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All-time fave books
According to a Harris Interactive poll, the Bible is America’s all-time favorite book, and is No. 1 across all demographic groups. No. 2 is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and Stephen King’s The Stand. Dan Brown has two books in the overall top 10, The Da Vinci Code (No. 6) and Angels and Demons (No. 8). Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is No. 7, followed by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged at No. 9 and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye rounding out the top 10.
For women, the second most popular book behind the Bible is Gone With the Wind, while for men it’s the Lord of the Rings. As for political partisans, polls may show we’re divided into red states and blue states and disagree on issues and candidates, but according to this survey, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all agree on their top two favorite books: the Bible and Gone With the Wind.
Did your favorite books of all-time make the top 10?
back to top46 Comments to “All-time fave books”
I like everything on the list except for the Dan Brown stuff. I would include Moby Dick, The Once and Future King, and several C.S. Lewis books.
I’m a little surprised that The Stand made it, although that is a very good book.
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Mine didn’t. I like George MacDonald’s Lilith, the Esolen translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and of course Paradise Lost.
Who wrote The Once and Future King? Sounds good ….
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I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t read Salinger, Rand or Lee’s books… I’ll have to amend that.
I’d have to put The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at the top of my list.
Dune would be close behind. Although I’ve read it, I’m not sure Gone With The Wind would even be on my top ten list. It’s more likely that Wind in the Willows would make it, or perhaps even Winnie the Pooh.
I’d probably also pick out Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia would be on the list too. Perhap’s I’m too apologetic, but Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle would be on the list as well as Once and Future King. And just for fun, I’ll throw in Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn.
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“The Once and Future King” was written by T. H. White in 1958. It’s the novel upon which the musical “Camelot” is based. But it’s a lot deeper than the musical, as you might expect.
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The book I have read over and over the most did not make the list: Goodnight Moon. On another note I have read Gone With The Wind 3 times. One of my most prized possessions is an autographed copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. I could read it over and over AND watch the movie over and over.
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I LOVE Gone With the Wind! I need to read that one again. I also really enjoyed East of Eden.
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The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye. The movie’s not bad either.
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I’ve read “Goodnight Moon” a few times myself along with “Brown Bear, Brown Bear”. I’d add “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “Oliver Twist”, “Kidnapped” and “I Robot” to “The Lord of the Rings”, “To kill a Mockingbird” and of course the Bible. “Gone with the Wind” was alright and as far as Stephen King is concerned I liked “The Dead Zone” the best.
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Other than the Bible and Lord of the Rings, nope.
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I’ll second To Kill a Mockingbird as well. I read it for the first time this Christmas and enjoyed it a good deal more than I expected to.
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Of course the Bible is my all-time favorite.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Atlas Shrugged are both among my favorites, for sure.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is good, but not among my personal top 10.
The rest of the books on the list are not at all favorites of mine.
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No, Steinbeck’s East of Eden wasn’t on the list. But that’s ok, I didn’t need a list to tell me how good it is.
I don’t understand the constant list-making that goes on in the media. If a columnist wants to write about books, let him write about books, but it’s nonsense to say that the people of a certain group like a certain book when the only people who responded to the poll are some of those that heard about it. If a book doesn’t make the list, is it any less readable [Fitzgerald]? If it makes the list, is it good [Dan Brown]? It’s all subjective. I’d rather the columnist wrote about why people liked certain books than just lumped people into identity groups. That would more likely lead someone to read something he hadn’t read before, lists just say ’smarter people than you read this book you haven’t read.’
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None of my favorite books were up there (except the Bible). I would have had Crime and Punishment, Jane Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Pride and Prejudice, and probably all of the Ender’s Game books.
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I’d be really surprised if that many people actually read the Bible. It’s like when Bush declared his favorite philosopher to be Jesus Christ. I don’t buy it.
Anyway, my pick didn’t come close to making it: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
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Alan Paton’s “Cry the Beloved Country” has been in my top 5 since I first read it in Jr. Hi. One of the few books I thought had paragraphs worth memorizing.
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I would have included some Mark Twain, perferably Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.
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My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok…powerful.
Also the sequel -The Gift of Asher Lev
Gone With the Wind, one of my all time favorites. I read it as a young teenage girl sitting in the crab apple tree at the farm I grew up on. It’s a great memory and I speak of it often.
The Bible, I read it.
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Is an all-time fave book one that you read over and over? If so, I’d have trouble coming up with any. There are a few books I’ve read a second time, but very few I’ve read more than that. I could list a lot of books mentioned here as great books that I would recommend. But “all-time fave” seems to imply that of all books I’ve read it’s one I would keep reading again and again.
I’ve read C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles quite a few times – but that’s partly because they’re short and easy to read. I don’t have to give up much time from reading other stuff to reread them. As a child I read Banner in the Sky several times, but I haven’t read it as an adult. I also read the Don Camillo books multiple times when I was a teenager, but when I read one recently I thought it was OK but not as great as I had remembered.
