Top Great Books

Charles Lincon
6 min readMar 17, 2023

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  1. The Iliad by Homer
  2. The Odyssey by Homer
  3. The Aeneid by Virgil
  4. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
  5. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  6. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  7. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
  8. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  9. King Lear by William Shakespeare
  10. Othello by William Shakespeare
  11. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
  12. Paradise Lost by John Milton
  13. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  14. Candide by Voltaire
  15. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  16. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  17. Emma by Jane Austen
  18. Persuasion by Jane Austen
  19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  20. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  21. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  22. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  23. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  24. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  25. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  27. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  28. Ulysses by James Joyce
  29. Dubliners by James Joyce
  30. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  31. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  32. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
  33. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  34. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  35. 1984 by George Orwell
  36. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  37. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  38. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  39. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  40. Light in August by William Faulkner
  41. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  42. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  43. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  44. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  45. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  46. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  47. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  48. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  49. Native Son by Richard Wright
  50. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  51. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  52. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  53. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  54. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  55. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  56. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  57. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  58. The Republic by Plato
  59. The Symposium by Plato
  60. The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
  61. Politics by Aristotle
  62. The Confessions by Saint Augustine
  63. The City of God by Saint Augustine
  64. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
  65. The Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas
  66. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
  67. The Divine Office by Saint Benedict of Nursia
  68. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
  69. The Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca
  70. Candide by Voltaire
  71. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  72. The Aeneid by Virgil
  73. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  74. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
  75. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  76. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  77. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
  78. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
  79. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
  80. The Misanthrope by Moliere
  81. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
  82. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
  83. The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
  84. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  85. The Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer
  86. Confessions by Saint Augustine
  87. The I Ching
  88. The Analects of Confucius
  89. The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
  90. The Bhagavad Gita
  91. The Upanishads
  92. The Mahabharata
  93. The Ramayana
  94. The Rigveda
  95. The Quran
  96. The Book of Job from the Bible
  97. The Gospel of John from the Bible
  98. The Gospel of Matthew from the Bible
  99. The Gospel of Luke from the Bible
  100. The Gospel of Mark from the Bible
  101. The Psalms from the Bible
  102. The Acts of the Apostles from the Bible
  103. The Epistles of Paul from the Bible
  104. The Revelation to John from the Bible
  105. The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer
  106. The Histories by Herodotus
  107. The Republic by Plato
  108. The Symposium by Plato
  109. The Phaedo by Plato
  110. The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
  111. The Politics by Aristotle
  112. The Metaphysics by Aristotle
  113. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  114. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  115. Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
  116. The Ethics by Baruch Spinoza
  117. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
  118. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
  119. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
  120. The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
  121. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
  122. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
  123. The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  124. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim
  125. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
  126. The Social Contract by John Rawls
  127. The Republic of Plato translated by Allan Bloom
  128. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
  129. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
  130. Candide by Voltaire
  131. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  132. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  133. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  134. The Aeneid by Virgil
  135. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  136. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  137. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  138. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
  139. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
  140. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
  141. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  142. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  143. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  144. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  145. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  146. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
  147. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
  148. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  149. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  150. The Odyssey by Homer
  151. The Iliad by Homer
  152. The Republic by Plato
  153. The Symposium by Plato
  154. The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
  155. The Politics by Aristotle
  156. The Confessions by Saint Augustine
  157. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
  158. The Divine Institutes by Lactantius
  159. The City of God by Saint Augustine
  160. The Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Aquinas
  161. Don Juan by Lord Byron
  162. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  163. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  164. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  165. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  166. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  167. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  168. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  169. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  170. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  171. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  172. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  173. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  174. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  175. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  176. The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato
  177. The Golden Ass by Apuleius
  178. The Satyricon by Petronius
  179. The Analects of Confucius
  180. “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
  181. “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal
  182. “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
  183. “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift
  184. “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame
  185. “The House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton
  186. “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner
  187. “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  188. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  189. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
  190. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”
  191. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
  192. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells
  193. “The Stranger” by Albert Camus
  194. “The Iliad” by Homer
  195. “The Odyssey” by Homer
  196. “The Aeneid” by Virgil
  197. “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri
  198. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
  199. “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes
  200. “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
  201. “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert
  202. “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy
  203. “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  204. “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy
  205. “The Brothers K” by David James Duncan
  206. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams
  207. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
  208. “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien
  209. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
  210. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger
  211. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut
  212. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  213. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
  214. “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
  215. “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
  216. “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen
  217. “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen
  218. “Emma” by Jane Austen
  219. “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen
  220. “Persuasion” by Jane Austen
  221. “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by Laurence Sterne
  222. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
  223. “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
  224. “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  225. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
  226. “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser
  227. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan
  228. “The Golden Ass” by Apuleius
  229. “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu

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Charles Lincon

Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, Hegelian dialectics, Attic Greek, masters University of Amsterdam.