Penguin's Best

For their 60th Anniversary, Penguin compiled a list of the BEST books in different categories. I love books, and I love lists! What fun.

THE BEST CRAZIES
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest :: Ken Kesey
The Diary of a Madman :: Nikolai Gogol
Wide Sargasso Sea :: Jean Rhys
Crime and Punishment :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes From Underground :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

THE BEST SEX (I'll be looking these up!)
Story of the Eye :: Georges Bataille
A Spy in the House of Love :: Anaïs Nin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover :: D. H. Lawrence
Venus In Furs :: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The Canterbury Tales :: Geoffrey Chaucer

THE BEST VILLAINS
The Brothers Karamazov :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness :: Joseph Conrad (I completely agree!)
Diamonds are Forever :: Ian Fleming
The Master and Margarita :: Mikhail Bulgakov
The Secret Agent :: Joseph Conrad

THE BEST LOVERS
A Room with a View :: E. M. Forster
Wuthering Heights :: Emily Brontë
Don Juan :: Lord Byron
Love In A Cold Climate :: Nancy Mitford
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof :: Tennessee Williams

THE BEST HEROES
David Copperfield :: Charles Dickens
Middlemarch :: George Eliot
She :: H. Rider Haggard
The Fight :: Norman Mailer
No Easy Walk to Freedom :: Nelson Mandela

THE BEST TEARJERKERS
Of Mice and Men :: John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence :: Edith Wharton
Notre-Dame De Paris :: Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure :: Thomas Hardy
The Old Curiosity Shop :: Charles Dickens

THE BEST SPINE-TINGLERS
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde :: Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula :: Bram Stoker
Frankenstein :: Mary Shelley
The Castle of Otranto :: Horace Walpole
The Turn of the Screw :: Henry James (This one freaks me out!)

THE BEST MINXES
Vanity Fair :: William Makepeace Thackeray
Lolita :: Vladimir Nabokov
Baby Doll :: Tennessee Williams
Breakfast at Tiffany’s :: Truman Capote
Emma :: Jane Austen

THE BEST JOURNEYS
On the Road :: Jack Kerouac
The Odyssey :: Homer
The Grapes of Wrath :: John Steinbeck
Three Men in a Boat :: Jerome K. Jerome
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland :: Lewis Carroll

THE BEST DECADENCE
The Great Gatsby :: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vile Bodies :: Evelyn Waugh
The Picture of Dorian Gray :: Oscar Wilde (I love this story)
The Beautiful and Damned :: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Against Nature :: J. K. Huysmans

THE BEST REBELS
The Autobiography of Malcolm X :: Malcolm X
The Outsider :: Albert Camus
Animal Farm :: George Orwell
The Communist Manifesto :: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Les Misérables :: Victor Hugo

THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION
The Time Machine :: H. G. Wells
The Man in the High Castle :: Philip K. Dick
The Invisible Man :: H. G. Wells
The Day of the Triffids :: John Wyndham
We :: Yevgeny Zamyatin

THE BEST VIOLENCE
A Clockwork Orange :: Anthony Burgess
Hell’s Angels :: Hunter S. Thompson
A Tale of Two Cities :: Charles Dickens
Another Country :: James Baldwin
In Cold Blood :: Truman Capote

THE BEST HIGHS
Junky :: William S. Burroughs
The Moonstone :: Wilkie Collins
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater :: Thomas De Quincey
The Subterraneans :: Jack Kerouac
Monsieur Monde Vanishes :: Georges Simenon

THE BEST SUBVERSION
1984 :: George Orwell
The Monkey Wrench Gang :: Edward Abbey
The Prince :: Niccolo Machiavelli
Bound for Glory :: Woody Guthrie
Death of a Salesman :: Arthur Miller

THE BEST CRIMES
Maigret and the Ghost :: Georges Simenon
The Woman in White :: Wilkie Collins
The Big Sleep :: Raymond Chandler
A Study in Scarlet :: Arthur Conan Doyle
The Thirty-Nine Steps :: John Buchan

THE BEST ADULTERY
Madame Bovary :: Gustave Flaubert
Thérèse Raquin :: Emile Zola
Les Liaisons dangereuses :: Choderlos de Laclos
The Scarlet Letter :: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anna Karenina :: Leo Tolstoy

THE BEST DEBAUCHERY
I, Claudius :: Robert Graves
Hangover Square :: Patrick Hamilton
The Beggar’s Opera :: John Gay
The Twelve Caesars :: Suetonius
Guys and Dolls :: Damon Runyon

THE BEST ACTION
Treasure Island :: Robert Louis Stevenson
The Iliad :: Homer
The Count Of Monte Cristo :: Alexandre Dumas
From Russia with Love :: Ian Fleming
War and Peace :: Leo Tolstoy

THE BEST LAUGHS
Cold Comfort Farm :: Stella Gibbons
The Diary of a Nobody :: George and Weedon Grossmith
The Pickwick Papers :: Charles Dickens
Scoop :: Evelyn Waugh
Lucky Jim :: Kingsley Amis