Greatest Novel of All-Time

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Except it's not a novel.

 

"I never read the book."

 

The Tell-Tale Heart is a Poe masterpiece, I believe.

 

I notice a conspicuous absence of the Twilight saga on that list.

 

When our niece had to read Grapes, I told her to save herself some time when she hit the part about the turtle, and just skip ahead to where the story picks up again. After finishing it, she asked me what I was talking about. In my memory, that turtle crawls along for at least 25 pages.

 

Poe, Dickens, Fu Schnickens, whatevs. Now I now why the teacher put a red mark through the author name on my paper.

 

Never got around to reading Moby Dick, but my favorite quote about it. . .

and that was Melville's brother-in-law.

Count me in the anti-Dickens crowd too. Other than Christmas Carol and Tale of Two Cities it seemed like he just wrote the same book over and over. Great Expectations is just horribly overrates.

Meanwhile where is Slaughterhouse Five? Where is On the Road?

 

I had to read Mockingbird in school and not Gatsby. If that's true for more people out there, it could explain why Mockingbird would be winning the vote.

 

Bingo. Why not 'Mill on the Floss,' or any other turbid Eliot pastoral of the same period?

No 'Tristram Shandy?' Has to be a put-on.

 

I like this list, for the purposes of a tournament-style bracket friendly to the moderately well-read: http://thegreatestbooks.org/

 

Good list, helpful site.

 

It's a fictional narrative with a single, overarching theme.