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Book Depository, Best Books Ever [2012]

102 entries: 96 monographical, six otherwise

Ranked

This list offered by the Book Depository, the British online book seller owned by an American online book seller, has been dated based upon the most-recent book in the list; the article itself is undated and no longer available except via the Internet Archive. Whoever made this list also created an alternate list based on votes from users, entitled Your Best Books Ever. We could include that list only as an extension of the original, since by itself it does not meet our criteria. For now, it is put aside. In neither case does the article provide any indication of the persons involved or when and how they made their choices.

  1. Gabriel García Márquez

  2. Cien Anõs de Soledad
    One Hundred Years of Solitude
    1967—Spanish


  3. F Scott Fitzgerald

  4. Tender Is the Night
    originally published serially Jan.-Apr. 1934 in Scribner's Magazine—English

  5. Emily Brontë

  6. Wuthering Heights
    originally published 1847 under the pseudonym, Ellis Bell; revised 1850—English

  7. Jane Austen

  8. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  9. Charles Dickens

  10. Our Mutual Friend
    originally published serially May 1864-Nov. 1865—English

  11. Truman Capote

  12. Breakfast at Tiffany's
    originally published 1958 in Esquire—English

  13. Roald Dahl

  14. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
    1977—English

  15. Gustave Flaubert

  16. Madame Bovary
    originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  17. Oscar Wilde

  18. The Picture of Dorian Grey
    originally published Jul. 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine; revised and expanded 1891; alternate earlier version published 2011—English

  19. Homer

  20. Iliad
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C#151;Greek

  21. Leo Tolstoy

  22. Voskresenie
    Resurrection
    1899—Russian


  23. Joseph Heller

  24. Catch-22
    1961—English

  25. Ernest Hemingway

  26. The Sun Also Rises
    1926—English

  27. Erich Maria Remarque

  28. Im Westen Nichts Neues
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    originally published Dec. 1928 in Vossische Zeitung—German


  29. Miguel de Cervantes

  30. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
    Don Quixote
    originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615—Spanish


  31. George Orwell

  32. Homage to Catalonia
    1938—English

    Ursula K Le Guin
  33. A Wizard of Earthsea

  34. 1968—English

  35. The Tombs of Atuan

  36. 1971—English

  37. The Farthest Shore

  38. 1972—English

  39. Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea

  40. 1990—English

  41. Kurt Vonnegut
    Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
    1969—English

    • Philip Pullman

    Grimm Tales: For Young and Old
    2012; U S version entitled, Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm; new versions of the German-language original stories—English

    Charles Perrault
    • The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

  42. 1977; translations by Angela Carter; includes nearly all of Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé, 1867—French

  43. Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé

  44. Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye
    1867—French


  45. Martin Amis

  46. Money
    1984—English

  47. P G Wodehouse

  48. Carry On, Jeeves
    1925—English

  49. Mary Shelley

  50. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
    originally anonymously published 1818—English

  51. Ray Bradbury

  52. Fahrenheit 451
    published in part, Feb. 1951, as 'The Fireman' in Galaxy Science Fiction; in its entirety, 1953—English

  53. John Steinbeck

  54. The Grapes of Wrath
    1939—English

  55. Ann Patchett

  56. Bel Canto
    2001—English

  57. Stephen King

  58. It
    1986—English

  59. George Eliot

  60. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
    originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872—English

  61. Murakami Haruki

  62. Nejimaki-Dori Kuronikuru
    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
    originally published in three volumes, 1994-5—Japanese


  63. Michael Ondaatje

  64. The English Patient
    1992—English

  65. Markus Zusak

  66. The Book Thief
    2005—English

  67. Émile Zola

  68. Thérèse Raquin
    originally published serially 1867 in L'Artiste—French

  69. Norman Mailer

  70. The Naked and the Dead
    1948—English

  71. Angela Carter
    The Magic Toyshop
    1967—English

    • Philip Pullman

  72. Northern Lights
    1995; U S title, The Golden Compass; first of three volumes of His Dark Materials—English

  73. Thomas Hardy

  74. Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented
    published in part serially Jul.-Dec. 1891 in the Graphic—English

  75. Daphne du Maurier

  76. Rebecca
    1938—English

  77. J D Salinger

  78. Franny and Zooey
    1961; 'Franny' originally published Jan. 1955 in the New Yorker; 'Zooey' originally published May 1957 in the New Yorker—English

  79. Georges Bataille

  80. L'Histoire d'Oeil
    Story of the Eye
    originally published 1928 under the pseudonym, Lord Auch; revised 1940—French


  81. Louis-Ferdinand Céline

  82. Voyage au Bout de la Nuit
    Journey to the End of Night
    1932—French


    Lewis Carroll
  83. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

  84. 1865—English

  85. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

  86. 1871—English

  87. Vikram Seth

  88. A Suitable Boy
    1993—English

  89. Salman Rushdie

  90. Midnight's Children
    1981—English

  91. Vladimir Nabokov

  92. Lolita
    1955—English

  93. Donna Tartt

  94. The Secret History
    1992—English

  95. Kazuo Ishiguro

  96. The Remains of the Day
    1989—English

  97. Joseph Conrad

  98. Heart of Darkness
    originally published serially Feb.-Apr. 1899 in Blackwood's—English

  99. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  100. Le Petit Prince
    1943—French

  101. John Kennedy Toole

  102. A Confederacy of Dunces
    written early 1960's; published 1980—English

  103. Victor Hugo

  104. Les Misérables
    1862—French

  105. Honoré de Balzac

  106. Illusions Perdues
    Lost Illusions
    1837-43—French


  107. Stendhal

  108. Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe Siècle
    The Red and the Black
    1830—French


  109. Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Idiot
    originally published serially 1868-9 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian

    • Anton Chekhov

  110. Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
    2000—Russian

  111. Plato

  112. Politeia
    The Republic
    early Fourth Century B C#151;Greek


  113. Henry David Thoreau

  114. Walden; or, Life in the Woods
    1854—English

  115. Albert Camus

  116. L'Étranger
    The Stranger
    1942—French


  117. James Joyce

  118. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
    originally published serially Feb. 1914-Sep. 1915, in the Egoist—English

  119. Sigmund Freud

  120. Das Unbewusste
    The Unconscious
    1915—German


  121. Karl Marx

  122. Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie
    written ca. 1858; published 1939—German

  123. Niccolò Machiavelli

  124. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian


  125. Herman Melville

  126. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  127. Sūnzǐ (Sun-tzu)

  128. Sūnzǐ Bīngfǎ
    The Art of War
    written ca. Fifth-Third centuries B C—Chinese


  129. John Green
    The Fault in Our Stars
    2012—English

    • Carl Jung; Joseph L Henderson; Marie-Louise von Franz; Aniela Jaffé; Jolande Jacobi

  130. Man and His Symbols
    1964—English

  131. Voltaire

  132. Candide, ou L'Optimisme
    1759—French

  133. Charles Darwin

  134. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
    1859—English

  135. Robert Caro
    The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
    1982—English

    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  136. Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil
    first of two volumes of Faust; published in part, 1790; in its entirey, 1808; revised 1829; second volume, Faust. Der Tragödie Zweiter Teil, 1832

  137. Ken Kesey

  138. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
    1962—English

  139. Toni Morrison

  140. Beloved
    1987—English

  141. John Irving

  142. A Prayer for Owen Meaney
    1989—English

  143. James Baldwin

  144. Another Country
    1962—English

  145. Maya Angelou

  146. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    1969—English

  147. Jaroslav Hasek

  148. Osudy Dobrého Vojáka Švejka za Svetové Války
    The Good Soldier Švejk
    1923—Czech


  149. Franz Kafka

  150. Die Verwandlung
    The Metamorphosis
    originally published 1915 in Die Weißen Blätter—German


  151. Samuel Beckett

  152. Watt
    published in part, 1950, in Envoy; in its entirety, 1953—English

  153. Jack London

  154. The Call of the Wild
    originally published serially 1903 in the Saturday Evening Post—English

  155. Baruch Spinoza

  156. Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata
    Ethics
    1677—Latin


  157. Thomas Hobbes

  158. Leviathan or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
    1651—English

  159. Daniel Defoe

  160. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
    originally anonymously published 1719—English

  161. Robert Graves

  162. I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B C, Murdered and Deified A D 54
    1934—English

  163. Philip Roth

  164. Portnoy's Complaint
    1969—English

  165. Raymond Chandler

  166. The Long Goodbye
    1953—English

  167. William Styron

  168. Sophie's Choice
    1979—English

  169. Christopher Isherwood

  170. Goodbye to Berlin
    1939—English

  171. Art Spiegelman

  172. Maus
    originally published serially 1980-91 in Raw; published in book form in two volumes: Maus: A Survivor's Tale, 1986; and And Here My Troubles Began, 1991;—English

  173. Rachel Carson

  174. Silent Spring
    originally published Jun. 1962 in the New Yorker—English

  175. Robert Hughes

  176. The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change
    1980; book accompanying television series of the same name—English

  177. James Agee

  178. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
    1941; photography by Walker Evans—English

  179. Edward Said

  180. Orientalism
    1978—English

  181. Hannah Arendt

  182. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
    originally published 1963 in the New Yorker; expanded 1965—English

  183. John Kenneth Galbraith

  184. The Affluent Society
    1958—English

  185. Barbara W Tuchman

  186. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
    1978—English

  187. Rebecca West

  188. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia
    1941—English

  189. Virginia Woolf

  190. A Room of One's Own
    1929—English

  191. Anne Frank

  192. Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 - 1 Augustus 1944
    The Diary of a Young Girl
    1947—Dutch