The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books

by J. Peder Zane (Editor)

You'll find the answer in The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books: the ultimate guide to the world's greatest books. As writers such as Norman Mailer, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, Margaret Drabble, Michael Chabon and Peter Carey name the ten books that have meant the most to them, you'll be reminded of books you have always loved and introduced to works awaiting your discovery.

The Top Ten includes summaries of 544 books—each of which is considered to be among the ten greatest books ever written by at least one leading writer. In addition to each writer's Top Ten List, the book features Top Ten Lists tabulated from their picks, including:


• The Top Ten Books of All Time

• The Top Ten Books by Living Writers

• The Top Ten Books of the Twentieth Century

• The Top Ten Mysteries

• The Top Ten Comedies


Already sparking debate, The Top Ten will help readers answer the most pressing question of all: What should I read next?

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Reference, Writing, Essays, Criticism, 21st Century

354 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 2007

Reviews

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I browsed through this book a few weeks back during a bookstore visit and put it back on the shelf; my quick assessment found it tediously monotonous, with all the writers picking the same few classics. I couldn’t pass it up for two dollars at a book sale, however. It did read with deadly repetition for the majority of the book: Macbeth…Macbeth…Macbeth…Middlemarch…Middlemarch…Middlemarch…War and Peace…War and Peace…War and Peace. It was the surprises, the little known favorites, that I found to be worth the price of the book, the So Long, See You Tomorrows, The Man Who Loved Childrens, the Quartet in Autumns. I love to hear about other people’s favorite books….It should be written under their name on a tag when meeting new people….inscribed on t-shirts….emblazoned on business cards….added to signature lines….

[Robert Sheard]

This is more of a reference book than one I'd read straight through, so I'll be dipping in and out of it for some time. It's a dream book for readers who are also obsessive about lists... yeah, me.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting and helpful book to gain some new book recommendations! I'm a sucker for lists, particularly book lists, so having a bunch of lists from various authors depicting their top 10 books was perfect for me.

The good thing about this book is that it provides a mini synopsis for every single book mentioned, even ones with only one single vote, so I was able to decide if I wanted to add them to my TBR list on my phone without having to individually search all the books I thought sounded interesting. There were also some extra lists at the back depicting the top 10 authors from certain time periods from book, as well as genre specific ones.

If you love lists and books, then I would highly recommend this book! Of course you may have to agree to disagree with some people's points (Les Miserables only mentioned by one author and in tenth place? NO!), but after all it is opinion, and it's interesting to see people try to choose.

[Kyla · Rating 1 out of 5]

oddly laid out - bare bone lists with few expansions, a ranking points system and a mandate that kind of shoots itself in the foot: the cover claims the writers choose their favourite books but really, they're trying to choose the "greatest" books and appear weighty. I utterly respected the authors who had the balls to choose their actual favourites, like David Foster Wallace with his genre fiction list that was meant to screw with the whole system. But really, how many times can you read a list of 10 that features all the Russians with a couple of Southern Gothics reliably thrown in. But I did mark down a couple of new to me titles for future reading.

[Susan Liston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading about what other people read. (duh, here I am on Goodreads) And I love lists, so this was cool. There were quite a few books I'd never heard of....the last part of this book features a brief synopsis of every one mentioned, which was helpful in making a new To Read list of my own. One question...were all these authors really honest? Did they pick what they thought were the ten best books they've read or what are actually their ten favorites? There is often a big difference. Hard to believe so many people really LOVE reading Ulysses, for example. Perhaps I am just dim but I've never made it past the first three pages. And does this mean I will have to give in and read #1, Anna Karenina? And if I read that I guess I have to read Madame Bovary as well. I've seen so many movie/TV adaptations of both I have them completely mixed up. I own an nice, vintage copy of one...but I CAN'T REMEMBER WHICH! I have to go look. I have a fifty-fifty chance of being right if I guess. (it's Madame Bovary)

Update: have acquired lovely vintage copy of Anna Karenina, also. Still haven't read either one.

[Amanda Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Most writers will be curious to discover their favourite author's choices. It becomes boring quickly when you realise it's simply a book of random lists. The drawback is the lack of reason for the book's existence.

