confusions of Young Törless (Germany, 1906) – Robert Musil
  90. The Secret Agent (Poland/UK, 1907) – Joseph Conrad
  91. Anne of Green Gables (Canada, 1908) – Lucy Maud Montgomery
  92. The Old Wive’s Tale (UK, 1908) – Arnold Bennett
  93. Under Western Eyes (Poland/UK, 1911) – Joseph Conrad
  94. Zuleika Dobson (UK, 1911) – Max Beerbohm
  95. Death in Venice (novella) (Germany, 1912) – Thomas Mann
  96. Le Grand Meaulnes (France, 1913) – Henry Alain-Fournier
  97. Kokoro (Japan, 1914) – Natsume Soseki
  98. The Metamorphosis (novella) (Austria-Hungary/Czechoslovakia, 1912, pub. 1915) – Franz Kafka
  99. The Magnificent Ambersons (US, 1918) – Booth Tarkington
  100. The Forsyte Saga (three novels and two stories) (UK, 1906-1921) – John Galsworthy
  101. The True Story of Ah Q (novella) (China, 1921-1922) – Lu Xun (Lu Hsun)
  102. Siddhartha (Germany/Switzerland, 1922) – Hermann Hesse
  103. A Lost Lady (US, 1923) – Willa Cather
  104. The Counterfeiters (France, 1925) – André Gide
  105. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (UK, 1926) – Agatha Christie
  106. Amerika (Czechoslovakia, 1911-1914, pub. 1927) – Franz Kafka
  107. Steppenwolf (Germany/Switzerland, 1927) – Hermann Hesse
  108. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (UK, 1928) – D.H. Lawrence
  109. Nadja (France, 1928) – André Breton
  110. Les Enfants Terribles (Frances, 1929) – Jean Cocteau
  111. Point Counter Point (UK, 1928) – Aldous Huxley
  112. The Good Earth (US, 1931) – Pearl Buck
  113. The Radetzky March (Austria, 1932) – Joseph Roth
  114. Tobacco Road (US, 1932) – Erskine Caldwell
  115. Young Lonigan (US, 1932) – James T. Farrell
  116. Miss Lonelyhearts (US, 1933) – Nathanael West
  117. Man’s Fate (France, 1933) – André Malraux
  118. The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (US, 1934) – James T. Farrell
  119. The Postman Always Rings Twice (US, 1934) – James M. Cain
  120. Judgment Day (US, 1935) – James T. Farrell
  121. The Book of Disquiet (Portugal, 1935) – Fernando Pessoa
  122. Rickshaw Boy (China, 1937) – Lao She
  123. Murphy (Ireland, 1938) – Samuel Beckett
  124. Brighton Rock (UK, 1938) – Graham Greene
  125. And Then There Were None (UK, 1939) – Agatha Christie
  126. And Quiet Flows the Don (USSR, 1928-1940) – Mikhail Sholokhov
  127. The Third Policeman (Ireland, 1939-1940) – Flann O’Brien
  128. The Tartar Steppe (Italy, 1940) – Dino Buzzati
  129. Our Lady of the Flowers (France, 1942-1943) – Jean Genet
  130. The Bridge on the Drina (Yugoslavia, 1945) – Ivo Andrić
  131. The Berlin Stories (two novellas) (UK, 1945) – Christopher Isherwood
  132. Pippi Longstocking (Sweden, 1945) – Astrid Lindgren
  133. Titus Groan (UK, 1946) – Mervyn Peake
  134. The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Nigeria, 1946) – Amos Tutola
  135. Doctor Faustus (Germany, 1947) – Thomas Mann
  136. The Makioka Sisters (Japan, 1948) – Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
  137. Snow Country (Japan, 1948) – Yasunari Kawabata
  138. Cry, the Beloved Country (South Africa, 1948) – Alan Paton
  139. The Kingdom of This World (Cuba, 1949) – Alejo Carpentier
  140. The Man with the Golden Arm (US, 1949) – Nelson Algren
  141. A Town Like Alice (UK, 1950) – Nevil Shute
  142. The Family Moskat (Poland/US, 1950) – Isaac Bashevis Singer
  143. Gormenghast (UK, 1950) – Mervyn Peake
  144. The Opposing Shore (France, 1951) – Julien Gracq
  145. Foundation (USSR/US, 1951) – Isaac Asimov
  146. From Here to Eternity (US, 1951) – James Jones
  147. Day of the Triffids (UK, 1951) – John Wyndham
  148. Lucky Jim (UK, 1953) – Kingsley Amis
  149. The Long Goodbye (US, 1953) – Raymond Chandler
  150. The Lost Steps (Cuba, 1953) – Alejo Carpentier
  151. Bonjour Tristesse (France, 1954) – Françoise Sagan
  152. I’m Not Stiller (Switzerland, 1954) – Max Frisch
  153. The Quiet American (UK, 1955) – Graham Greene
  154. The Talented Mr. Ripley (UK, 1955) – Patricia Highsmith
  155. The Fall (France, 1956) – Albert Camus
  156. Seize the Day (US, 1956) – Saul Bellow
  157. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (Brazil, 1956) – João Guimarães Rosa
  158. The Wapshot Chronicle (US, 1957) – John Cheever
  159. A Death in the Family (US, 1957) – James Agee
  160. Voss (Australia, 1957) – Patrick White
  161. The Baron in the Trees (Italy, 1957) – Italo Calvino
  162. Jealousy (France, 1957) – Alain Robbe-Grillet
