Pretty good.

The Great Gatsby is a pile of garbage, imho. I don't know why so many people think it's an important novel. I wasn't a huge fan of Moby Dick, either.

Be sure to throw The Road and The Godfather in that list.

The Road got surprisingly few votes, and The Godfather is in the top 100.
I didn't like Gatsby much myself (I think I gave it about a 2 - 2.5 out of 5), but it seems a LOT of people like it. It was on the top or near the top of quite a few lists

I'm of the opinion that a lot of these books (Gatsby, Moby Dick, etc) get high praise in the literary world because they have high praise in the literary world. I don't know how the cycle started, but it's definitely there.

The Road is a much newer novel, so I feel like that hurts it in rankings. One because it just hasn't circulated enough and two because literaturists feel like a new novel can't stand up to classics.

Oh, Doctor Zhivago is another one that needs to be up there.

The Jungle, as well.

Ah, but this list isn't just made up of the opinions of literaturists.
There are a few newer novels on the list, but admittedly anything new has a distinct disadvantage as fewer people will have read it. Anything that's on high school reading lists probably has a huge advantage because it means most everyone has read it. Unfortunately, when making lists such as this one, there is no way around such biases.

I think you're one of the first to list Doctor Zhivago in their top ten.

.. same goes to The Jungle

Oh, top 10? I was just thinking of books you need to make sure you read.

Let me think...

Oh, and the list is also biased towards people's top choices. Most of the books in the top 30 there are several people's favourite book of all time. There may be books out there which would appear on everyone in the world's top 20, but if it didn't make anyone's top 10, it wouldn't be on my list

Yeah it's a list made up only of top ten choices. I would have done only #1's, but I just didn't have a big enough sample size.

I personally didn't like Animal Farm or Farenheit 451, and think that something like the Tale of Two Cities or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man should be there instead

Better yet, Odysseus

"The Sun Also Rises" is a GREAT book.

Also "The Cossacks" by Tolstoy is a gem

Oh, I should have said that I excluded James Joyce because my uncle suggested I not read his stuff yet. Portrait would certainly be on here otherwise.
Tale of two cities didn't make the top 100.

If you're talking about just 30 books out of everything written, you shouldn't have 2 books by the same author. So take off Animal Farm and one of the Dostoyevsky books, and replace them with two others.

Also, 24 out of 30 of those books are written in English; you might want to look at some non-English sources. And if you're going to include SF and fantasy, you owe it to yourself to include some mysteries too. Maybe you don't read mystery novels, but the best one ever written will be pretty darn good.

neither did the Odyssey, The Sun Also Rises, of The Cossacks.
Not that I'm saying those aren't great books - it just seems that not a lot of lists have them in their top 10

also i didn't like anna karenina as much as the cossacks.

also popular opinions =! quality

You also excluded all quiet on the western front. SHAME ON YOU. "Three Comrades" by the same author was also excellent.

@pastorlan: What logic is there behind having only one book by each author? Is it not possible for a single author to write more than one great book? Also, this list isn't based on my personal preferences - it's simply an amalgamation of many other lists made by others.
Also, I only read English, so it would be very difficult for me to look at non-English sources.
And I should note that I've probably read more mystery novels than 99% of the people on this website. It's my Dad's favourite genre and thus all I ever read growing up. I count many mystery novels among my personal favourites, but very few are worthy of a top-ten list in my opinion, and it seems that most of the sources I found agree with me on that one

Okay, disclaimer for all future respondents: This list is NOT based on my personal opinion.

I think that best is a stupid thing to do to art. art is art. art is not a cell phone or a laptop computer; where there is a technical best. This flawed reasoning on you part is just stiring up disagreements. It would have been better to just have us reccomend books to you.

"If you're talking about just 30 books out of everything written, you shouldn't have 2 books by the same author. "

Why?

@numberzero: you may have noticed that I put "best books of all time" in quotations in the first post. This is because I only use the term because that is what is most often used for lists of this kind. I'm not claiming that The Great Gatsby is THE BEST book of all time. "Best" is entirely based on the opinion of the person reading the book. The problem with just asking individual people who book recommendations is that they are simply your opinions, which may not be the same as mine. With a list that combines the opinions of hundreds of people, there is a good chance that I will find some books that I will agree with.