[Jay Newman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is organized into sections, the first section being the top ten lists of 125 famous authors. I noticed right away that with only a handful of exceptions all of these lists together make up what seemed to be about 30 or 40 books repeated into oblivion. And these 30 or 40 books are the obvious "classical" suspects/ It reads like a list of what your high school literature teacher tells you that you should read, when they don't even like them.
As a matter of fact one author, Fred Chappell even says, "These are not necessarily my favorite books. One of them, the Joyce, I haven't even read much of - only enough to persuade me that it is worth a lifetime of attention, one that I haven't got." Yet he wants us all to read it?
When you get to the next section of the book it becomes clear that there were 544 works mentioned but only 11 were mentioned continuously and another 11 frequently. They assigned them points and the difference between the 1 and 23 is like 75%.
So if you really are looking for great books to read that you may not have heard of this isn't it. It's not a bad book, just not for that purpose.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, not a book you can read, which is, believe it or not, a quality I look for in most books. This is a essentially a poll in book form: the author asked 125 writers to pick the 10 greatest books, and then printed each person's list of 10. And other than a forward and preface and introduction (there are three short peces about the lists before the lists), that's it. The author suggests you can open the book at any place (harder on a Kindle), stick your finger on the page, and find some great book to read, although to be fair it would often be Middlemarch or Lolita.

I was expecting (silly me) to have perhaps twenty authors each write about their ten favourite books, something like Jo Walton's collected reviews, only with more breadth of taste. But no. It's just list upon list.

(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = really enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

[becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is disappointing to me is the old stake out of date books these writers choose. I have not read this full book but the lists keep popping up at me and maybe I got unlucky but the writers I looked at chose the most hideous of books many however are considered classics. Mostly written by English people or by or about wealthy Americans (great gatsby for example). Today’s writers are so much better. Why stay stuck in the past? I read those books decades ago and when I read them now... no thank you! Was surprised by Meg Wolitizers list- thought she would give suggestions of new writers but most dead and white. Colette? Really? What is to like about that book that fascinated me when I was 20 but now who could care about the entire premise.

[Steve Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is 4/5 purely for what it provides in summary, ... a set of lists, and not because it tells an interesting story or has good writing. It is a poll that would make a good magazine article, but instead has been fluffed up to a book.

Just the lists and the basic description of how they were put together are great. Reading a synopsis of all authors and all books is not at all necessary. I did read the whole thing. Reading then did provoke some interest at first, since the books were presented in the order of how many writers picked them. So, if 10 writers picked a book, it was generally an interest couple of paragraphs synopsis of that book. It devolved ... amazingly fast ... off a cliff of interest/quality to a diverse set of stuff, most of which I’d never touch. The books where only 1 writer picked them, ... those were scattered to the winds. All over the shop.

It is very nice to have the top 10s identified and prioritized and that is the rare value this book provides.

[James S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book to browse through and a good way to learn about books you may have missed. There are some pretty big names in here (Jonathan Franzen, Norman Mailer, David Mitchell, Robert Pinsky), and you can learn a lot about them by what they chose. While most people just picked a few golden idols and called it a day (Madame Bovary is really the most enjoyable novel they've ever read?), a few provided more interesting and idiosyncratic lists. David Foster Wallace's list is legendary.

Overall, a fun book and a good way to learn about books.

[John DiConsiglio]

A reference book really, but worth the 99-cent Kindle buy. The title doesn’t lie: All-star authors make top 10 lists, plus capsule summaries of 500 picks from Anna Karenina to Zoo Story. The editors have fun sorting it out. Top comedy: Don Quixote. Top fantasy/sci fi: 1. Alice 2. The Stand. Top 15th century & earlier work: Homer & Dante nose out the Bible. Impressive jury: Mailer, Stephen King, Tom Wolfe & on & on. (Annie Proulx’s kinda testy. David Mitchell gets it.) The lists get repetitive. Did Nabokov pay them royalties?

[Dixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The lists and some of the descriptions of favorite books were interesting. But overall, I didn't enjoy the format of this book. With a few minor exceptions, the lists had no descriptions or explanations, and then every book mentioned in every list was synopsized by a different group of writers than the ones who made the lists. And the synopses made up more than half of the book. Not what I was expecting.