  163. The Once and Future King (UK, 1958) – T.H. White
  164. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (US, 1958) – Truman Capote
  165. Titus Alone (UK, 1959) – Mervyn Peake
  166. Henderson the Rain King (US, 1959) – Saul Bellow
  167. Solaris (Poland, 1961) – Stanislaw Lem
  168. The Woman in the Dunes (Japan, 1962) – Kobo Abe
  169. Cat’s Cradle (US, 1963) – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  170. V. (US, 1963) – Thomas Pynchon
  171. Arrow of God (Nigeria, 1964) – Chinua Achebe
  172. Dune (US, 1965) – Frank Herbert
  173. The Magus (UK, 1966) – John Fowles
  174. The Crying of Lot 49 (US, 1966) – Thomas Pynchon
  175. The Fixer (US, 1966) – Bernard Malamud
  176. The First Circle (USSR, 1968) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  177. Myra Breckenridge (US, 1968) – Gore Vidal
  178. The Godfather (US, 1969) – Mario Puzo
  179. Them (US, 1969) – Joyce Carol Oates
  180. The Left Hand of Darkness (US, 1969) – Ursula K. Le Guin
  181. The Sea of Fertility (four novels) (Japan, 1964-1970, pub. 1969-1971) – Yukio Mishima
  182. Deliverance (US, 1970) – James Dickey
  183. The Ogre (France, 1970) – Michel Tournier
  184. Angle of Repose (US, 1971) – Wallace Stegner
  185. Watership Down (US, 1972) – Richard Adams
  186. The Siege of Krishnapur (UK, 1973) – J.G. Farrell
  187. The Conservationist (South Africa, 1974) – Nadine Gordimer
  188. Dog Soldiers (US, 1974) – Robert Stone
  189. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (UK, 1974) – John Le Carré
  190. Humboldt’s Gift (US, 1975) – Saul Bellow
  191. The Periodic Table (Italy, 1975) – Primo Levi
  192. The Shining (US, 1977) – Stephen King
  193. The Sea, the Sea (UK, 1978) – Iris Murdoch
  194. The Ghost Writer (US, 1979) – Philip Roth
  195. The Executioner’s Song (US, 1980) – Norman Mailer
  196. So Long, See You Tomorrow (US, 1980) – William Maxwell
  197. Obasan (Canada, 1981) – Joy Kogawa
  198. So Long A Letter (Senegal, 1981) – Mariama Bâ
  199. The Women of Brewster Place (US, 1982) – Gloria Naylor
  200. The Life and Times of Michael K. (South Africa, 1983) – J.M. Coetzee
  201. Ironweed (US, 1983) – William Kennedy
  202. The Accidental Tourist (US, 1985) – Anne Tyler
  203. Nervous Conditions (Zimbabwe, 1988) – Tsitsi Dangaremba
  204. Oscar and Lucinda (Australia, 1988) – Peter Carey
  205. The Alchemist (Brazil, 1988) – Paulo Coelho
  206. A Prayer for Owen Meany (US, 1989) – John Irving
  207. The Power of One (South Africa/Australia, 1989) – Bryce Courtenay
  208. Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico, 1989) – Laura Esquivel
  209. Billy Bathgate (US, 1989) – E.L. Doctorow
  210. Get Shorty (US, 1990) – Elmore Leonard
  211. Possession (UK, 1990) – A.S. Byatt
  212. A Thousand Acres (US, 1991) – Jane Smiley
  213. Mao II (US, 1991) – Don DeLillo
  214. The English Patient (Canada, 1992) – Michael Ondaatje
  215. The Secret History (US, 1992) – Donna Tartt
  216. Operation Shylock (US, 1993) – Philip Roth
  217. The Stone Diaries (US/Canada, 1993) – Carol Shields
  218. The Shipping News (US, 1993) – E. Annie Proulx
  219. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (UK, 1994) – Louis De Bernières
  220. The Rings of Saturn (Germany, 1995) – W.G. Sebald
  221. A Fine Balance (India/Canada, 1995) – Rohinton Mistry
  222. Mason & Dixon (US, 1997) – Thomas Pynchon
  223. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials II) (UK, 1997) – Philip Pullman
  224. The God of Small Things (India, 1997) – Arundhati Roy
  225. The Hours (US, 1998) – Michael Cunningham
  226. Waiting (China/US, 1999) – Ha Jin
  227. The Human Stain (US, 2000) – Philip Roth
  228. The Blind Assassin (Canada, 2000) – Margaret Atwood
  229. Blonde (US, 2000) – Joyce Carol Oates
  230. The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials III) (UK, 2000) – Philip Pullman
  231. Life of Pi (Canada, 2001) – Yann Martel
  232. The Namesake (India/US, 2003) – Jhumpa Lahiri
  233. The Kite Runner (Afghanistan/US, 2003) – Khaled Hosseini
  234. The Known World (US, 2003) – Edward P. Jones
  235. Gilead (US, 2004) – Marilynne Robinson
  236. The Book Thief (Australia, 2005) – Markus Zusak
  237. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Dominican Republic/US, 2007) – Junot Diaz
  238. Station Eleven (Canada, 2014) – Emily St. John Mandel
  239. The Underground Railroad (US, 2016) – Colson Whitehead

