How long would it take to read the greatest books of all time?
The Economist consulted bibliophile data scientists to bring you the answer
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Explore the 500 highest ranked books
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez, 1967
7 hours and 40 minutes to readAdd to list - 2
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
2 hours and 51 minutes to read - 3
Ulysses
James Joyce, 1922
14 hours and 54 minutes to read - 4
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger, 1951
4 hours and 36 minutes to read - 5
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell, 1949
5 hours and 35 minutes to read - 6
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust, 1913
3 days, 3 hours and 47 minutes to read - 7
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
6 hours and 5 minutes to read - 8
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee, 1960
5 hours and 35 minutes to read - 9
Moby Dick
Herman Melville, 1851
11 hours and 59 minutes to read - 10
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen, 1813
7 hours and 15 minutes to read - 11
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë, 1847
6 hours and 37 minutes to read - 12
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes, 1605
23 hours and 54 minutes to read - 13
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866
11 hours and 28 minutes to read - 14
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy, 1877
19 hours and 36 minutes to read - 15
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck, 1939
10 hours and 25 minutes to read - 16
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy, 1869
1 day, 7 hours and 28 minutes to read - 17
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
1 day, 7 hours and 13 minutes to read - 18
Catch-22
Joseph Heller, 1961
10 hours and 33 minutes to read - 19
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert, 1857
6 hours and 36 minutes to read - 20
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë, 1847
10 hours and 25 minutes to read - 21
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, 1929
5 hours and 14 minutes to read - 22
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll, 1865
1 hour and 39 minutes to read - 23
Middlemarch
George Eliot, 1871
17 hours and 45 minutes to read - 24
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain, 1884
6 hours and 20 minutes to read - 25
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, 1899
2 hours and 17 minutes to read - 26
Beloved
Toni Morrison, 1987
5 hours and 19 minutes to read - 27
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri, 1321
6 hours and 12 minutes to read - 28
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison, 1952
11 hours and 58 minutes to read - 29
The Odyssey
Homer, 740BC
7 hours and 22 minutes to read - 30
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, 1818
4 hours and 16 minutes to read - 31
The Stranger
Albert Camus, 1942
1 hour and 57 minutes to read - 32
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880
19 hours and 40 minutes to read - 33
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens, 1860
10 hours and 25 minutes to read - 34
The Bible
1400BC
1 day, 17 hours and 27 minutes to read - 35
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, 1927
3 hours and 53 minutes to read - 36
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, 1925
3 hours and 42 minutes to read - 37
The Iliad
Homer, 750BC
10 hours and 41 minutes to read - 38
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie, 1981
13 hours and 34 minutes to read - 39
The Trial
Franz Kafka, 1925
4 hours and 49 minutes to read - 40
On the Road
Jack Kerouac, 1957
7 hours and 26 minutes to read - 41
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
8 hours and 16 minutes to read - 42
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley, 1932
3 hours and 19 minutes to read - 43
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann, 1924
18 hours and 27 minutes to read - 44
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift, 1726
5 hours and 50 minutes to read - 45
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens, 1850
19 hours and 53 minutes to read - 46
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo, 1862
1 day, 7 hours and 35 minutes to read - 47
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell, 1936
23 hours and 17 minutes to read - 48
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway, 1926
3 hours and 57 minutes to read - 49
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
3 hours and 26 minutes to read - 50
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe, 1958
3 hours and 34 minutes to read - 51
The Color Purple
Alice Walker, 1982
4 hours and 8 minutes to read - 52
The Red and the Black
Stendhal, 1830
10 hours and 56 minutes to read - 53
A Passage to India
E.M. Forster, 1924
5 hours and 49 minutes to read - 54
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
3 hours and 12 minutes to read - 55
Lord of the Flies
William Golding, 1954
3 hours and 31 minutes to read - 56
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner, 1936
7 hours to read - 57
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier, 1938
8 hours and 5 minutes to read - 58
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
4 hours and 50 minutes to read - 59
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne, 1759
9 hours and 47 minutes to read - 60
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank, 1947
5 hours and 57 minutes to read - 61
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson, 1962
4 hours and 38 minutes to read - 62
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943
54 minutes to read - 63
