ReadingRate · Best Books · 2026

The 100 best books from Canada

The 100 best books from Canada, ranked by literary regard. Difficulty and reading-time estimates where measured.

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible works currently in the catalogue for this selection. Ranked by literary regard, Canadian writing is led by Alice Munro's short-story collections, Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. Munro appears more often in the top tier than any other Canadian writer, and this list ranks the top 100 with difficulty scores for each.

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible works currently in the catalogue for this selection. This is a computed ranking ordered by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent.

About 666 hours for 100 of 100 books with measured lengths. Estimates use a 250-word-per-minute baseline adjusted for each book's difficulty. At two hours a day, about 334 days for those books.

1–10

1. Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro (1990, difficulty 7.2/10, 8.2 hours)
2. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye (1957, difficulty 6.7/10, 8.8 hours)
3. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992, difficulty 6.3/10, 5.8 hours)
4. Writing Lives by Leon Edel (1984, difficulty 4.9/10, 4.9 hours)
5. Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro (1968, difficulty 5.2/10, 5.1 hours)
6. Runaway by Alice Munro (2004, difficulty 4.5/10, 5.5 hours)
7. The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro (1998, difficulty 4.6/10, 5.9 hours)
8. The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe by David G. Roskies (1988, difficulty 6.3/10, 7.1 hours)
9. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (1970, difficulty 7.7/10, 9.6 hours)
10. At the Will of the Body by Arthur W. Frank (1991, difficulty 5.0/10, 3.3 hours)

11–20

11. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity by Charles Taylor (1989, difficulty 7.0/10, 17 hours)
12. The Licensing Act of 1737 and the Staging of the Eighteenth-Century Essay by Margaret Anne Doody (1996, difficulty 6.5/10, 14 hours)
13. The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (1980, difficulty 5.4/10, 5.6 hours)
14. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984, difficulty 5.6/10, 5.5 hours)
15. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002, difficulty 5.8/10, 6.8 hours)
16. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (1972, difficulty 7.6/10, 5.7 hours)
17. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996, difficulty 6.7/10, 13 hours)
18. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (1999, difficulty 7.1/10, 3.6 hours)
19. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction by Linda Hutcheon (1988, difficulty 5.4/10, 7.3 hours)
20. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019, difficulty 7.5/10, 8.3 hours)

21–30

21. Dear Life by Alice Munro (2012, difficulty 4.0/10, 4.6 hours)
22. The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner (1971, difficulty 7.9/10, 15 hours)
23. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1908, difficulty 3.3/10, 4.2 hours)
24. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (1959, difficulty 3.3/10, 4.7 hours)
25. Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature by Alberto Manguel (1983, difficulty 5.1/10, 12 hours)
26. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (2000, difficulty 6.4/10, 5.1 hours)
27. Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro (1971, difficulty 5.2/10, 6.2 hours)
28. In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (1987, difficulty 6.3/10, 4.7 hours)
29. Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (2005, difficulty 6.1/10, 2.2 hours)
30. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000, difficulty 7.4/10, 16 hours)

31–40

31. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003, difficulty 7.9/10, 9.9 hours)
32. Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (1964, difficulty 5.9/10, 5.8 hours)
33. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (1997, difficulty 6.6/10, 6 hours)
34. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (1993, difficulty 6.9/10, 14 hours)
35. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (2005, difficulty 4.2/10, 6.9 hours)
36. The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking (1999, difficulty 6.8/10, 6 hours)
37. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje (1976, difficulty 6.9/10, 2.9 hours)
38. The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (1994, difficulty 4.1/10, 9.3 hours)
39. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (1989, difficulty 7.0/10, 11 hours)
40. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1993, difficulty 7.6/10, 9 hours)

41–50

41. World of Wonders by Robertson Davies (1975, difficulty 4.5/10, 6.1 hours)
42. The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank (1995, difficulty 5.1/10, 4.9 hours)
43. Unless by Carol Shields (2002, difficulty 6.0/10, 5.3 hours)
44. What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies (1986, difficulty 6.1/10, 8 hours)
45. How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti (2012, difficulty 3.9/10, 3.6 hours)
46. Larry's Party by Carol Shields (1998, difficulty 5.3/10, 6.1 hours)
47. Room by Emma Donoghue (2010, difficulty 4.9/10, 6.1 hours)
48. The Adversary by Michael Crummey (2025, difficulty 5.6/10, 2.7 hours)
49. St. Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler (1971, difficulty 5.7/10, 8.2 hours)
50. Annabel by Kathleen Winter (2011, difficulty 4.5/10, 7.5 hours)