[Dick Rockwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the most part just lists. Categorized lists. Favorites lists. Not much else to induce you to read these vaunted tomes. An occasional teaser would help (e.g. MTV Cops a.k.a. Miami Vice). Does it help to know Moby Dick showed up on three different lists or ten if you haven’t a clue what the book is about? And what about the list most likely to become dated “Best Books by Living Authors?” This type book is best left to an evolving internet site.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a catalog, "The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books" is a handy resource for avid readers looking to find overlooked or forgotten books. Editor J. Peder Zane convinced 125 writers to contribute their personal top-10 lists, with 18 electing to describe a favorite work in less than 100 words. The short descriptions of each of the mentioned books are extremely useful for those seeking recommendations, making this a collection likely to be referred to over and over again.

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essays/book reviews are worthless fodder used to give the illusion that the book contains substance rather than just lists of authors' favorite books. Ignore them and go straight to the lists of your favorite authors.

Also, the first half of the book is the collection of lists and the second half is a list of all the books chosen in order of "best" to "worst".

[Aleks Veselovsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting spin on a “what to read next” book; I liked it because I’ve always wondered what some of my favorite writers like to read, and here I found out about some of them and add many new books to my “to read” list.

[Rich McKee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative and interesting.

[Dawn Fielder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the essays interesting-- but I also wished that all of the lists came with an essay or some reasons why the books were chosen.

[Andres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at what 125 different writers think are the top ten books they've ever read.

The lists are somewhat interesting but reading list after list gets boring very quickly. Even if you look up the lists made by your favorite writers they really aren't very helpful or useful. Even the "top top ten list" or the sub-lists don't really pack any punch. I guess that's to be expected with any huge list of lists---there's just so much information it becomes overwhelming and shrug-inducing.

What I found helpful and interesting were the synopses of all 544 books picked by all the writers, listed in order by point system (explained in the book). After reading all of the summaries I now have (yet another) list of books I want to read. They range from books I've never heard of to books that I had heard about but never knew exactly what they were about.

So while I'm thankful for the bounty of information this book provided, I also found some of the summaries were wrong in details big and small (usually small), at least for the books I was familiar with. This doesn't mean it's not worth the read (none of them were misleadingly wrong) but it is strange that these kinds of mistakes crept into the final product.

I recommend this book for anyone who needs help finding books to read for the next ten years.

Here are the mistakes I'm aware of:

pg 153: Heart of Darkness
Calls main character 'Phillip Marlowe' instead of Charles Marlow. Philip Marlowe (one 'l') is the private detective in Raymond Chandler's books. Ouch.

pg 194: The Screwtape Letters
Calls character 'Wormword' instead of 'Wormwood'.

pg 210: Lord Jim
Continues to misspell Marlow's name (with 'Marlowe') but at least doesn't call him Phillip again since he doesn't mention the first name at all.

pg 216: Norwood
Since the summary is pointing out a specific quote I can't tell if it's in the original text or just misprinted here: either way, it's a you're vs your mistake. I hate those.

pg 252: Mildred Pierce
Says this novel has "a perfect storm of betrayal and murder" except for the fact that there is no murder in the book, only in the 1945 movie version, which famously added a murder in order to live up to Cain's reputation from previous books and movie adaptations. Tsk tsk.

pg 295; The Three Musketeers
Calls famous character 'D'Argent' instead of D'Artagnan. This is kind of like calling Sylvester the Cat 'Silver the Cat'.

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I will have to cop to a certain proclivity for top ten lists and also for the tabulation of points based upon an item’s appearance on those lists to make other top ten lists. Then if you make those top tens the favorite books of 125 contemporary authors, you have me hooked. This is a nice book to pick through at your leisure over time, otherwise reading list after list could become rather maddening. After the author’s lists, a synopsis of each book appears in the order of its popularity from the top tens. There are 544 books listed which let me know two things. First--many books appear on multiple lists and second-- despite that, I still found a treasure trove of books that I have never heard of and am now crazy curious to find. For example, MAN’S FATE by Andre Malraux, IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA by Raymond Roussel, THE WAR OF THE NEWTS by Karel Capek, AUTO-DA-FE by Elias Canetti and several more. The somewhat redundant appearance of certain books reflects that most of the authors were Western, white and predominantly male—that is a drawback. I would also have liked some archival work referencing writers no longer with us and the books they liked and referenced during their careers. Possibly another book. And of course it is quite difficult to read this book and not be inspired to create my own list:
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
MOBY DICK by Herman Melville
TWICE TOLD TALES by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston
DEAD SOULS by Nicolai Gogol
CATCHER IN THE RYE by JD Salinger
SHIP OF FOOLS by Katherine Anne Porter
GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

And of course I cheated by putting eleven. Before you judge me, try it yourself.

