Great Books of the Western World

Great Books of the Western World names 205 books; ReadingRate holds 118 of them, listed here. The most approachable of them is The School for Wives by Molière (difficulty 30/100, about 1.2 hours); the hardest is The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (92/100). 6 of its books are on four or more of the eight great rankings.

• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (1879) — difficulty 51/100, about 1.8 hours
• A Lost Lady by Willa Cather (1923) — difficulty 32/100, about 2.2 hours
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 50/100, about 1.1 hours
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916) — difficulty 78/100, about 11 hours, on 4 of 8 rankings
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884) — difficulty 52/100, about 7.5 hours
• Aeneid by Virgil (-19) — difficulty 63/100, about 9.4 hours
• Ajax by Sophocles (-450) — difficulty 59/100, about 56 min
• Alcestis by Euripides — difficulty 46/100, about 39 min
• All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (1605) — difficulty 63/100, about 2.2 hours
• Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945) — difficulty 56/100, about 2.3 hours, on 6 of 8 rankings
• Antigone by Sophocles (-441) — difficulty 54/100, about 2.6 hours
• Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (1607) — difficulty 68/100, about 2.7 hours
• Areopagitica by John Milton (1644) — difficulty 45/100, about 1.3 hours
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 53/100, about 1.6 hours
• Bérénice by Jean Racine (1670) — difficulty 41/100, about 50 min
• Candide by Voltaire (1759) — difficulty 62/100, about 3 hours
• City of God by Augustine of Hippo (426) — difficulty 66/100, about 41 hours
• Comus by John Milton (1634) — difficulty 50/100, about 33 min
• Coriolanus by William Shakespeare (1608) — difficulty 67/100, about 2.9 hours
• Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac (1846) — difficulty 38/100, about 10 hours
• Cymbeline by William Shakespeare (1611) — difficulty 73/100, about 3.4 hours
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912) — difficulty 69/100, about 11 hours
• Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320) — difficulty 67/100, about 11 hours
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605) — difficulty 58/100, about 32 hours
• Eclogues by Virgil (-37) — difficulty 67/100, about 58 min
• Electra by Sophocles (-410) — difficulty 52/100, about 50 min
• Emma by Jane Austen (1815) — difficulty 56/100, about 12 hours
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832) — difficulty 69/100, about 3.9 hours
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (1532) — difficulty 69/100, about 33 hours
• Georgics by Virgil (-29) — difficulty 49/100, about 1.6 hours
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726) — difficulty 66/100, about 10 hours
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1601) — difficulty 67/100, about 3.1 hours
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899) — difficulty 69/100, about 4 hours
• Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (1891) — difficulty 55/100, about 2.1 hours
• Henry IV Part 2 by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 55/100, about 5.3 hours
• Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare (1598) — difficulty 74/100, about 3.1 hours
• Henry V by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 71/100, about 3 hours
• Henry VI, Part 1 by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 49/100, about 1.5 hours
• Henry VI, Part 2 by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 50/100, about 1.8 hours
• Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare (1595) — difficulty 65/100, about 2.4 hours
• Henry VIII by William Shakespeare (1613) — difficulty 39/100, about 1.6 hours
• Hippolytus by Euripides (-428) — difficulty 57/100, about 2.3 hours
• Iliad by Homer (-750) — difficulty 56/100, about 13 hours
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913) — difficulty 71/100, about 25 hours
• Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides — difficulty 50/100, about 1.2 hours
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (1599) — difficulty 63/100, about 1.8 hours
• King John by William Shakespeare (1596) — difficulty 40/100, about 6.4 hours
• King Lear by William Shakespeare (1606) — difficulty 73/100, about 12 hours
• Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651) — difficulty 65/100, about 20 hours
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (1857) — difficulty 54/100, about 25 hours
• Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (1598) — difficulty 49/100, about 1.4 hours
• Lycidas by John Milton (1638) — difficulty 51/100, about 6 min
• Lysistrata by Aristophanes (-411) — difficulty 35/100, about 50 min
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606) — difficulty 59/100, about 1.4 hours
• Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare (1604) — difficulty 74/100, about 2.8 hours
• Medea by Euripides (-431) — difficulty 52/100, about 1.6 hours
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (180) — difficulty 41/100, about 4.3 hours
• Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871) — difficulty 54/100, about 22 hours
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851) — difficulty 71/100, about 26 hours, on 4 of 8 rankings
• Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht (1941) — difficulty 62/100, about 13 hours
• Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill (1931) — difficulty 57/100, about 4.4 hours
• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 61/100, about 1.9 hours
• Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles (-401) — difficulty 50/100, about 1.2 hours