 

The Guardian’s List of Best Novels – And Mine.

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The Guardian newspaper recently published its latest list of 100 Best Novels of All Time. I’ll be adding the list to my own meta-list of best novels. The Guardian‘s list was created by soliciting ranked lists of 10 best novels from authors, critics, and academics from around the world. I’ve read 72 of the 100 books on the list.

The list is ranked (Middlemarch is No. 1), although to me the exercise of deciding whether, for example, Ulysses is better than In Search of Lost Time, or whether Emma is better than Persuasion is a colossal waste of time. Here’s an analogy: the cream always rises to the top of the milk bottle; the cream layer constitutes only a tiny percentage of the bottle’s contents. Therefore, relative to the entire bottle, every bit of cream in that thin layer is equal, for all practical purposes. Why engage in the trouble of deciding that one bit of cream is a little better than another? Similarly, if we choose 100 books out of the hundreds of thousands of books ever published, the miniscule differences in quality among the top 100 are far outweighed by the difference between the top 100 and the remaining thousands. But listers seem to love to rank their lists, so I’m clearly in the minority here.

I tried to make my own list of 100 favorite novels, but could only get it down to 125. Regular readers of Make Lists, Not War may know that, while I love reading “top [insert number here] lists,” I hate making them. I find it too painful to whittle down the list to reach an arbitrary number. As I’ve said before, I think it makes more sense to rate every book I read (or movie I see, album I listen to, etc.) on a 1-5 or 1-10 scale. My “top” books (movies, music, …) list then consists of every item that received a top score. There is no arbitrary cutoff number. Then we have no worries about ranking (they’re all 10/10!) and no painful winnowing of the favorites to 10, 25, or 100. If you want to see the full list of my five-star books, go HERE. The reduced list of my 125 favorite novels, which is a subset of the Five-Star Books list, follows (unranked, in chronological order). I apologize in advance for the lack of contemporary fiction. I have been engaged in a massive reading project (based on my own lists, of course) since 2011 and have been moving chronologically (so far I’ve made it to the 1920s), so I have read almost no fiction published in the past 15 years or so. (When I take breaks from my reading list, I tend to opt for recent nonfiction instead of fiction.) I hope to remedy this shameful gap soon. Also, I cheated a little by including trilogies and quartets as single entries, to keep the total down. NOTE: If the book is also on the Guardian‘s list, I’ve added an asterisk:

  1. The Tale of Genji. Murasaki Shikibu (Japan, 1021)
  2. Gargantua and Pantagruel. François Rabelais (France, 1532)
  3. Don Quixote. Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 1605, 1615)*
  4. Gulliver’s Travels. Jonathan Swift (Ireland, 1726)
  5. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Henry Fielding (Great Britain, 1749)
  6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Laurence Sterne (Ireland, 1759)*
  7. Dream of the Red Chamber (The Story of the Stone) – Cao Xueqin and Guo E (China, 1763-1764)
  8. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen (UK, 1813)*
  9. Emma. Jane Austen (UK, 1815)*
  10. Ivanhoe. Walter Scott (UK, 1819)
  11. The Red and the Black. Stendhal (France, 1830)
  12. Le Père Goriot. Honoré de Balzac (France, 1835)
  13. Cousin Bette. Honoré de Balzac (France, 1846)
  14. Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë (UK, 1847)*
  15. Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë (UK, 1847)*
  16. Moby-Dick. Herman Melville (US, 1851)*
  17. Notes from Underground. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russia, 1861)
  18. Great Expectations. Charles Dickens (UK, 1861)*
  19. Fathers and Sons. Ivan Turgenev (Russia, 1862)
  20. Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russia, 1866)*
  21. The Last Chronicle of Barset. Anthony Trollope (UK, 1867)
  22. The Idiot. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russia, 1869)
  23. War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy (Russia, 1869)*
  24. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. George Eliot (UK, 1871)*
  25. The Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russia, 1878)*
  26. Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy (Russia, 1878)*
  27. The Return of the Native. Thomas Hardy (UK, 1878)*
  28. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain (US, 1884)
  29. The Maias. Eça de Queirós (Portugal, 1888)
  30. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy (UK, 1891)
  31. Jude the Obscure. Thomas Hardy (UK, 1895)*
  32. Dracula. Bram Stoker (Ireland, 1897)*
  33. Lord Jim. Joseph Conrad (UK, 1900)
  34. Sister Carrie. Theodore Dreiser (US, 1900)
  35. Kim. Rudyard Kipling (UK, 1901)
  36. The Wings of the Dove. Henry James (US/UK, 1901)
  37. The Ambassadors. Henry James (US/UK, 1903)
  38. The Golden Bowl. Henry James (US/UK, 1904)*
  39. Nostromo. Joseph Conrad (UK, 1904)
  40. The House of Mirth. Edith Wharton (US, 1905)
  41. Sons and Lovers. D.H. Lawrence (UK, 1915)
  42. The Good Soldier. Ford Madox Ford (UK, 1915)*
  43. The Rainbow. D.H. Lawrence (UK, 1915)*
  44. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. James Joyce (Ireland, 1916)
  45. The Magnificent Ambersons. Booth Tarkington (US, 1918)
  46. Women in Love. D.H. Lawrence (UK, 1920)
  47. Siddhartha. Hermann Hesse (Germany, 1922)
  48. Ulysses. James Joyce (Ireland, 1922)*
  49. The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann (Germany, 1924)*
  50. The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald (US, 1925)*
  51. Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf (UK, 1925)*
  52. The Trial. Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia, 1925)*
  53. The Castle. Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia, 1926)
  54. In Search of Lost Time. Marcel Proust (France, 1913-1927)*
  55. Steppenwolf. Hermann Hesse (Germany, 1927)
  56. To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf (UK, 1927)*
  57. Death Comes for the Archbishop. Willa Cather (US, 1927)
  58. Orlando: A Biography. Virginia Woolf (UK, 1928)*
  59. Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe (US, 1929)
  60. The Sound and the Fury. William Faulkner (US, 1929)*
  61. As I Lay Dying. William Faulkner (US, 1930)
  62. Light in August. William Faulkner (US, 1932)
  63. Independent People. Halldór Laxness (Iceland, 1934)
  64. The Book of Disquiet. Fernando Pessoa (Portugal, 1935)
  65. Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner (US, 1936)
  66. U.S.A. John Dos Passos (US, 1930-1936)
  67. Nausea. Jean-Paul Sartre (France, 1938)
  68. At Swim-Two-Birds. Flann O’Brien (Ireland, 1939)
  69. The Glass Bead Game. Hermann Hesse (Germany, 1943)
  70. All the King’s Men. Robert Penn Warren (US, 1946)
  71. Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry (UK, 1947)
  72. Cry, the Beloved Country. Alan Paton (South Africa, 1948)
  73. Intruder in the Dust. William Faulkner (US, 1948)
  74. The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger (US, 1951)
  75. Memoirs of Hadrian. Marguerite Yourcenar (France, 1951)
  76. Invisible Man. Ralph Ellison (UK, 1952)*
  77. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: A Trilogy. Samuel Beckett (Ireland/France, 1951-1953)
  78. Lucky Jim. Kingsley Amis (UK, 1954)
  79. Lord of the Flies. William Golding (UK, 1954)
  80. The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien (UK, 1954-1955)
  81. Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov (USSR/US, 1955)*
  82. The Inheritors. William Golding (UK, 1955)
  83. A Death in the Family. James Agee (US, 1957)
  84. The Tin Drum. Günter Grass (Germany, 1959)
  85. The Alexandria Quartet. Lawrence Durrell (UK, 1957-1960)
  86. Catch-22. Joseph Heller (US, 1961)*
  87. A Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess (UK, 1962)
  88. The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing (UK, 1962)*
  89. Cat’s Cradle. Kurt Vonnegut (US, 1963)
  90. V. Thomas Pynchon (US, 1963)
  91. Giles Goat-Boy. John Barth (US, 1966)
  92. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel García Marquez (Colombia, 1967)*
  93. Invisible Cities. Italo Calvino (Italy, 1972)*
  94. Breakfast of Champions. Kurt Vonnegut (US, 1973)
  95. Gravity’s Rainbow. Thomas Pynchon (US, 1973)
  96. Ragtime. E.L. Doctorow (US, 1975)
  97. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Tom Robbins (US, 1976)
  98. Song of Solomon. Toni Morrison (US, 1977)*
  99. So Long, See You Tomorrow. William Maxwell (US, 1979)
  100. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Italo Calvino (Italy, 1979)
  101. Still Life with Woodpecker. Tom Robbins (US, 1980)
  102. Midnight’s Children. Salman Rushdie (UK/India, 1981)*
  103. The White Hotel. D.M. Thomas (UK, 1981)
  104. Money: A Suicide Note. Martin Amis (UK, 1984)
  105. White Noise. Don DeLillo (US, 1985)
  106. World’s End. T.C. Boyle (US, 1987)
  107. Beloved. Toni Morrison (US, 1987)*
  108. The New York Trilogy. Paul Auster (US, 1987)
  109. Oscar and Lucinda. Peter Carey (Australia, 1988)
  110. Mating. Norman Rush (US, 1991)
  111. Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace (US, 1996)
  112. The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy (India, 1997)*
  113. American Pastoral. Philip Roth (US, 1997)
  114. White Teeth. Zadie Smith (UK, 1999)*
  115. Atonement. Ian McEwan (UK, 2001)
  116. Austerlitz. W.G. Sebald (Germany, 2001)*
  117. Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides (US, 2002)
  118. The Known World. Edward P. Jones (US, 2003)*
  119. Never Let Me Go. Kazuo Ishiguro (UK, 2005)*
  120. Europe Central. William T. Vollmann (US, 2005)
  121. What Is the What. Dave Eggers (US, 2006)
  122. The Inheritance of Loss. Kiran Desai (India/US, 2006)
  123. The Road. Cormac McCarthy (US, 2006)*
  124. There But For The. Ali Smith (UK, 2011)
  125. The Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend*, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. Elena Ferrante (Italy, 2011-2014)

My Year in Review 2025: Movies, Books, Music & Live Performances

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MOVIES

It was a slow year for moviegoing.  I watched fewer movies than usual, either in the theaters or streaming.  I’m not sure why, but family health issues and national politics may each have played a part. Early in the year we caught up on some of the acclaimed movies from 2024, and about halfway through the year, we were inspired by the New York Times’ ‘best movies of the 21st century so far’ list to see some of the films on that list. (I also added the NYT list to my own meta-list of 21st Century films.) One of my New Year’s resolutions is to watch more movies in 2026.  Here are the films I watched in 2025, with my 1-10 rating:

10/10
The Zone of Interest (UK/Poland, 2023) Dir: Jonathan Glazer

9/10
Margaret (US, 2011) Dir: Kenneth Lonergan
Toni Erdmann (Germany/Austria, 2016) Dir: Maren Ade
The Worst Person in the World (Norway, 2021) Dir: Joachim Trier
I Saw the TV Glow (US, 2024) Dir: Jane Schoenbrun
Anora (US, 2024) Dir: Sean Baker
One Battle After Another (US, 2025) Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson

8/10
 Jazz on a Summer’s Day (US, 1959) Dir: Bert Stern
I Am Not Your Negro (US, 2016) Dir: Raoul Peck
His Three Daughters (US, 2023) Dir: Azazel Jacobs
The Outrun (Germany/UK, 2024) Dir: Nora Fingscheidt
A Complete Unknown (US, 2024) Dir: James Mangold
The Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan/US, 2025) Dir: Shih-Ching Tsou

7/10
The Snapper (Ireland, 1993) Dir: Stephen Frears
Hamilton (US, 2020) Dir: Thomas Kail
Hit Man (US, 2023) Dir: Richard Linklater
Challengers (US, 2024) Dir: Luca Guadagnino
Heretic (US, 2024) Dir: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods
The Substance (France/UK/US, 2024) Dir: Coralie Fargeat
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (UK, 2024) Dir: Nick Park

6/10
Ocean’s Eleven (US, 2001) Dir: Steven Soderbergh
Idiocracy (US, 2006) Dir: Mike Judge
Sicario (US, 2015) Dir: Denis Villeneuve

5/10
Hundreds of Beavers (US, 2022) Dir: Mike Cheslik
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (US, 2025) Dir: Christopher McQuarrie

BOOKS

In 2025, I continued to work my way through a large chronological ‘best literature’ reading list that is based on my meta-list of the greatest works of literature.  This year, I read a number of works published in the 1910s and 1920s.  I decided to take on Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time, which occupied most of my reading time this year (I hope to finish it in 2026).  I also read Miracles and Wonder, the newest book by Elaine Pagels about the history of Christianity (you can read my review here) as well as two of her earlier books. A trip to England inspired me to read two books on British history.  Here is a list of the books I read in 2025, with my 1-5 star rating.

5/5
In Search of Lost Time I: Swann’s Way (1913). By Marcel Proust. Translated by Lydia Davis.
The Rainbow (1915). By D.H. Lawrence.
The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (1918). By Henry Adams.
In Search of Lost Time II: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919). By Marcel Proust. Translated by James Grieve.
In Search of Lost Time III: The Guermantes Way (1920). By Marcel Proust. Translated by Mark Treharne.

4/5
Kokoro (1914). By Natsume Sōseki. Translated by Meredith McKinney.
The Home and the World (1916). By Rabindranath Tagore. Translated by Surendranath Tagore.
Selected Stories (1918-1926). By Lu Xun. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang.
Main Street (1920). By Sinclair Lewis.
The Forsyte Saga (1921). By John Galsworthy.
Zeno’s Conscience (1923). By Italo Svevo. Translated by William Weaver.
Three Plays (1923-1926). By Sean O’Casey.
An American Tragedy (1925). By Theodore Dreiser.
Three Tragedies (1932-1936). By Federico García Lorca. Translated by James Graham-Lujan and Richard L. O’Connell.
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity (1988). By Elaine Pagels.
The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics (1995). By Elaine Pagels.
A History of Britain I: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603 (2000). By Simon Schama.
These Truths: A History of the United States (2018). By Jill Lepore.
Life Between the Tides (2021). By Adam Nicolson.
Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures (2024). By Katherine Rundell.
Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (2025). By Elaine Pagels.

3/5
A Short History of England: The Glorious Story of a Rowdy Nation (2011). By Simon Jenkins.
Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change (2025). By Olga Khazan.

