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)