The books I do reread are usually humorous books. Really good humor is good no matter how many times you read it. Adrian Plass’s Sacred Diary and Theatrical Tapes of Leonard Thynn are wonderful. So is Cheaper by the Dozen. And of course all the Calvin and Hobbes books, though some people might not want to count them in a list of books.
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I like Walter Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Sorrows, but I would not pretend that they would appeal to everyone.
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I seldom read a book twice. Too many books; so little time. I did like *Gone With The Wind*. I’m not sure what I would put on a list. *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*, *Les Miserables* would be up there. I like several already mentioned. It would be too difficult to come up with only one favorite.
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For those of you who want to take C.S. Lewis’ word on the re-reading issue, he comments in Of Other Worlds that we re-read our favourite books because for us they have a special kind of magic. He also says that those who think one read through a classic settles the matter and sets them up for good are rather hopeless.
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I would have to throw Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” books into the mix. McMurtry deals with things in a large scale, and the old west provides a perfect backdrop for his stories.
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These are the books I enjoyed most.
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
John Knowles’ A Separate Peace
Alex Haley’s Roots
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
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Thanks Ki. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables was excellent as well. I should add that one definitely.
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It’s hard for me to pin down “favorites,” but if I go by the criteria of having read the book more than twice over a span of more than five years (to ensure that it has staying power), I come up with this (in no particular order):
Stephen King’s The Stand and It.
And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts.
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.T.
A Season For Justice, Morris Dees.
Friday by Robert Heinlein.
… and yes, The Bible.
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“My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok…powerful.”
Agreed # 17!!!!!
And definitely agree on “Gone with the Wind” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”
And I am going to make a confession: Before I read this blog, I NEVER heard of
the book “Atlas Shrugged”…..and yes, I know book titles aren’t supposed to
be in quotes, but I don’t have time to try and figure out the way to italicize or
underline.
This group of people sure love our books – so many threads on the topic.
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Here’s a list of books I put together three or four years ago of books I’ve read at least five times:
Fiction books I’ve read at least five times:
juvenile:
Heidi
Little House books
Chronicles of Narnia
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Wheel on the School (Meindert deJong)
Haunt Fox (Jim Kjelgaard)
Charlotte’s Web
Little Women
The Black Stallion (but not its sequels)
Bambi (original)
Pinnochio (unabridged)
The Princess and the Goblin; The Princess and Curdie (juvenile, George MacDonald)
adult:
Lilith (MacDonald)
Phantastes (MacDonald)
Perelandra (Lewis)
Pilgrim’s Regress (Lewis–not one of his easier or better known works)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
My Name Is Asher Lev (Potok)
Davita’s Harp (Potok)
Holy Fool
Silas Marner (George Eliot)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Viper’s Tangle (Francois Mauriac)
Holy Masquerade
Will eventually read these many times, but I did my first reading too late to have read any five times:
LOTR
Robinson Crusoe (unabridged)
Pride and Prejudice
Christy
Anne of Green Gables
probably some Dickens books, but still on my first round
The Name of the Rose
Romey’s Place (Schaap)
Jewel (Lott)
The Maltese Falcon (I might be up to five reads by now)
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Chosen (Potok)
Sorry I haven’t italicized–it’s time consuming, and when I list a lot of books, I simply leave them roman.
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Oh yes, and I’ve read the Bible–all of it, even the “begats”–more than five times. My list was just fiction, since as a rule I’m less likely to reread nonfiction as often. (I have read some, such as Orthodoxy by Chesterton and Lewis’s God in the Dock, three or four times each, but I’m not sure I’ve made it to five yet on any nonfiction except the Bible.)
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I was going to say I’ve read them all except for Stephen King and Dan Brown, and then I realized I’ve never read Lord of the Rings–just seen the movies some 30 times (or more, they ran non stop for awhile at our house)!
I detested Catcher in the Rye. Who would find that a good book and why?
The “comfort” novels I’ve read over and over again wouldn’t appear on any of these lists–because they appeal to me based on other things besides quality. But you all have read some good books and I’d agree with most of them.
Back to writing one . . .
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Four of mine made it to the top ten. “Catcher in the Rye” is a PC classic, so I guess it doesn’t matter what a disappointingly terrible read it is. As far as good fiction goes, I’m in to Bernard Cornwell’s books at this time.
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Hurrah, #27! Somebody else who’s read Lilith!
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I was trying to remember something from MacDonald, and Cheryl put a name to it.
I’d put Princess and the Goblin on my list of favorites.
If it comes down to favorites as being the ones you’d read over and over again, I’d have to say that only the Bible, the LOTR, and the Chronicles of Narnia fit that bill.
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I wasn’t impressed by Gone With the Wind when I read it, (almost 40 yrs ago)
To Kill a Mockingbird, another Southren work, deserves its status as a classic. Evidently Harper Lee decided since she got it right the first time, there was no need to write another book.