MUSIC

My music listening in 2025 was dominated by my discovery of the rock band The Warning, a trio of sisters from Mexico who play hard rock with tinges of metal, pop, and punk. Many of their fans refer to them as ‘the future of rock’ and I don’t disagree. I also spent a lot of time listening to new albums from my best of 2024 meta-list. I also binged several favorite artists of years past: The Roches, The Who, and Steely Dan. Classical music listening was down this year. Here are the top 50 albums I listened to in 2025: 

  1. The Warning – Keep Me Fed (2024)
  2. Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood (2024)
  3. The Warning – ERROR (2022)
  4. Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us (2024)
  5. The Roches – Speak (1989)
  6. Clairo – Charm (2024)
  7. Charles Lloyd – The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (2024)
  8. The Roches -The Roches (1979)
  9. The Who – Live at Leeds (1970)
  10. The Roches – A Dove (1992)
  11. Yasmin Williams – Acadia (2024)
  12. Mabe Fratti – Sentir Que No Sabes (2024)
  13. The Who – Quadrophenia (1973)
  14. Steely Dan – A Decade of Steely Dan (1972-1980)
  15. The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy (2024)
  16. Hurray For The Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive (2024)
  17. The Roches – Keep On Doing (1982)
  18. Adam Steinberg – Angels + Angles (2022)
  19. The Roches – Another World (1985)
  20. Steely Dan – Can’t Buy A Thrill (1972)
  21. Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The ‘Royal Albert Hall’ Concert (rec. 1966)
  22. Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic (1974)
  23. The Roches – Can We Go Home Now (1995)
  24. Alvvays – Blue Rev (2022)
  25. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Wild God (2024)
  26. World Party – Arkeology (rec. 1984-2011)
  27. Michael Kiwanuka – Small Changes (2024)
  28. Charlie Parker – The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes (rec. 1944-1948)
  29. Steely Dan – Katy Lied (1975)
  30. Brittany Howard – What Now (2024)
  31. SZA – SOS (2022)
  32. Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy (1973)
  33. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness (2024)
  34. The Who – Tommy (1969)
  35. The Who – Who’s Next (1971)
  36. Waxahatchee – Out in the Storm (2017)
  37. Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch (2024)
  38. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud (2020)
  39. Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid (2010)
  40. Lucinda Williams – West (2007)
  41. The New Pornographers – Electric Version (2003)
  42. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema (2005)
  43. Andrew Sue Wing – Seventeen (2024)
  44. Björk – Vespertine (2001)
  45. Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks (1975)
  46. Fontaines D.C. – Romance (2024)
  47. Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song (2010)
  48. Kim Deal – Nobody Loves You More (2024)
  49. Lana Del Rey – Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd (2023)
  50. Oscar Peterson – Night Train (1962)

LIVE PERFORMANCES

For the first time in several years, I didn’t attend concerts by any of my favorite indie or alternative pop & rock artists.  Instead, most of the concerts I attended in 2025 were for classical music, with two jazz concerts, and one singer-songwriter concert at a new (to me) venue: the Rec Room in Belmont.  I didn’t see any plays this year, but did enjoy a night of improv comedy for the first time in many years.  Here are the live performances I attended in 2025, in chronological order:

  • The Makanda Project with Charles Tolliver at Boston Public Library, Roxbury, MA 3/5/25
  • Jeremy Denk at Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA 3/21/25
    Performing Partitas (BWV 825-830) by J.S. Bach
  • Cambridge Jazz Festival at Danehy Park, Cambridge, MA 7/26/25
    Ron Reid’s Precious Metals Project
    Namisa Mdalose & Lumanyano Bizana
  • Improv Asylum at Charles Playhouse, Boston, MA 8/16/25
    The Main Stage Show (Barker, Carty, Gillis, Sosebee, etc.)
  • Andrew Sue Wing at The Rec Room, Belmont, MA 9/9/25
  • A Tribute to Scott Nickrenz at Calderwood Hall, Gardner Museum. Boston, MA 9/10/25
    Performers included: Yo-Yo Ma, Jason Bell, Paavali Jumppanen, Lawrence Dutton, Borromeo Quartet, A Far Cry
  • Convivium Musicum at First Unitarian Church, Worcester, MA 11/23/25
    Performing works of Gregorio Allegri, Noel Bauldeweyn, Adrian Willaert, Jacob Handl, and Josquin des Prez
  • Paula Robison & Paavali Jumppanen at Williams Hall, NEC, Boston, MA 12/14/25
    Performing works of J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, and Mozart

The Best of 2025: Movies, TV, Music & Books

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It’s that time of year again, when various publications and individuals publish their “best of the year” lists. It seems like these lists come out earlier every year.  (I only hope that the listmakers go back to the prior December to find any gems they’ve missed in their eagerness to get their list out in late November or early December.)

I’ve compiled dozens of lists, as I do each year, to see which items reached a critical consensus as the best in their particular art form.  These are not my personal opinions.  I have not seen all these movies or TV shows, read all these books, or listened to all this music.  The links to the lists are below:

Best Films of 2025
Best TV Shows of 2025
Best Music of 2025
Best Books of 2025

To give you a sneak peek, here are the top items on each of the four lists:

BOOKS (3-way tie)
A Guardian and a Thief. By Megha Majumdar.
Audition. By Katie Kitamura.
Mother Mary Comes To Me. By Arundhati Roy.

MUSIC 
Geese – Getting Killed

TV SHOWS
Andor 

FILM
One Battle After Another

Please feel free to leave your comments about favorite movies, books, TV, and music of 2025 in the comments!

Meta-List Updates

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I’ve updated a number of the website pages on Make Lists, Not War.