In no particular order:

1) Dune
2) LoTR
3) The Godfather
4) The Road
5) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
6) The Odyssey
7) A Scanner Darkly
8) War and Peace
9) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
10) The Jungle

people *for* book recommendations, not *who*

Thanks abgemacht. If I get a bunch more top 10 lists I'll update my list. I imagine every few years I'll do a new search for opinions and update the list accordingly. Eventually it should be a pretty accurate reading of the western world's opinion on literature.

i didn't understand your last comment. anyway. my opinion on your list (which is what you were asking) is that making that list was stupid and a bad thing to do because art does not work that way. Congrats on contributing to the popular misunderstanding of art.

..and since there seems to be a lot of interest, here's #31-100
(note: entries further in the list may be more and more influenced by individuals' opinions and thus less valid - in other words, more data is needed)

31-Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl-Anne Frank
31-Les Miserables-Victor Hugo
31-Slaughterhouse-Five-Kurt Vonnegut
34-Absalom, Absalom!-William Faulkner
34-Beloved-Toni Morrison
34-Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy
34-The Divine Comedy-Dante Alighieri
38-The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck
38-To the Lighthouse-Virginia Woolf
40-Disgrace-J.M. Coetzee
41-Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
41-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-J.K. Rowling
43-Gone With the Wind-Margaret Mitchell
43-Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison
43-Robinson Crusoe-Daniel Defoe
46-Tristam Shandy-Laurence Sterne
46-Winnie the Pooh-A.A. Milne
48-The Godfather-Mario Puzo
49-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe-C.S. Lewis
49-The Magic Mountain-Thomas Mann
51-Jesus' Son-Denis Johnson
51-Paradise Lost-John Milton
51-The Tale of Genji-Murasaki Shikibu
51-Tom Jones-Henry Fielding
55-Emma-Jane Austen
55-John Adams-David McCullough
55-King Lear-William Shakespeare
55-The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao-Junot Diaz
55-The Education of Henry Adams-Henry Adams
60-1776-David McCullough
60-Pilgrim’s Progress-John Bunyan
60-Song of Solomon-Toni Morrison
60-The Iliad-Homer
60-The Portrait of a Lady-Henry James
60-Up From Slavery-Booker T. Washington
66-A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century-Barbary W. Tuchman
66-A Room of One’s Own-Virginia Woolf
66-Notes from the Underground-Fyodor Dostoevsky
66-Persuasion-Jane Austen
66-The Count of Monte Cristo-Alexandre Dumas
71-As I Lay Dying-William Faulkner
71-Oryx and Crake-Margaret Atwood
71-Silent Spring-Rachel Carson
71-Team of Rivals-Doris Kearns Goodwin
75-Bleak House-Charles Dickens
75-Children of the Arbat-Anatoli Rybakov
75-Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel García Márquez
75-The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-Edward Gibbon
75-The Double Helix-James D. Watson
75-The Makers-Cory Doctorow
75-The Red Tent-Anita Diamant
75-The Stand-Stephen King
75-The Tin Drum-Gunter Grass
84-All the King's Men-Robert Penn Warren
84-Battle Cry of Freedom-James M. McPherson
84-Clarissa-Samuel Richardson
84-Daemonslayer-William King
84-Infinite Jest-David Foster Wallace
84-Medea-Euripides
84-Memoirs of a Geisha-Arthur Golden
84-Speak, Memory-Vladimir Nabokov
84-Stranger in a Strange Land-Robert A. Heinlein
84-The Bear-William Faulkner
84-The Chrysalids-John Wyndham
84-The Greek Achievement-Charles Freeman
84-The Stories of Alice Munro-Alice Munro
84-The Stranger-Albert Camus
98-Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-Lewis Carroll
98-For the Win-Cory Doctorow
98-Jurassic Park-Michael Crichton
98-The American Language-H. L. Mencken
98-The Histories-Herodotus
98-The Name of the Rose-Umberto Eco
98-The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie-Muriel Spark
98-Tree of Smoke-Denis Johnson
98-Winesburg, Ohio-Sherwood Anderson