I found Atlas Shrugged important and influential more for its ability to shift one’s thinking than for any literary esthetic. “Who is John Galt?” became a byword. Ayn Rand is too didactic for pleasure reading. Her Fountainhead was similarly positioned as a philosophic polemic disguised as a novel. I found We the Living her first novel, and her most accessible, autobiographical and conventional work, a fascinating portrait of the Bolshevik revolution’s corrosive and destructive effects on the human spirit.
I agree with Chaim Potok’s works as worthy of reading.
In my misspent youth I enjoyed Jack Kerouack’s On the Road multiple times, in spite of Truman capote’s verdict, based on Kerouack’s reported stream of conciousness methodology, that it was typing, not writing. I spent a few years trying to live it. I was also deeply impressed by Hermann Hesse’s Demian even more than the adopted iconic 60’s spiritual journey, Siddhartha.“
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Please notice Shakespeare did not make the list. It is time to ban his putrid work to the dust bin of history.
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I would have to add that I have read the bible through several times. If you are a believer and haven’t done this yet, I believe you are really missing out. It is a great blessing every time I read it. The big picture emerges when one reads it as a whole. There is a place for that in addition to studying portions in depth.
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So many of your books are LITERATURE! I guess I like other reads. Not in any order;
Scottish Chieftans
Men of Iron
Starship Troopers
1776
Killer Angels
The Last Battle
I’ll bet that not many of you recognize many of them.
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The Russians esp Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Illyich is a great short story.
As a teen I loved Ayn Rand’s Anthem (I’ve since repented from this great sin). Also the Chrysalids and Brave New World.
Anything by Orwell. Graham Greene has a strange appeal to me — I’ve yet to know why I like his work.
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richeler.
As you can see CanLit is well used in high school English.
As for guilt ridden reading I prefer historical novels by Micheler and Uris. I say guilt ridden because its badly written but an entertaining way to learn the history of a particular region and event. Uris in particular is a cheerleader.
The above are all fiction but I usually prefer non-fiction Guns, Germs and Steel, A Short History of Progress, A Short History of Everything, Voltaire’s Bastard, The Shock Doctrine, A History of God are all good reads from the past decade or so. As for most influential in my life Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality, Marx’s Theses on Fuerbach, Camus’ The Rebel, and Nietzsche esp The Birth of Tragedy.
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Honest questions, not meant to argue:
What makes one book “literature” and another just “fiction?” I mean more than the test of time. How would those of you who list those books most people would categorize as “classics” define what makes them so? HRW says Micheler and Uris are badly written, what about them makes them bad [surely it's not just because they're longer than the story needs them to be]?
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Cheryl thanks. I have read Christy more times than I can remember.
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Kayvee
As historical based writers, they become far too in love with their subject material. With Michelar’s multi-genreation nvoels such as the Covenant characterization is weak and stereotypical. Even in his Tales of the South Pacific, each soldier represent a particular facet of the American character that he admired. Uris reduces his material to simplistic us vs them narrative with very little nuances. And where he inserts personal inner conflicts, it seems contrived — see the Trinity.
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Thanks, HRW, I see what you mean.
I’d still like to hear anyone’s thoughts on what makes one book “literature” and another just a good read.
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….and then of course there is the lovely Mitford Series by Jan Karon -and it is in the ‘literature’ section at my local Borders!
And for good science fiction literature I read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson.
But I must also mention one of my husband’s favorite books by Scott Adams- The Joy of Work-Dilbert’s Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-workers. Now that is THE definition of ‘literature’!
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Other than the Bible (yes DC Lawyer I’ve read it and do so on a regular basis)none of the books on the list are my favorites.
My all time favorite novels are:
1984 George Orwell
Earth Abides, George R. Stewart
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Blade Runner, Alan E. Nourse
Alas Babylon, Pat Frank
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DaVinci Code – is that under humor?
Other than the Bible and LOTR, none of mine are on the list. Many of my favorites are history. I would probably list a dozen, but nobody would be interested.
Some novels -
Far from the Madding Crown – Hardy
Treasure Island – Stevenson
Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness – Conrad
Kim – Kipling
David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities – Dickens
Got to go, that’s it off the top of my head.
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A few good ones that come to mind, excluding the ancients because I can’t decide which ones to list:
The Opium War – Peter Fay
The Price of Glory – Alistair Horne
Gordon of Khartoum – Lord Elton
Adams, Truman – McCullough
Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra – Massie
The Age of Reconnaissance – Parry
Conquest of New Spain – Bernal Diaz
Mao – Chang & Halliday
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After looking at the other posts -
I forgot Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground. And Huckleberry Finn.
Throw in Thurber’s 13 Clocks for the fun of it.
Moby Dick is cool.
Akmom 15 – yes, I wish that was substituted for Catcher in the Rye.
Thanks for all the ideas.
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