(1) Timeline of Human History, Part V: 2000-Present
I’ve been a little behind in doing the year-by-year summaries, but I am now up to date.  I’ve added important world events for the years 2021-2024.  The big additions include the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, various items regarding Donald Trump, and news about climate change.  I’m still delinquent about adding photos to the years since 2016. I’ll get to that eventually.
Here’s the link:
Timeline of Human History Part V: 2000-Present

(2) Best of the 21st Century (so far): Film, Music, and Books
As we approach the end of the 1st quarter of the 21st Century, a number of new lists have been published, and I’ve added these to the meta-list.  The new lists didn’t change the top items in music or film (The White Stripes – Elephant, and There Will Be Blood), but the top of the book list is now a three-way tie: The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, Atonement, by Ian McEwan, and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  As I mention elsewhere, one of the odd results of collecting “best of the 21st century” lists over time is that the meta-list tends to be biased toward the first part of the century.  The lists contain almost no items from 2020 or later.  I’m sure that will be remedied as new lists are produced and added to the meta list.
Here’s the link
Best of the 21st Century (so far)

(3) Best Athletes of All Time
It has been several years since I updated the Best Athletes lists. I found six new lists and added them to the meta-lists.  New additions include Simone Biles and Novak Djokovic.  Athletes who were already on the lists but moved up considerably included Serena Williams, Tom Brady, and LeBron James.  To the dismay of all, Lance Armstrong remains on the list, due to a glitch in the meta-list process. Even though none of the lists that were made after 2013 include Armstrong, I found 8 lists made before the revelations about his performance-enhancing drug use that did include him. I have left this artifact of time on the list with an asterisk to explain the oddity.  Not yet on enough lists to make the meta-list are swimmer Katie Ledecky and basketball phenom Caitlin Clark, although my guess is that they will reach the meta-list in the future.
Here are the lists:
Best Athletes of All Time – Ranked (with photos)
Best Athletes of All Time – By Sport (without photos)

My Year in Books – 2024

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As usual, the bulk of my reading this year followed my world literature meta-list.  I began this particular project with The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BCE) in 2012 and have progressed chronologically ever since.  This year I turned the corner into the 20th Century, an exciting milestone.  Highlights included a wonderful multi-generational novel from Portugal that deserves to be better known (The Maias, written by Eça de Queirós in 1888), a somber modernist tale from Norway (Hunger, by Knut Hamsun) and the thought-provoking, darkly ironic plays of George Bernard Shaw.  A large chunk of my reading time this year was devoted to the works of Sigmund Freud. I read a compendium of six of his works (Interpretation of Dreams, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Wit and the Unconscious, Totem and Taboo, and History of the Psychoanalytic Movement).  (The book was left over from a college philosophy class in the early 1980s; I didn’t get around to reading it back then!) To obtain some perspective on how Freud’s theories are perceived now, I read the recent biography by Frank Tallis, Mortal Secrets.  My views on Freud are complicated, but right now I believe he was a revolutionary thinker and psychologist whose ideas influenced the development of psychology and psychotherapy, mostly for the good, although also in negative ways.  He was no scientist, but recent science has found support for some of his theories.

My continuing studies of art led me to read a number of art books, including a riveting biography of one of my art heroes, Marcel Duchamp, by Calvin Tomkins.  I also read a very funny memoir by one of my favorite comedians, Maria Bamford (Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult).  I was fascinated by my friend Andy LeCompte’s account of his experiences in an actual cult (Finding Miracles.)

Here are the books I read this year, with Goodreads rating.

5 Stars

  1. The Maias – Eça de Queirós (Portugal, 1888)
  2. Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Norway, 1890)
  3. Plays – George Bernard Shaw (UK, 1893-1912)
  4. Duchamp: A Biography – Calvin Tomkins (US, 1996)
  5. Finding Miracles: Escape from a Cult – Andrew LeCompte (US, 2024)

4 Stars

  1. The Essential Tales of Chekhov – Anton Chekhov (Russia, 1880-1903)
  2. Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche (Germany, 1885)
  3. Plays – Anton Chekhov (Russia, 1887-1904)
  4. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Short Stories – Oscar Wilde (Ireland/UK, 1888-1891)
  5. Diary of a Nobody – George Grossmith (UK, 1892)
  6. A Shropshire Lad – A.E. Housman (UK, 1896)
  7. Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand (France, 1897)
  8. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud – Sigmund Freud (A.A. Brill, ed.) (Austria, 1899-1914)
  9. The Immoralist – André Gide (France, 1902)
  10. The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James (US, 1902)
  11. The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois (US, 1903)
  12. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – Max Weber (Germany, 1905)
  13. The Confusions of Young Törless – Robert Musil (Austria, 1906)
  14. The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays – John Millington Synge (Ireland, 1902-1907)
  15. Mythologies – Roland Barthes (France, 1957)
  16. Greek Art – John Boardman (UK, 1964)
  17. History of Modern Art – H. Harvard Arnason (US, 1968)
  18. After Modern Art: 1945-2000 – David Hopkins (UK, 2000)
  19. Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity – Peter Attia (US, 2023)
  20. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere – Maria Bamford (US, 2023)
  21. Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind – Frank Tallis (UK, 2024)

3 Stars

  1. Art: A Brief History – Marilyn Stokstad (US, 1999)

 

 

 

 

The Best of 2024: Film, TV, Music, Books

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I’ve created meta-lists of the best of 2024 by collecting end-of-year lists from the critics.  Here are the meta-lists, organized with the items on the most lists at the top.