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (-429) — difficulty 61/100, about 1.8 hours
• On the Nature of Things by Lucretius (-55) — difficulty 46/100, about 5.5 hours
• Oresteia by Aeschylus (-458) — difficulty 64/100, about 3.1 hours
• Othello by William Shakespeare (1603) — difficulty 58/100, about 2.2 hours
• Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667) — difficulty 69/100, about 8.4 hours
• Pensées by Blaise Pascal (1670) — difficulty 49/100, about 6.3 hours
• Phèdre by Jean Racine (1677) — difficulty 44/100, about 52 min
• Philoctetes by Sophocles (-409) — difficulty 57/100, about 56 min
• Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (-430) — difficulty 59/100, about 47 min
• Rameau's Nephew by Denis Diderot (1805) — difficulty 73/100, about 6 hours
• Republic by Plato (-375) — difficulty 65/100, about 20 hours
• Richard II by William Shakespeare (1597) — difficulty 67/100, about 2.3 hours
• Richard III by William Shakespeare (1597) — difficulty 64/100, about 2.8 hours
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1597) — difficulty 47/100, about 1.7 hours
• Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (1923) — difficulty 55/100, about 4 hours
• Samson Agonistes by John Milton (1671) — difficulty 58/100, about 1.1 hours
• Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (1921) — difficulty 64/100, about 1.9 hours
• Tartuffe by Molière (1669) — difficulty 48/100, about 1.3 hours
• The Bacchae by Euripides (-405) — difficulty 46/100, about 1.3 hours
• The Beast In The Jungle by Henry James (1903) — difficulty 68/100, about 1.3 hours
• The Birds by Aristophanes (-414) — difficulty 42/100, about 1.3 hours
• The Bourgeois Gentleman by Molière (1670) — difficulty 46/100, about 1.2 hours
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880) — difficulty 67/100, about 35 hours
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1400) — difficulty 60/100, about 23 hours
• The Clouds by Aristophanes (-423) — difficulty 59/100, about 1.2 hours
• The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 40/100, about 1 hours
• The Frogs by Aristophanes (-405) — difficulty 60/100, about 1.1 hours
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) — difficulty 52/100, about 3.4 hours, on 7 of 8 rankings
• The Imaginary Invalid by Molière (1673) — difficulty 46/100, about 1.4 hours
• The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899) — difficulty 49/100, about 13 hours
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759) — difficulty 82/100, about 27 hours
• The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen (2016) — difficulty 53/100, about 1.7 hours
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1600) — difficulty 57/100, about 3.9 hours
• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare (1602) — difficulty 47/100, about 1.6 hours
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915) — difficulty 47/100, about 1.4 hours
• The Miser by Molière (1668) — difficulty 43/100, about 1.4 hours
• The School for Wives by Molière (1662) — difficulty 30/100, about 1.2 hours
• The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 49/100, about 4.2 hours
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1611) — difficulty 57/100, about 2 hours
• The Trojan Women by Euripides (-415) — difficulty 51/100, about 58 min
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 52/100, about 1.3 hours
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (1922) — difficulty 92/100, about 1.4 hours
• The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (1884) — difficulty 53/100, about 2.2 hours
• The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (1611) — difficulty 55/100, about 1.9 hours
• The Women of Trachis by Sophocles (-450) — difficulty 68/100, about 7.2 hours
• Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare (1623) — difficulty 59/100, about 1.6 hours
• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (1594) — difficulty 38/100, about 1.3 hours
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927) — difficulty 70/100, about 7.4 hours, on 6 of 8 rankings
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749) — difficulty 47/100, about 23 hours
• Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare (1609) — difficulty 72/100, about 3.1 hours
• Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer (1385) — difficulty 79/100, about 9.3 hours
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1602) — difficulty 62/100, about 1.8 hours
• Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (1899) — difficulty 59/100, about 1.7 hours
• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1953) — difficulty 74/100, about 2.4 hours
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869) — difficulty 53/100, about 39 hours, on 5 of 8 rankings

Questions

How many books are on Great Books of the Western World?

205. ReadingRate holds 118 of them, each with how hard it is to read and how long it takes.

Which book on Great Books of the Western World is the easiest to read?

The School for Wives by Molière, difficulty 30/100, about 1.2 hours. The hardest is The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, at 92/100.

How long would it take to read every book on Great Books of the Western World?

About 743 hours for the 118 books ReadingRate measures, at 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty: 372 days at two hours a day.

Other lists: Modern Library 100 Best Novels, TIME All-TIME 100 Novels, Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, BBC Big Read Top 100, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Open Syllabus Top 500 - Literature, Bokklubben World Library. All lists.