The 50 best reads ever according to book lovers
Back in 2008, an employee at Goodreads, a website hosting the largest online reading community, decided to take a poll of the site’s members. The question was simple – what are the best books ever?
Almost a decade later, nearly 49,000 books have been added to the list and more than 173,000 members have had their say. The result is an ever-changing and ever-growing list curated by the people most passionate about books.
There have been many similar “best of” lists, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as big and as democratic at this one – without a snobby literary critic in sight.
At the time of writing, the top 50 stands as follows. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, including how many you’ve read and what book you’d like to see at number one.
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
- The Chronicles of Narnia #1-7 by C.S. Lewis
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
- Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
- Divergent by Veronia Roth
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
- The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Water for Elephants by SaraGruen