What Is The Best Novel Of All Time According To HuffPost Books Readers?

What's The Best Novel Of All Time?

UPDATE: We have a winner! Feel free to keep telling us your favorite books that aren't on our list below, but the votes have been tallied, and the final space in our bracket will be taken up by:

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts. The bracket will launch soon, and then the head-to-head battles will begin...

What with March Madness brackets and other similar brackets around appearing around here, we felt it was time your voice was heard.

So here is a question for you, dedicated reader: What do you think is the best novel of all time?

Yes, we know, there's no single winner, you love plenty of books in different ways, why do you have to choose? Because picking one might help someone who has never read that book finally decide to pick it up. Because we think it's fun. Because we're asking you to.

And because it's a bracket, all you have to do is choose between two options, each time. It couldn't be easier, and we promise not to tell any passing librarians what you select.

To pick our finalists, we looked over several other 'best novels' lists (including those of The Atlantic, The Guardian, and TIME, to name a few) to compile our own shortlist of 15 titles.

However, we want the last novel on the shortlist to be named by YOU.

First, the ground rules. What IS a novel? The term 'novel' came into use in the late 18th century and was derived from medieval and early romance, as well as the novella. That means that the 'novel' category will not include anything before that time, and epic poetry (such as "The Odyssey") does NOT count as a novel. Plays are also out. Lastly, we agreed that to call something "the BEST" it needs to have stood the test of time (so no "The Corrections" or "White Teeth" on our list). And self-published authors: we love you dearly, but this isn't the moment to nominate your new erotic political werewolf thriller. You know who you are.

So, what have we missed? Let us know what the final contender should be! Either post in the comments, tweeting @HuffPostBooks using hashtag #bestnovel, or answer the question on our Facebook wall. We'll tally up the votes, and the novel with the most votes will be added to the final spot in our bracket for you on soon.

Here are the 15 selections already on our shortlist:

"Middlemarch" by George Eliot

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot