The lists that decide what gets read

59 lists of record, each book on them scored for how hard it is to read and how long it takes: 8 great rankings, the publishers' series, each year's best, two book clubs and the set texts of school systems. 46 books are on four or more of the rankings; 3 are on 7.

On four or more of the 8 rankings

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — on 7 of 8 rankings, difficulty 52/100
  2. 1984 by George Orwell — on 7 of 8 rankings, difficulty 46/100
  3. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie — on 7 of 8 rankings, difficulty 67/100
  4. Ulysses by James Joyce — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 89/100
  5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 69/100
  6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 80/100
  7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 55/100
  8. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 58/100
  9. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 70/100
  10. Animal Farm by George Orwell — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 56/100
  11. On the Road by Jack Kerouac — on 6 of 8 rankings, difficulty 54/100
  12. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 51/100
  13. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 52/100
  14. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 62/100
  15. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 72/100
  16. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 75/100
  17. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 53/100
  18. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 45/100
  19. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 55/100
  20. Lord of the Flies by William Golding — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 65/100
  21. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh — on 5 of 8 rankings, difficulty 55/100
  22. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 52/100
  23. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 78/100
  24. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 42/100
  25. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 50/100
  26. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 73/100
  27. I, Claudius by Robert Graves — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 49/100
  28. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 63/100
  29. Native Son by Richard Wright — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 58/100
  30. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 54/100
  31. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 56/100
  32. Light in August by William Faulkner — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 65/100
  33. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 57/100
  34. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 54/100
  35. A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 46/100
  36. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 63/100
  37. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 64/100
  38. Sophie's Choice by William Styron — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 59/100
  39. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 68/100
  40. Beloved by Toni Morrison — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 58/100
  41. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 71/100
  42. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 59/100
  43. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 53/100
  44. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 63/100
  45. The Stranger by Albert Camus — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 64/100
  46. The Trial by Franz Kafka — on 4 of 8 rankings, difficulty 71/100

Rankings

Publishers' series

The year's best

Book clubs

School and exam lists

The 100 best books of all time · Every literary prize winner · Discover