Every year since the 1990s, I’ve been creating these meta-lists to help me decide what to watch, listen to, and read.  I hope they can provide you with some guidance in making intelligent choices for the use of your precious time!

Best Films of 2024
Best TV Shows of 2024
Best Music of 2024 (Albums)
Best Books of 2024

The Best of 2023: Movies, TV, Music & Books

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Once again, I have compiled meta-lists of the best of the year in film, television, music, and literature.  I began undertaking this project over 20 years ago when I decided that, with limited time to read books, watch movies and TV shows, and listen to music, I wanted to reduce my chances of encountering dreck and increase the percentage of that I would encounter gems.  The solution I chose to this problem was to collect the opinions of multiple critics when they issue their end-of-year “best of” lists.  While the method is not foolproof (I do occasionally find critical faves that I don’t like, and I also sometimes run across items I rate highly that the critics didn’t like so much), it has been a success overall.  One of the best aspects of this method is that it gets me outside my comfort zone.  By collecting and collating these lists, creating the meta-lists that are linked below, I have expanded my horizons and encountered works of art that I might not have found if I had stayed within the recommendations of friends and family, or of just one favored critic.  Why go by the recommendations of one random person when you have at your fingertips the critical consensus of over a dozen experts?

Here are the links to this year’s lists:

Best Films of 2023
Best TV Shows of 2023
Best Music of 2023
Best Books of 2023

Getting Up To Speed: A Meta-List Update Report

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I’ve updated a number of the meta-lists, using original source lists I obtained from various sources, including books, magazines, and websites.  I’ve updated several of the film lists and the literature (book) lists.  I added three new film lists, including a best 100 films from Stephanie Zacharek at Time magazine, and about 10 new best literature lists.  The literature lists hadn’t been updated in almost 10 years.  Here are the links to the updated lists:

MOVIES
Best Films of All Time – Ranked
Best Films of All Time – Chronological
Best Films of All Time – By Director
Best of the 21st Century (So Far)  (Note: Only the movies section of this list has been updated.)

LITERATURE
Greatest Works of Literature – Ranked
Greatest Works of Literature – Chronological
Greatest Works of Literature – By Author
The Big Literature List: A Meta-Meta List

Some may be wondering, why make lists of the greatest literature and not the greatest books?  I have actually given this quite a bit of thought.  I do have some lists that reference books, but the category of literature gives me an opportunity to include bodies of work, not just specific books. In many cases (esp. for writers known best for their poems, essays or short stories), people making “best of” lists will simply list the author’s entire body of work, without singling out any particular poem, story or essay.  There are often multiple collections of the author’s work in the genre, but instead of randomly selecting one of these collections as a “best book”, I thought it made more sense to reference the works as bodies of work (thus the italicized items in the literature lists).  (Although when listers do reference a specific collection/compilation, I have included it.)  Because these bodies of work aren’t books as such, I’ve used the more encompassing term “literature” for these lists (even though I’m aware that the algorithms and search terms might be looking for “best books”).

My Year in Books – 2022

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In 2022, I continued to go through my Greatest Works of Literature list, a project I began back in 2011.  I’m now up to the mid-19th Century.  A big part of the year was spent reading four of the six books in the Barsetshire Chronicles, by Anthony Trollope. I had never read anything of his before, and he is now one of my favorite 19th Century authors. I occasionally detoured to the 21st Century to read books on nature and art, and one recent novel.  I was excited to read the book Loving Orphaned Space by my college friend Mrill Ingram (see my review HERE).

Here are the 21 books I finished in 2022, in order of publication date, with my 1-5 star rating.  Thanks to Goodreads for providing a space to keep track of my reading.

  1. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni (1827) (4/5)
  2. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame – Victor Hugo (1831) (4/5)
  3. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse – Alexander Pushkin (1833) (4/5)
  4. Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac (1835) (5/5)
  5. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal (1839) (4/5)
  6. Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville (1835, 1840) (5/5)
  7. Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol (1842) (4/5)
  8. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket – Edgar Allan Poe (1844) (4/5)
  9. Walden – Henry David Thoreau (1849) (5/5)
  10. The Prelude – William Wordsworth (1850) (5/5)
  11. The Warden – Anthony Trollope (1855) (4/5)
  12. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (1856) (4/5)
  13. Barchester Towers – Anthony Trollope (1857) (4/5)
  14. The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin (1859) (5/5)
  15. The Small House at Allington – Anthony Trollope (1864) (4/5)
  16. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope (1867) (5/5)
  17. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting – Syd Field (1979) (4/5)
  18. What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World – Jon Young (2012) (4/5)
  19. The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben (2015) (4/5)
  20. Utopia Avenue – David Mitchell (2020) (3/5)
  21. Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth – Mrill Ingram (2022) (5/5)