The question is, with so little free time we have, to read so many books, how we find those few books that we need to pick out so that they "can be chewed and digested well?" 

In the early 2000s, John Pedner Jane – an American journalist – set out to answer this question.

Over a period of several years, Zane asked 125 famous writers to deliver "a list, sorted in order, of the ten best works of fiction of all time - novels, collections of stories, plays or poems." Some also chose some non-fiction works.

Each book was then assigned points based on its ranking and an overall ranking list was created.

The famous group of famous writers who voted included Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, Peter Carey, Kate Atkinson, Thomas Wolfe, Carl Hayasen, Norman Tiller, E. Annie Pry and others.

Whether you are looking for wonderful books to add to your reading list, or to share them with friends, the team of INVESTA Real Estate – real estate agency Larissa, gathered a list of some of the top books of all time, as voted by the famous authors. 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Synopsis: "Anna Karenina recounts the doomed love between the sensual and revolutionary Anna and the daring officer, Count Vronsky. The tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionate marriage and is thus exposed to the hypocrisy of society."

This novel refers to the meaning of life and happiness. Tolstoy teaches that the eternal mistake of people is to equate their happiness with the realization of their desires. At the same time, through simple events, he composes a deep and timeless novel about the thorny issues of life and religion.

Madame Bobary by Gustav Flaumbert

Synopsis: "When Emma marries Charles Bovari, she imagines that she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in emotional novels and women's magazines. But Charles is a dull provincial doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic enthusiasm he longs for."

Relentless as a tragedy, violent as a drama, incisive as a comedy, the banal subject of adultery acquires deeply human dimensions in Flaubert's work. Corrosive and groundbreaking, this masterpiece naturalistic novel revolutionized the way of writing of the time, clashed with the forms of romanticism and, with its rigid objectivity, sealed the beginning of a new era in literature.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Synopsis: "The novel recounts the French invasion of Russia and the impact of napoleon's time on tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families."

No document, historical or artistic, gives us so vividly the life, character and psychology of the Russian and Russian people of the pre-revolutionary era, as L. Tolstoy's "War and Peace". This deep and analytical anatomy of the individual and group soul makes the book interested in every person, of any latitude and of any era.

The Adventures of Hackleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Synopsis: "A 19th-century boy from a Mississippi River town recounts his adventures as he travels the river with a runaway slave, meeting a family involved in a dispute, two crooks pretending to be kings, and Tom Sawyer's aunt who confuses him for him."

It's a novel for all ages. Page by page, keeps the reader’s interest: the humor of the author is well known. But in this book the comedian verges on the tragic, to the point where it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Synopsis: "Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular and enigmatic work. It follows the form of a "tragedy of revenge", in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks revenge on his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now king of Denmark."

In a masterful way, Shakespeare touches on fundamental ontological and existential questions, timeless about the nature of man. Written in the well-known Shakespearean way, which strikes in the depths of the human soul

The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Synopsis: "The story is primarily about young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession with the beautiful former newcomer Daisy Buchanan."

This is a great work, one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Its acceptance by critics and readership is almost unanimous.

Gatsby embodies the American Dream, the ideal of personal success, social and professional advancement, and wealth, in conditions of freedom, regardless of origin, education, religion. This includes erotic success.