[struggle]

My List (and I am a lit. teacher)

1. The Bible (no other work is so often alluded to)
2. The Iliad/Odyssey
3. MacBeth
4. Sound and the Fury (narrative experimentation)
5. Hamlet
6. Scarlet Letter
7. Huck Finn
8. Nichomachean Ethics
9. Mere Christianity
10. Walden/Civil Disobedience

[Future Snake Eater]

Good list.

Except for “Scarlet Letter.” Terrible, terrible book.

I wasn’t too keen on Hamlet. I saw the Branagh movie in high school and it was much more enjoyable than reading it. MacBeth seemed to be just as good either way to me.

[ConorMacNessa]

I was an English Lit. major in my undergrad days. Your list contains a number of items that I would include in my own list.

The most striking omission from The Atlantic's list is indeed the Bible - it is more widely read than almost any other book and as you say, it is most frequently alluded to in other works - books, poems, and plays. A lack of knowledge of the Bible is a serious impediment to understanding much of the canon of great works in literature.

Of course, I am not surprised that The Atlantic omitted it - the last time I read the Atlantic it was chock full of left-wing pap. I haven't given it a look in years.

Etiam non princeps sed usque ad genua, Principis Pacis!

[reed13k]

I’ll play: (I will stick to fiction, but not Europe) (ping Daffy)

1) Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
2) Hamlet - Shakespeare
3) Pilgrims Progress - Bunyun
4) Odyssey - Homer
5) Nibelungenlied
6) War and Peace - Tolstoy
7) Rashomon
8) Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
9) Genji Monogatori (my preference over Nihongi or Kojiki for Japan)
10) Faith of the Fallen - Goodkind (while one in a series of 11, this fantasy novel is one of the best stories of liberty overcoming an oppressive government and what men can do that I’ve read; and yes it’s self-serving for my preferences to include it here)
11) Orlando Innamarato (Tale of Roland) - Boriado
12) Don Quixote - Cervantes (this is really really hard to limit to 10)
13) Dee Goong An - Van Gulik (translaton of 17th century chinese detective novel originating in the first century and considered by many to be the first in the genre)
14) Silence - Endo (a historical fiction novel of christian persecution in Tokogawa Japan)

non-fiction
1) Bible (King James Version (pure artistry and accurate lingual interpretations) - God (through Moses and many others) (by the way national geographic had a semi-nice article about the history of the KJV recently just stop 1/2 through as they go into hit mode after a nice start)
2) The Republic - Plato
3) Analects - Confucius
4) Killer Angels - Shaara(very accurate historical fiction on Gettysburg)
5) The Art of War - Sun Tzu (over Musashi’s Book of Five Rings and the Hagakure)
6) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy - Newton
7) History of English Speaking People - Churchill
8) Wealth of Nations - Smith
7) Heike Story (Japanese historical fiction debatable)
8) Influence of Seapower Upon History - Mahan
9)Revolutions of the heavenly spheres - copernicus
10) Five Love Languages - Chapman (required as it has been a personal help, again self serving)
11)....I’ll stop now

That was much harder than I anticipated I couldn’t get to Tolkien, Locke, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Twain, Kepler, Milton, Frost, Sandburg, Asimov, Yoshikawa, Orson Scott Card, ... sigh

Here’s a nice link by the way to great books that I occasion, note it is euro-centric as most lists tend to be though there is a lot of great literature throughout Asia as well.

http://books.mirror.org/gb.titles.html

[In Maryland]

My List (and I am a lit. teacher) 1. The Bible (no other work is so often alluded to) 2. The Iliad/Odyssey 3. MacBeth 4. Sound and the Fury (narrative experimentation) 5. Hamlet 6. Scarlet Letter 7. Huck Finn 8. Nichomachean Ethics 9. Mere Christianity 10. Walden/Civil Disobedience

Well, in all fairness, they were asked for the greatest works of fiction. I don't consider the Bible a work of fiction (though I suspect portions of it are), likewise the Illiad and Odyssey. Certainly the Nichomachan Ethics, Mere Christianity and Walden are not works of fiction. My list for works of fiction would be:

1. Aesop's Fables (influential beyond our recognition)

2. King Lear (Shakespeare)

3. Paradise Lost (Milton)

4. Faust (Goethe)

5. Grimm's Fairy Tales

6. The Arabian Nights

7. Hamlet (Shakespeare)

8. The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)

9. Inferno (Dante)

10. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

Obviously, my list veers more to the works of fiction I feel have been most influential on Western Civilization, rather than pure literary quality.