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James, 1881
6 hours and 40 minutes to read - 64
Candide
Voltaire, 1759
2 hours and 10 minutes to read - 65
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott, 1868
10 hours and 52 minutes to read - 66
One Thousand and One Nights
800
5 hours and 19 minutes to read - 67
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner, 1930
3 hours and 14 minutes to read - 68
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce, 1916
4 hours and 53 minutes to read - 69
Native Son
Richard Wright, 1940
8 hours and 46 minutes to read - 70
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood, 1985
5 hours and 34 minutes to read - 71
Walden
Henry David Thoreau, 1854
4 hours and 17 minutes to read - 72
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848
16 hours and 58 minutes to read - 73
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams, 1979
2 hours and 55 minutes to read - 74
Animal Farm
George Orwell, 1945
1 hour and 46 minutes to read - 75
The Aeneid
Virgil, 19BC
6 hours and 9 minutes to read - 76
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote, 1966
7 hours and 15 minutes to read - 77
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe, 1719
6 hours and 53 minutes to read - 78
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath, 1963
3 hours and 38 minutes to read - 79
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway, 1940
10 hours and 19 minutes to read - 80
Oedipus the King
Sophocles, 429BC
57 minutes to read - 81
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway, 1952
1 hour and 29 minutes to read - 82
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy, 1891
8 hours and 30 minutes to read - 83
Hamlet
William Shakespeare, 1600
1 hour and 47 minutes to read - 84
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1808
5 hours and 29 minutes to read - 85
Dracula
Bram Stoker, 1897
9 hours and 8 minutes to read - 86
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532
2 hours and 57 minutes to read - 87
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess, 1962
3 hours and 37 minutes to read - 88
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton, 1920
5 hours and 48 minutes to read - 89
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman, 1855
6 hours and 56 minutes to read - 90
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov, 1962
4 hours and 21 minutes to read - 91
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding, 1749
19 hours and 39 minutes to read - 92
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde, 1891
4 hours and 33 minutes to read - 93
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass, 1959
13 hours and 10 minutes to read - 94
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing, 1962
14 hours and 3 minutes to read - 95
Emma
Jane Austen, 1815
9 hours and 25 minutes to read - 96
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett, 1952
52 minutes to read - 97
The Leopard
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958
4 hours and 58 minutes to read - 98
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey, 1962
6 hours and 55 minutes to read - 99
Charlotte's Web
E.B. White, 1952
2 hours and 12 minutes to read - 100
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque, 1928
4 hours and 26 minutes to read - 101
Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges, 1944
2 hours and 29 minutes to read - 102
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler, 1939
3 hours and 47 minutes to read - 103
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1476
13 hours and 34 minutes to read - 104
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883
3 hours and 59 minutes to read - 105
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas, 1844
1 day, 1 hour and 47 minutes to read - 106
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury, 1953
2 hours and 43 minutes to read - 107
Paradise Lost
John Milton, 1667
4 hours and 38 minutes to read - 108
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco, 1980
10 hours and 53 minutes to read - 109
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1869
13 hours and 35 minutes to read - 110
Dune
Frank Herbert, 1965
8 hours and 59 minutes to read - 111
Essays
Michel de Montaigne, 1580
22 hours and 7 minutes to read - 112
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez, 1985
8 hours and 31 minutes to read - 113
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys, 1966
2 hours and 55 minutes to read - 114
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera, 1984
4 hours and 49 minutes to read - 115
The Stories of Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov, 1900
1 hour and 42 minutes to read - 116
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway, 1929
5 hours and 14 minutes to read - 117
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford, 1915
4 hours and 21 minutes to read - 118
My Ántonia
Willa Cather, 1918
4 hours and 19 minutes to read - 119
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry, 1947
7 hours and 35 minutes to read - 120
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin, 1859
8 hours and 49 minutes to read - 121
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, 1902
15 hours and 32 minutes to read - 122
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
3 hours and 28 minutes to read - 123
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka, 1915
53 minutes to read - 124
Journey to the End of The Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1932
9 hours and 30 minutes to read - 125
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence, 1913
9 hours and 4 minutes to read - 126
First Folio
William Shakespeare, 1623
