Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge
Classics

Book Riot Readers’ Top 50 Favorite Novels

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Chief of Staff

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky.

View All posts by Rebecca Joines Schinsky

A couple weeks ago, Rioter in Chief Jeff challenged you to name your favorite novel. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, especially because he refused to define favorite for you (“genre, era, quality: it’s up to you to decide what ‘favorite’ means”), so he gave you a little slack and the space to name not one but three favorites. 1,311 of you answered the call, nominating more than 1,200 different books. After many gloriously nerdy hours rolling around in the data, we’ve tallied up the Top 50. Check ’em out below, and look for a discussion post with more stats soon.

  1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (126 votes)
  2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  • Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  • The Stand by Stephen King
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen
  • The PIcture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  • The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  • American Gods by Neil Gaiman
  • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  • Ulysses by James Joyce
  • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  • Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (13 votes)

    Did your favorite makes the finals?