[Jain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really like hearing about other peoples' favorite books, so the first half of The Top Ten, in which 125 authors list their top ten books, was enjoyable despite some drawbacks: all of the authors were American or British, I hadn't heard of most of them (though I'm planning to check some of them out based on their brief bios and their top ten selections), and almost none of the lists included commentary from the authors on why they'd selected those particular books.

The composite lists in the appendix (e.g. Top Ten Books of the 19th Century, Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers, etc.) were also fun. Unfortunately, the rest of The Top Ten consisted of brief synopses of the selected books that were so dull--and often spoilery--that they acted as a deterrent to reading the actual books.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to read? That is the question. Given a finite life span and an almost infinite number of choices, how can we decide which books are truly worth our time? Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is one of the best sources. Bloom's book is very subjective but succeeds based on his enormous store of learning. Although Zane is not remotely in Bloom's league, he uses a quasi-scientific approach to come up with a pretty good list. He sent questionnaires to some of the top writers alive asking them to name their top ten books and then compiled the responses to make a master list of the best books. I use it often.

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

125 Writers including Peter Carey, Annie Proulx, Sandra Cisneros, and Michael Cunningham list their favorite books. Most of the lists are simply that--a listing of their favorite works, but there are descriptions of each work in the appendix, and scattered throughout, some of the authors have written appreciations of favorite books. The editor uses a strange system to rank the works in several categories, e.g., Top 10 Works of the 20th Century, Top 10 Works by Russian Authors, but overall it is very good.

[Lynecia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me quite a while to get through this book! Lists and lists of top ten books (from various authors, some of them favorites of mine) was both interesting and tedious. The second half of this book gave paragraph synopsis of all the books chosen--it's a treasure trove of literature! Lots of the chosen titles were unique, sometimes obscure works,mixed with old faithfuls such as "Anna Karenina" and "Pride and Prejudice"...This is a great reference book for those who want some new, interesting and exciting books to read, that aren't hyped "book of the moment" picks.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Editor Zane asked 125 writers to select their top ten favorite books, yielding the expected (Anna Karenina got the most votes, followed by Madame Bovary) and the unexpected:

--David Foster Wallace really likes Stephen King's The Stand
--Annie Proulx calls the project "difficult, pointlesss, and wrong-headed, but submits 10 anyway, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Black Book
--Nobody picked Dracula
--544 books were selected, 23 of which earned a top slot but no other, including I, Claudius and Geek Love

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got this one via special order from the local library and spent most of the evening checking it out. Lotsa good trivia. There are 544 "works" represented, including many books and authors(including the ones submitting lists) that I never heard of. Literature - what a vast and fertile land! I gave myself a score of 113/544. Probably not all that bad but I'll use the book to add more stuff to my too-read list! By the way, this book lists James Joyce as a British writer... what about Irish??? He may have been British - technically - at birth, but come on!

[sleeps9hours · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love lists of greatest books, and this book has lots of lists. 125 authors list their personal top 10, which are compiled into the top top 10. Then all 544 books listed are briefly described. I’ve been reading too many bad or mediocre books lately, so I’m looking back to the greats for a sure thing. There are so many I still haven’t touched, and several I want to reread. Made for an enjoyable couple hours of dreaming about what to pick up next.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one hand, I really didn't recognize many of the writers compiling lists, and too often there wasn't a lot of personal reasoning behind their choices. On the other hand, who better to create a master list of great books to enjoy. The list at the end with general plot synopses (minus spoilers) is very useful for those who are trying to create a "to read" list of literature's great works.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this book to help seed my reading choices in the first year of my retirement. It was a great way to fill in the gaps in my classics education. The abstracts of all the books were really helpful. Ironically, the lists of each writer's top 10 picks were the least interesting aspect of the book for me.