1 day, 21 hours and 30 minutes to read - 127
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame, 1908
3 hours and 25 minutes to read - 128
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers, 1940
7 hours and 6 minutes to read - 129
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak, 1957
12 hours and 34 minutes to read - 130
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949
16 hours and 11 minutes to read - 131
Rabbit, Run
John Updike, 1960
6 hours and 6 minutes to read - 132
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev, 1862
4 hours and 36 minutes to read - 133
The Castle
Franz Kafka, 1926
6 hours and 12 minutes to read - 134
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
J.K. Rowling, 1997
4 hours and 52 minutes to read - 135
The Plague
Albert Camus, 1947
5 hours and 19 minutes to read - 136
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol, 1842
8 hours and 3 minutes to read - 137
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison, 1977
5 hours and 20 minutes to read - 138
Antigone
Sophocles, 441BC
53 minutes to read - 139
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad, 1900
7 hours and 23 minutes to read - 140
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley, 1965
7 hours and 43 minutes to read - 141
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett, 1930
4 hours and 5 minutes to read - 142
The Republic
Plato, 379BC
7 hours and 16 minutes to read - 143
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud, 1899
11 hours and 38 minutes to read - 144
The Man Without Qualities
Robert Musil, 1930
1 day, 6 hours and 20 minutes to read - 145
Demons
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1872
13 hours and 40 minutes to read - 146
Orlando: A Biography
Virginia Woolf, 1928
3 hours and 59 minutes to read - 147
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse, 1927
3 hours and 41 minutes to read - 148
Confessions
St Augustine, 397
6 hours and 23 minutes to read - 149
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann, 1901
13 hours and 12 minutes to read - 150
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton, 1905
7 hours and 21 minutes to read - 151
Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth, 1969
4 hours and 22 minutes to read - 152
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carré, 1963
3 hours and 48 minutes to read - 153
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann, 1947
5 hours and 59 minutes to read - 154
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith, 1955
5 hours and 3 minutes to read - 155
The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu, 1010
5 hours and 38 minutes to read - 156
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou, 1969
5 hours and 2 minutes to read - 157
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas, 1844
12 hours and 55 minutes to read - 158
Howards End
E.M. Forster, 1910
6 hours and 12 minutes to read - 159
The Call of the Wild
Jack London, 1903
1 hour and 56 minutes to read - 160
The Long Goodbye: A Novel
Raymond Chandler, 1953
5 hours and 20 minutes to read - 161
Bleak House
Charles Dickens, 1852
19 hours and 48 minutes to read - 162
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser, 1925
18 hours and 29 minutes to read - 163
Light in August
William Faulkner, 1932
8 hours and 3 minutes to read - 164
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins, 1860
13 hours and 46 minutes to read - 165
Winnie the Pooh
A.A Milne, 1926
1 hour and 19 minutes to read - 166
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren, 1946
12 hours and 41 minutes to read - 167
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende, 1982
8 hours and 6 minutes to read - 168
Tender Is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934
6 hours and 18 minutes to read - 169
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
James D. Watson, 1968
2 hours and 10 minutes to read - 170
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
Franz Kafka, 1971
8 hours and 6 minutes to read - 171
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Hunter S. Thompson, 1971
3 hours and 13 minutes to read - 172
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy, 1985
6 hours and 16 minutes to read - 173
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852
10 hours and 13 minutes to read - 174
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh, 1945
6 hours and 7 minutes to read - 175
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole, 1980
6 hours and 58 minutes to read - 176
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf, 1929
2 hours and 32 minutes to read - 177
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor, 1971
9 hours and 13 minutes to read - 178
The Shining
Stephen King, 1977
9 hours and 23 minutes to read - 179
Watership Down
Richard Adams, 1972
8 hours and 43 minutes to read - 180
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn, 1962
4 hours and 58 minutes to read - 181
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow, 1953
12 hours and 45 minutes to read - 182
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon, 1973
17 hours and 11 minutes to read - 183
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair, 1906
3 hours to read - 184
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence, 1928
6 hours and 43 minutes to read - 185
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells, 1895
1 hour and 58 minutes to read - 186
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
4 hours and 2 minutes to read - 187
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962
2 hours and 47 minutes to read - 188
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937
5 hours and 36 minutes to read - 189