51–60

51. The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan (1962, difficulty 3.2/10, 3.9 hours)
52. The Manticore by Robertson Davies (1972, difficulty 6.2/10, 7.5 hours)
53. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (2018, difficulty 6.2/10, 5.6 hours)
54. The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher (2017, difficulty 6.1/10, 2.7 hours)
55. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood (2002, difficulty 4.1/10, 3.8 hours)
56. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod (2001, difficulty 5.4/10, 4.8 hours)
57. The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies (1981, difficulty 4.3/10, 6.7 hours)
58. Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler (1990, difficulty 6.1/10, 12 hours)
59. Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill (2008, difficulty 5.1/10, 6.2 hours)
60. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (2018, difficulty 5.7/10, 7 hours)

61–70

61. Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (2011, difficulty 5.3/10, 5.8 hours)
62. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014, difficulty 5.7/10, 6.6 hours)
63. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (2022, difficulty 5.3/10, 4.4 hours)
64. De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage (2008, difficulty 5.1/10, 4.6 hours)
65. Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff (1993, difficulty 5.7/10, 3.5 hours)
66. Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy by Amaryll Chanady (1985, difficulty 6.0/10, 4.7 hours)
67. The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (2011, difficulty 3.0/10, 16 hours)
68. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker (1997, difficulty 3.6/10, 12 hours)
69. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (1997, difficulty 5.9/10, 5 hours)
70. Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (2023, difficulty 6.4/10, 2.4 hours)

71–80

71. News of the World by Paulette Jiles (2016, difficulty 5.0/10, 3.9 hours)
72. This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki (2014, difficulty 2.4/10, 29 min)
73. Far to Go by Alison Pick (2011, difficulty 5.1/10, 5.3 hours)
74. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (2003, difficulty 5.5/10, 12 hours)
75. Motherhood by Sheila Heti (2018, difficulty 6.7/10, 4.1 hours)
76. Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje (1982, difficulty 3.2/10, 2.5 hours)
77. Consolation by Michael Redhill (2007, difficulty 4.9/10, 8 hours)
78. What I Know About You by Éric Chacour (2023, difficulty 4.8/10, 4.1 hours)
79. Held by Anne Michaels (2024, difficulty 5.2/10, 3.2 hours)
80. Blindsight by Peter Watts (2006, difficulty 5.5/10, 6.6 hours)

81–90

81. The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (1970, difficulty 5.7/10, 4.2 hours)
82. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker (2002, difficulty 3.5/10, 9.8 hours)
83. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker (2014, difficulty 3.2/10, 5.2 hours)
84. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood (2011, difficulty 5.0/10, 4.4 hours)
85. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien (2016, difficulty 5.5/10, 8.3 hours)
86. Unexploded by Alison MacLeod (2013, difficulty 5.7/10, 5.9 hours)
87. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (1999, difficulty 6.0/10, 15 hours)
88. The Troop by Nick Cutter (2014, difficulty 3.4/10, 4.9 hours)
89. Jade City by Fonda Lee (2017, difficulty 5.5/10, 9.9 hours)
90. No Logo by Naomi Klein (1999, difficulty 2.8/10, 6.7 hours)

91–100

91. Pure Colour by Sheila Heti (2022, difficulty 6.9/10, 3 hours)
92. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction by Darko Suvin (1979, difficulty 7.2/10, 8.5 hours)
93. Ulysses by Hugh Kenner (1980, difficulty 8.5/10, 5.3 hours)
94. Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson (1986, difficulty 6.8/10, 3.9 hours)
95. Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin (2018, difficulty 1.9/10, 3.8 hours)
96. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature by Margaret Atwood (1972, difficulty 3.0/10, 4 hours)
97. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination by Northrop Frye (1971, difficulty 4.1/10, 5 hours)
98. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007, difficulty 3.0/10, 9.6 hours)
99. Airborn by Kenneth Oppel (2004, difficulty 1.9/10, 3.4 hours)
100. The Push by Ashley Audrain (2021, difficulty 4.6/10, 5.1 hours)