The 100 most meaningful books of all time

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From http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Guides/GoodReads/100alltime.asp:

A 2002 survey of around 100 well-known authors from 54 countries voted for the "most meaningful book of all time" in a poll organised by editors at the Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo. Voters included Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes and Norman Mailer. Miguel de Cervantes’ tale gained 50% more votes than any other book, eclipsing works by Shakespeare, Homer and Tolstoy.

Ten authors got more than one book on to the list. After Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoevsky emerged as the most worthwhile read with four books listed. The only Shakespeare plays the authors agreed on were Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. The Bard was matched by Franz Kafka whose three angst-ridden tales of grotesque alienation on the list were The Trial, The Castle and the Complete Stories. Three works by Leo Tolstoy made it: War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf both scored twice, along with the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Other than ‘Don Quixote’ in first place below, the remaining 99 titles are reproduced as published by De Norske Bokklubbene in alphabetical order and are not ranked.

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  1. 51.
    Sons and Lovers (Modern Library Classics)
    by D.H. Lawrence

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  2. 52.
    Independent People
    by Halldor Laxness

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  3. 54.

  4. 55.
    Pippi Longstocking
    by Astrid Lindgren

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  5. 56.
    Diary of a Madman (Paper)
    by Lu Xun

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  6. 58.
    ?
    Children of Gebelawi (African writers series)
    by Najib Mahfuz

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  7. 60.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

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  8. 61.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
    by Herman Melville

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  9. 62.
    Montaigne: Essays
    by Michel de Montaigne

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  10. 63.
    ?
    HISTORY : A NOVEL (Aventura)
    by Elsa Morante

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  11. 66.
    ?
    Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities Volume II
    by translated by Sophie Wilkins & Burton Pike Musil Robert

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  12. 67.
    Lolita (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  13. 68.
    Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

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  14. 69.
    Nineteen Eighty-four
    by George Orwell

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  15. 70.

  16. 71.
    The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)
    by Fernando Pessoa

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  17. 72.
    Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems
    by Edgar Allan Poe

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  18. 74.
    Gargantua and Pantagruel (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Francois Rabelais

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  19. 75.
    Pedro Paramo
    by Juan Rulfo

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  20. 76.
    The Mathnawi Jalaluddin Rumi, vol. VI (Books 5-6)
    by Reynold A. Nicholson

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  21. 77.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

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  22. 78.
    The Bostan of Saadi (The Orchard), Books I and II
    by Sheikh Muslihu-d-Din Sa'adi of Shiraz

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  23. 79.
    Season of Migration to the North: A Novel
    by Al-Tayyib Salih

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  24. 80.
    Blindness (Harvest Book)
    by Jose Saramago

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  25. 81.
    Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  26. 82.
    King Lear (New Folger Library Shakespeare)
    by William Shakespeare

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  27. 83.
    Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  28. 84.
    Oedipus the King (Enriched Classics)
    by Sophocles

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  29. 85.
    ?
    Stendhals the Red and the Black,
    by W. Somerset Maugh

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  30. 86.
    ?
    Tristram Shandy
    by Laurence Sterne

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  31. 87.
    ?
    Confessions of Zeno
    by Italo Svevo

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  32. 88.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

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  33. 89.
    War and Peace
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  34. 90.
    Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  35. 91.
    The Death of Ivan Ilyich: And, Master and Man
    by Leo; Garnett, Constance Black; Tolstoy, Leo Khoziain Rabotnik I Tolstoy

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  36. 92.
    Chekhov: Selected Stories
    by Anton Chekhov

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  37. 93.

  38. 96.
    The Aeneid: Virgil
    by Virgil

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  39. 97.
    Leaves of Grass
    by Walt Whitman

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  40. 98.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

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  41. 99.
    To the Lighthouse (Annotated)
    by Virginia Woolf

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  42. 100.
    Memoirs of Hadrian
    by Marguerite Yourcenar

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Created by ohnicole on Aug 31, 2007.
 

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