Poems of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, 1890
2 hours to read - 190
The Secret History
Donna Tartt, 1992
10 hours and 37 minutes to read - 191
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark, 1961
2 hours and 11 minutes to read - 192
The Moviegoer
Walker Percy, 1961
11 hours to read - 193
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973
1 day, 12 hours and 40 minutes to read - 194
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad, 1904
9 hours and 38 minutes to read - 195
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie, 1939
3 hours and 18 minutes to read - 196
Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848
48 minutes to read - 197
Herzog
Saul Bellow, 1964
7 hours and 5 minutes to read - 198
The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot, 1922
26 minutes to read - 199
A Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968
3 hours and 55 minutes to read - 200
The Awakening
Kate Chopin, 1899
3 hours and 44 minutes to read - 201
Gargantua and Pantagruel
François Rabelais, 1532
17 hours and 57 minutes to read - 202
U.S.A. Trilogy
John Dos Passos, 1930
17 hours and 13 minutes to read - 203
A Wrinkle In Time
Madeleine L'Engle, 1962
3 hours and 2 minutes to read - 204
A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul, 1961
11 hours and 34 minutes to read - 205
Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio, 1349
17 hours and 16 minutes to read - 206
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith, 1943
8 hours and 20 minutes to read - 207
Father Goriot
Honoré de Balzac, 1835
5 hours and 55 minutes to read - 208
The Ambassadors
Henry James, 1903
9 hours and 10 minutes to read - 209
Atonement
Ian McEwan, 2001
6 hours and 55 minutes to read - 210
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis, 1950
2 hours and 16 minutes to read - 211
Dangerous Liaisons
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782
8 hours and 33 minutes to read - 212
Fairy Tales and Stories
Hans Christian Andersen, 1835
19 hours and 4 minutes to read - 213
The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens, 1836
16 hours and 50 minutes to read - 214
Kim
Rudyard Kipling, 1901
5 hours and 59 minutes to read - 215
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson, 1980
3 hours and 29 minutes to read - 216
White Teeth
Zadie Smith, 2000
10 hours and 12 minutes to read - 217
Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats, 1933
1 hour and 23 minutes to read - 218
Medea
Euripides, 431BC
1 hour and 20 minutes to read - 219
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck, 1937
1 hour and 41 minutes to read - 220
War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells, 1898
3 hours and 30 minutes to read - 221
The World According to Garp
John Irving, 1978
10 hours and 45 minutes to read - 222
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen, 2001
10 hours and 44 minutes to read - 223
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, 1957
1 day, 2 hours and 4 minutes to read - 224
Macbeth
William Shakespeare, 1606
1 hour and 11 minutes to read - 225
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy, 1997
5 hours and 47 minutes to read - 226
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller, 1934
5 hours and 1 minute to read - 227
The Stand
Stephen King, 1978
1 day, 3 hours and 2 minutes to read - 228
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence, 1920
9 hours and 26 minutes to read - 229
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain, 1876
4 hours and 6 minutes to read - 230
Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons, 1932
4 hours and 39 minutes to read - 231
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy, 1895
8 hours and 12 minutes to read - 232
The Once and Future King
T.H. White, 1958
17 hours and 36 minutes to read - 233
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
1 hour and 36 minutes to read - 234
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis, 1922
6 hours and 59 minutes to read - 235
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1927
1 day, 12 hours and 26 minutes to read - 236
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse, 1922
2 hours and 21 minutes to read - 237
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens, 1859
7 hours and 43 minutes to read - 238
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis, 1954
4 hours and 44 minutes to read - 239
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
10 hours and 36 minutes to read - 240
The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal, 1839
6 hours and 51 minutes to read - 241
Molloy
Samuel Beckett, 1951
3 hours and 32 minutes to read - 242
The Good Soldier Svejk
Jaroslav Hašek, 1921
15 hours and 18 minutes to read - 243
Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe, 1987
13 hours and 49 minutes to read - 244
The Life of Samuel Johnson
James Boswell, 1791
16 hours and 18 minutes to read - 245
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee, 1999
3 hours and 45 minutes to read - 246
American Pastoral
Philip Roth, 1997
8 hours and 46 minutes to read - 247
Man's Fate
André Malraux, 1933
6 hours and 7 minutes to read - 248
Foundation
Isaac Asimov, 1951
4 hours and 18 minutes to read - 249
Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles, 401BC
1 hour and 41 minutes to read - 250
Oresteia
Aeschylus, 458BC
1 hour and 48 minutes to read - 251
If This Is a Man
Primo Levi, 1947
7 hours and 34 minutes to read - 252
Neuromancer
William Gibson, 1984
5 hours and 32 minutes to read - 253
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy, 1886
6 hours and 34 minutes to read - 254
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Michael Chabon, 2000
13 hours and 13 minutes to read - 255
Nausea
Jean Paul Sartre, 1938
4 hours and 32 minutes to read - 256
Confessions of Zeno
Italo Svevo, 1923
9 hours and 5 minutes to read - 257
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien, 1990
3 hours and 55 minutes to read - 258
King Lear
William Shakespeare, 1605
1 hour and 22 minutes to read - 259
Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin, 1953
4 hours and 40 minutes to read - 260
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin, 1956
2 hours and 55 minutes to read - 261
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie, 1926
4 hours and 6 minutes to read - 262
The Counterfeiters
André Gide, 1925
4 hours and 7 minutes to read - 263
A Sentimental Education
Gustave Flaubert, 1869
8 hours and 19 minutes to read - 264
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume, 1970
1 hour and 45 minutes to read - 265
Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott, 1819
10 hours and 6 minutes to read - 266
Possession
A.S. Byatt, 1990
10 hours to read - 267
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham, 1915
14 hours and 35 minutes to read - 268
The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis, 1950
19 hours and 16 minutes to read - 269
Anne of Green Gables
L.M. Montgomery, 1908
5 hours and 52 minutes to read - 270
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James, 1898
2 hours and 31 minutes to read - 271
The Godfather
Mario Puzo, 1969
4 hours and 21 minutes to read - 272
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Italo Calvino, 1979
8 hours and 46 minutes to read - 273
The Adventures of Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens, 1837
8 hours and 54 minutes to read - 274
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne, 1870
5 hours and 59 minutes to read - 275
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
6 hours and 27 minutes to read - 276
The Left Hand Of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969
4 hours and 42 minutes to read - 277
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami, 1994
14 hours and 7 minutes to read - 278
Brighton Rock
Graham Greene, 1938
5 hours and 11 minutes to read - 279
Epic of Gilgamesh
2000BC
1 hour and 7 minutes to read - 280
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving, 1989
13 hours and 42 minutes to read - 281
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson, 1959
3 hours and 19 minutes to read - 282
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883
6 hours and 20 minutes to read - 283
Oblomov
Ivan Goncharov, 1859
3 hours and 27 minutes to read - 284
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson, 1919
4 hours and 17 minutes to read - 285
The End of the Affair
Graham Greene, 1951
3 hours and 44 minutes to read - 286
Persuasion
Jane Austen, 1817
4 hours and 48 minutes to read - 287
The Sea, The Sea
Iris Murdoch, 1978
10 hours and 6 minutes to read - 288
The Flowers of Evil
Charles Baudelaire, 1857
36 minutes to read - 289
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
2 hours and 32 minutes to read - 290
A Room With a View
E.M. Forster, 1908
3 hours and 52 minutes to read - 291
The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever, 1978
3 hours and 35 minutes to read - 292
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick, 1968
3 hours and 44 minutes to read - 293
Invisible Cities
Italo Calvino, 1972
1 hour and 33 minutes to read - 294
The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck, 1931
6 hours and 8 minutes to read - 295
A Season in Hell
Arthur Rimbaud, 1873
36 minutes to read - 296
At Swim Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien, 1939
4 hours and 51 minutes to read - 297
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins, 1868
11 hours to read - 298
Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo, 1955
53 minutes to read - 299
The Lover
Marguerite Duras, 1984
1 hour and 35 minutes to read - 300
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan, 1989
4 hours and 39 minutes to read - 301
The Road
Cormac McCarthy, 2006
3 hours and 35 minutes to read - 302
Hunger
Knut Hamsun, 1890
3 hours and 35 minutes to read - 303
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace, 1996
1 day, 6 hours and 19 minutes to read - 304
Labyrinths
Jorge Luis Borges, 1962
4 hours and 45 minutes to read - 305
White Noise
Don DeLillo, 1985
5 hours and 24 minutes to read - 306
Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe, 1929
12 hours and 23 minutes to read - 307
I, Claudius
Robert Graves, 1934
8 hours and 50 minutes to read - 308
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho, 1988
2 hours and 51 minutes to read - 309
The Tempest
William Shakespeare, 1623
1 hour and 28 minutes to read - 310
Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951
2 hours and 4 minutes to read - 311
The Poems of Robert Frost
Robert Frost, 1913
1 hour and 35 minutes to read - 312
The Histories of Herodotus
Herodotus, 450BC
13 hours and 48 minutes to read - 313
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler, 1940
4 hours and 23 minutes to read - 314
The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1782
15 hours and 4 minutes to read - 315
Mahabharata
Vyasa, 400BC
2 hours and 50 minutes to read - 316
Children's and Household Tales
Brothers Grimm, 1812
9 hours and 43 minutes to read - 317
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792
4 hours and 58 minutes to read - 318
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane, 1895
2 hours and 44 minutes to read - 319
Nightwood
Djuna Barnes, 1936
3 hours and 9 minutes to read - 320
East of Eden
John Steinbeck, 1952
13 hours and 8 minutes to read - 321
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Alfred Döblin, 1929
5 hours and 6 minutes to read - 322
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs, 1959
5 hours and 15 minutes to read - 323
Money
Martin Amis, 1984
8 hours and 40 minutes to read - 324
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen, 1879
1 hour and 38 minutes to read - 325
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce, 1939
12 hours and 9 minutes to read - 326
Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), 1937
1 hour and 33 minutes to read - 327
The Tartar Steppe
Dino Buzzati, 1940
1 hour and 23 minutes to read - 328
The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett, 1908
12 hours and 12 minutes to read - 329
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum, 1900
2 hours and 22 minutes to read - 330
Metamorphoses
Ovid, 8
7 hours and 8 minutes to read - 331
The Elements of Style
E.B. White, William Strunk Jr., 1918
57 minutes to read - 332
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot, 1860
11 hours and 38 minutes to read - 333
Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov, 1951
4 hours and 36 minutes to read - 334
Zorba the Greek
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1946
5 hours and 20 minutes to read - 335
A Bend in the River
V.S. Naipaul, 1979
5 hours and 57 minutes to read - 336
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor, 1953
4 hours and 23 minutes to read - 337
Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren, 1945
1 hour and 26 minutes to read - 338
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton, 1948
4 hours and 39 minutes to read - 339
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes, 1651
12 hours and 1 minute to read - 340
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
James Agee, 1941
6 hours and 1 minute to read - 341
Ragtime
E. L. Doctorow, 1975
4 hours and 23 minutes to read - 342
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman, 1995
22 hours and 44 minutes to read - 343
Clarissa
Samuel Richardson, 1748
17 hours and 13 minutes to read - 344
Pensées
Blaise Pascal, 1670
6 hours and 20 minutes to read - 345
A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth, 1993
1 day, 10 hours and 57 minutes to read - 346
Relativity
Albert Einstein, 1916
1 hour and 2 minutes to read - 347
Sophie's Choice
William Styron, 1979
1 hour and 34 minutes to read - 348
Death of Virgil
Hermann Broch, 1945
8 hours and 11 minutes to read - 349
Germinal
Émile Zola, 1885
10 hours and 4 minutes to read - 350
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene, 1940
5 hours and 14 minutes to read - 351
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
John Maynard Keynes, 1936
6 hours and 41 minutes to read - 352
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper, 1826
8 hours and 25 minutes to read - 353
Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan, 1678
3 hours and 24 minutes to read - 354
The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West, 1939
2 hours and 26 minutes to read - 355
Malone Dies
Samuel Beckett, 1951
2 hours and 38 minutes to read - 356
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell, 1938
4 hours and 14 minutes to read - 357
The Complete Works of Plato
Plato, 387BC
3 hours and 20 minutes to read - 358
A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell, 1951
1 day, 23 hours and 20 minutes to read - 359
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking, 1988
3 hours and 12 minutes to read - 360
Le Morte d'Arthur
Thomas Malory, 1485
9 hours and 33 minutes to read - 361
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911
4 hours and 40 minutes to read - 362
Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway, 1987
3 hours and 19 minutes to read - 363
Rabbit Redux
John Updike, 1971
7 hours and 51 minutes to read - 364
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey, 1951
3 hours to read - 365
The Princess of Cleves
Madame de La Fayette, 1678
3 hours and 35 minutes to read - 366
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton, 1911
2 hours and 6 minutes to read - 367
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig, 1974
8 hours and 32 minutes to read - 368
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens, 1864
18 hours and 14 minutes to read - 369
The Shipping News
Annie Proulx, 1993
5 hours and 26 minutes to read - 370
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon, 1776
3 days, 16 hours and 55 minutes to read - 371
I Capture the Castle
Dodie Smith, 1948
7 hours and 25 minutes to read - 372
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens, 1843
1 hour and 45 minutes to read - 373
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe, 1968
6 hours and 39 minutes to read - 374
The Bacchae
Euripides, 405BC
1 hour and 7 minutes to read - 375
2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke, 1968
3 hours and 7 minutes to read - 376
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Rebecca West, 1941
19 hours and 37 minutes to read - 377
Rabbit Is Rich
John Updike, 1981
9 hours and 37 minutes to read - 378
The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon, 1966
2 hours and 41 minutes to read - 379
The Waves
Virginia Woolf, 1931
3 hours and 49 minutes to read - 380
Regeneration
Pat Barker, 1991
4 hours and 30 minutes to read - 381
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan, 1963
8 hours and 8 minutes to read - 382
Wings of the Dove
Henry James, 1902
4 hours and 37 minutes to read - 383
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo, 1831
10 hours and 53 minutes to read - 384
A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry, 1995
12 hours and 25 minutes to read - 385
The Day of the Jackal
Frederick Forsyth, 1971
6 hours and 56 minutes to read - 386
The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy, 1878
7 hours and 10 minutes to read - 387
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005
5 hours and 22 minutes to read - 388
The Forsyte Saga
John Galsworthy, 1906
6 hours and 15 minutes to read - 389
Nights At The Circus
Angela Carter, 1984
6 hours and 25 minutes to read - 390
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius, 161
4 hours and 10 minutes to read - 391
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz, 2007
5 hours and 10 minutes to read - 392
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver, 1998
9 hours and 14 minutes to read - 393
The Rainbow
D.H. Lawrence, 1915
10 hours and 30 minutes to read - 394
Kristin Lavransdatter
Sigrid Undset, 1920
1 day, 1 hour and 6 minutes to read - 395
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant, 1781
11 hours and 47 minutes to read - 396
Bonjour Tristesse
Francoise Sagan, 1954
28 minutes to read - 397
So Long, See You Tomorrow
William Maxwell, 1980
3 hours and 6 minutes to read - 398
The Civil War
Shelby Foote, 1958
3 days, 8 hours and 54 minutes to read - 399
Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie, 1934
3 hours and 28 minutes to read - 400
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy, 1886
1 hour and 23 minutes to read - 401
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis, 1991
8 hours and 11 minutes to read - 402
Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll, 1871
2 hours and 58 minutes to read - 403
Ferdydurke
Witold Gombrowicz, 1937
5 hours and 19 minutes to read - 404
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan, 1915
2 hours and 27 minutes to read - 405
Das Kapital
Karl Marx, 1867
1 hour and 17 minutes to read - 406
The Siege of Krishnapur
J. G. Farrell, 1973
7 hours and 4 minutes to read - 407
Maus
Art Spiegelman, 1980
2 hours and 38 minutes to read - 408
Silas Marner
George Eliot, 1861
4 hours and 7 minutes to read - 409
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis, 1920
9 hours and 25 minutes to read - 410
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James, 1902
10 hours and 31 minutes to read - 411
Independent People
Halldor Laxness, 1934
11 hours and 38 minutes to read - 412
Schindler's List
Thomas Keneally, 1982
7 hours and 31 minutes to read - 413
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles, 1969
8 hours and 21 minutes to read - 414
The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster, 1961
2 hours and 33 minutes to read - 415
The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith, 1766
3 hours and 34 minutes to read - 416
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg, 1824
4 hours and 50 minutes to read - 417
Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser, 1900
8 hours and 52 minutes to read - 418
Underworld
Don DeLillo, 1997
3 hours and 51 minutes to read - 419
Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion, 1970
2 hours and 3 minutes to read - 420
Perfume
Patrick Süskind, 1985
4 hours and 52 minutes to read - 421
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak, 1963
1 minute to read - 422
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen, 1938
5 hours and 56 minutes to read - 423
The Affluent Society
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958
4 hours and 31 minutes to read - 424
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864
2 hours and 37 minutes to read - 425
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith, 1776
18 hours and 22 minutes to read - 426
Collected Poems
Wallace Stevens, 1954
5 hours and 9 minutes to read - 427
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin, 1833
1 hour and 51 minutes to read - 428
Beowulf
1000
2 hours and 21 minutes to read - 429
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams, 1947
54 minutes to read - 430
Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee, 1980
3 hours and 42 minutes to read - 431
The Golden Bowl
Henry James, 1904
11 hours and 32 minutes to read - 432
The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams, 1907
9 hours and 57 minutes to read - 433
Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy, 1874
7 hours and 47 minutes to read - 434
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov, 1840
3 hours and 27 minutes to read - 435
Solaris
Stanislaw Lem, 1961
4 hours and 10 minutes to read - 436
The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead, 1940
10 hours and 13 minutes to read - 437
Crash: A Novel
J. G. Ballard, 1973
3 hours and 15 minutes to read - 438
Dubliners
James Joyce, 1914
3 hours and 55 minutes to read - 439
Life and Fate
Vasily Grossman, 1980
4 hours and 8 minutes to read - 440
Electra
Sophocles, 409BC
38 minutes to read - 441
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein, 1933
5 hours and 16 minutes to read - 442
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson, 2004
4 hours and 50 minutes to read - 443
Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe, 1722
8 hours and 8 minutes to read - 444
The Koran
610
9 hours and 46 minutes to read - 445
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002
2 hours and 30 minutes to read - 446
The Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence Durrell, 1957
17 hours and 29 minutes to read - 447
Black Beauty
Anna Sewell, 1877
3 hours and 30 minutes to read - 448
Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban
J.K. Rowling, 1999
6 hours and 44 minutes to read - 449
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell, 2004
8 hours and 38 minutes to read - 450
The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse, 1943
11 hours and 5 minutes to read - 451
Life, a User's Manual
Georges Perec, 1978
10 hours and 6 minutes to read - 452
