List :: Books You Can't Live Without by The Guardian

  • Gone with the Wind

    #21

    Gone with the Wind

    by Margaret Mitchell

    (22 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 16

    606 points

    "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were."

  • The Great Gatsby

    #22

    The Great Gatsby

    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    (97 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 1

    994 points

    "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

  • Bleak House

    #23

    Bleak House

    by Charles Dickens

    (8 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 98

    189 points

    "London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall."

  • War and Peace

    #24

    War and Peace

    by Leo Tolstoy

    (12 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 35

    357 points

    "Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. (Maude/Maude)

  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    #25

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    by Douglas Adams

    (28 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 40

    344 points

    "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million..."

  • Brideshead Revisited

    #26

    Brideshead Revisited

    by Evelyn Waugh

    (9 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 64

    269 points

    "When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning."

  • Crime and Punishment

    #27

    Crime and Punishment

    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    (18 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 58

    298 points

    "On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. (Garnett..."

  • The Grapes of Wrath

    #28

    The Grapes of Wrath

    by John Steinbeck

    (35 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 2

    963 points

    "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

    #29

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

    by Lewis Carroll

    (24 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 45

    327 points

    "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or..."

  • The Wind in the Willows

    #30

    The Wind in the Willows

    by Kenneth Grahame

    (18 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 49

    318 points

    "The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. "