No matter how many exciting new books are published each year, book lovers will never truly escape the pull of the classics. Whether you want to relive your school days, expand your familiarity with the canon, or catch up on all the literature that didn’t fit into your busy schedule of napping, yapping, and playing, the following classic books are a great starting point.
There are plenty other compilations out there of the “best classic books of all time,” like the daunting Greatest Books list, which has used an algorithm to pull beloved titles from across the world. But hardly anyone has the time to sort through thousands of books, so we’ve narrowed it down to 41 that we think should make the cut onto your coveted TBR list.
To keep it simple, we’ve excluded poetry, short story collections, and plays, and we’ve only included books published before 2000. So while you won’t find any Sally Rooney, Sarah J. Maas, or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who has a new book coming in 2025) on this list, you’ll spot lots of familiar titles that have cemented their place in history as some of the best and most influential classic books ever written.
