Middlemarch by George EliotWolf Hall by Hilary MantelThe Golden Notebook by Doris LessingBring Up the Bodies by Hilary MantelMiss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young
Large Experimental Books by Women
87 books — 71 voters
Finnegans Wake by James JoyceUlysses by James JoycePhenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGravity’s Rainbow by Thomas PynchonCritique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT BOOKS
261 books — 364 voters

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo CalvinoHouse of Leaves by Mark Z. DanielewskiSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.The Name of the Rose by Umberto EcoThe Princess Bride by William Goldman
Metafiction
442 books — 578 voters
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.The Sound and the Fury by William FaulknerUlysses by James JoyceIf on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo CalvinoHouse of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Style as Text
251 books — 130 voters

Infinite Jest by David Foster WallaceSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas PynchonCatch-22 by Joseph HellerThe Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Postmodern Genius
519 books — 584 voters
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas PynchonInfinite Jest by David Foster WallaceThe Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas PynchonSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
A Postmodernist "Canon"
273 books — 172 voters

Technological Slavery by Theodore John KaczynskiAnti-Tech Revolution by Theodore John KaczynskiIndustrial Society and Its Future by Theodore John KaczynskiThis Changes Everything by Naomi KleinMy Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Beyond Civilization
66 books — 44 voters
The Stranger by Albert CamusCrime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky1984 by George OrwellSiddhartha by Hermann HesseThe Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Best Philosophical Fiction
318 books — 559 voters

The Stranger by Albert CamusCrime and Punishment by Fyodor DostoevskyThe Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaNausea by Jean-Paul SartreThe Trial by Franz Kafka
Best Existential Fiction
449 books — 767 voters
The Stranger by Albert Camus1984 by George OrwellSiddhartha by Hermann HesseThe Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Best Philosophical Literature
1,168 books — 2,725 voters