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño, 1998
14 hours and 8 minutes to read - 453
The Magus
John Fowles, 1965
13 hours and 13 minutes to read - 454
Philosophical Investigations
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953
5 hours and 28 minutes to read - 455
The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekhov, 1904
1 hour and 1 minute to read - 456
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924
3 hours and 41 minutes to read - 457
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison, 1970
3 hours and 11 minutes to read - 458
Call It Sleep
Henry Roth, 1934
8 hours and 50 minutes to read - 459
The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad, 1907
4 hours and 40 minutes to read - 460
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann, 1912
1 hour and 45 minutes to read - 461
The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain, 1934
1 hour and 50 minutes to read - 462
Analects
Confucius, 479BC
1 hour and 48 minutes to read - 463
The Third Policeman
Flann O'Brien, 1967
4 hours and 24 minutes to read - 464
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler, 1979
5 hours and 33 minutes to read - 465
Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald, 2001
2 hours and 14 minutes to read - 466
Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett, 1929
3 hours and 17 minutes to read - 467
Ada or Ardor
Vladimir Nabokov, 1969
9 hours and 33 minutes to read - 468
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger, 1953
5 hours and 1 minute to read - 469
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand, 1943
19 hours and 11 minutes to read - 470
The Unnamable
Samuel Beckett, 1953
3 hours and 15 minutes to read - 471
Adam Bede
George Eliot, 1859
11 hours and 47 minutes to read - 472
Quo Vadis
Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1896
12 hours and 5 minutes to read - 473
The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe, 1979
8 hours and 59 minutes to read - 474
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote, 1958
1 hour and 31 minutes to read - 475
Rabbit at Rest
John Updike, 1990
10 hours and 45 minutes to read - 476
The Art of War
Sun Tzu, 475BC
3 hours and 14 minutes to read - 477
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope, 1875
19 hours and 39 minutes to read - 478
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje, 1992
4 hours and 27 minutes to read - 479
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer, 1948
13 hours and 46 minutes to read - 480
The Betrothed
Alessandro Manzoni, 1827
9 hours and 29 minutes to read - 481
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903
3 hours and 59 minutes to read - 482
The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa, 1982
8 hours and 54 minutes to read - 483
The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough, 1977
3 hours and 22 minutes to read - 484
Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus, 479BC
32 minutes to read - 485
Season of Migration to the North
Al-Tayyib Salih, 1966
2 hours and 19 minutes to read - 486
Wise Blood
Flannery O'Connor, 1952
2 hours and 52 minutes to read - 487
The House of the Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
6 hours to read - 488
2666
Roberto Bolaño, 2004
20 hours and 11 minutes to read - 489
The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, 1787
10 hours and 25 minutes to read - 490
Journey to the West
Wu Cheng'en, 1592
6 hours and 15 minutes to read - 491
De Rerum Natura
Lucretius, 55
3 hours and 43 minutes to read - 492
Cousin Bette
Honoré de Balzac, 1846
8 hours and 23 minutes to read - 493
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J.K. Rowling, 2000
11 hours and 39 minutes to read - 494
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl, 1964
1 hour and 44 minutes to read - 495
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles, 1949
5 hours and 38 minutes to read - 496
The Sonnets
William Shakespeare, 1609
1 hour and 5 minutes to read - 497
The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, 340BC
4 hours and 46 minutes to read - 498
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
John le Carré, 1974
6 hours and 39 minutes to read - 499
Watchmen
Alan Moore, 1987
6 hours and 55 minutes to read - 500
Effi Briest
Theodor Fontane, 1895
5 hours and 30 minutes to read
Top 100 books
Size=time to read
1
Rank, log scale
One Hundred
Years of Solitude
2
The Great Gatsby
3
Ulysses
4
The Catcher in the Rye
5
Nineteen Eighty Four
In Search of Lost Time
Lolita
To Kill a Mockingbird
Moby-Dick
10
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
Don Quixote
War and Peace
Jane Eyre
Catch-22
The Divine Comedy
The Odyssey
The Bible
The Iliad
50
Gulliver’s Travels
Tristram Shandy
100
Pre-1700
1700s
1800s
1900s
Rank, log scale
Top 100 books
1
One Hundred
Years of Solitude
Size=time to read
2
The Great Gatsby
3
Ulysses
4
The Catcher in the Rye
Nineteen Eighty Four
5
In Search of
Lost Time
Lolita
Moby-Dick
To Kill a Mockingbird
10
Pride and Prejudice
Don Quixote
Wuthering Heights
War and Peace
Catch-22
Jane Eyre
Beloved
The Divine Comedy
The Odyssey
The Bible
The Iliad
Les
Misérables
Gulliver’s Travels
50
Tristram
Shandy
100
Pre-1700
1700s
1800s
1900s
Rank, log scale
Top 100 books
1
One Hundred
Years of Solitude
Size=time to read
2
The Great Gatsby
3
Ulysses
4
The Catcher in the Rye
Nineteen Eighty Four
5
In Search of
Lost Time
Lolita
Moby-Dick
To Kill a Mockingbird
10
Pride and Prejudice
Don Quixote
Wuthering Heights
War and Peace
Catch-22
Jane Eyre
Beloved
The Divine Comedy
The Odyssey
The Bible
The Iliad
Les
Misérables
Gulliver’s Travels
50
Tristram
Shandy
100
Pre-1700
1700s
1800s
1900s
Sources: Shane Sherman, thegreatestbooks.org; Harry Tong, howlongtoread.com