All right, now usually on these bonus videos we do something to torture me. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's me.

Maybe it's something I said. Maybe it's a strain of masochism I don't know about. But today we're going to do something different.

The internet has gathered 23 works of literature that the internet thinks are the best pieces of literature ever. Now, I'm different than the internet because I've read a lot of literature.

So they're going to show me these books, these 23 books, and I will rank them. They are ranked on tier rankings of S, which stands for spectacular, superb, or I have no idea.

There's no E. No E. This is so confusing. But we need some artificial intelligence in here or I can rank it. I didn't read which maybe I will if they're, you know, politically correct or anything like that.

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Visit genucell.com/klavanYT. All right, let's start with Pride and Prejudice, author Jane Austen.

Definitely S. One of the great novels ever written by one of the greatest novelists, the only female novelist in the top 10 of novelists. She actually virtually invented the novel, taking a kind of entertainment for ladies and turning it into art.

And Pride and Prejudice is one of her greatest works.

So S. 1984, author George Orwell. I would make that an A. Is that the second one? I would say that's an A. It is one of the greatest political novels ever written.

It is incredibly insightful about the Soviet Union. That's what it's about. It is about leftism. Those are the villains, but it is such a good novel, a great novel, that even so, some of the tropes like Big Brother can be applied to the right and the left equally, and it is one of the great understandings of the authoritarian mind.

I rank it below S because it's not a great novel in that you just can't put it down, but it is a wonderful novel and incredibly insightful.

Don Quixote de la Mancha, that is one of the classic novels. That's a novel, kind of the first novel almost.

It's written before there were novels and it is just absolutely amazing. It's not an easy read necessarily, but it is amazing. The latest, there's a new translation of it that is great, and it creates the modern world like Shakespeare does.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, I would give that an A.

One of the, these are good books. I'm surprised the internet did so well. One of the greatest of American novels.

Very small novella, but a wonderful, wonderful romance, a wonderful look at the upper classes and sort of something about the inherent class system of the of of America, which we don't like to talk about, and just beautifully, beautifully written.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I would put this a B. I think it is a a really wonderful novel.

It's a great piece of Americana. You know, everything gets over-graded. If you give anything less than a top grade, people think you're dissing it.

I'm not. It's a really good novel. It's a good read. I don't think it's up there with the great classics like Pride and Prejudice and 1984, but it's definitely really good.

And it's uh strong and everybody who reads it loves it and I think it's lovable.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Again, an S, one of the absolute classic novels of all time. Any list of great novels that is limited to say 10 is going to have Crime and Punishment on it.

It is the most important novel in my life. It is the novel that turned me against postmodern philosophy, moral relativism, materialism.

You cannot read it and not believe that there is both evil and good. It is the book that ultimately over 30 years led me to Christianity.

I love it. It's a absolutely terrific. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I would put this at an A.

It's my daughter's favorite novel, so that almost gives it an S. It's a great novel. I'm I'm saying an A is still a great, great novel.

I'm just putting only the very, very best in top S. I don't think it's it's a brilliantly written novel.

It's written in a very Gothic style. Uh it has some kind of quirks to it, but it's it's the essential Gothic novel.

It is the essential Gothic novel and it's a wonderful, wonderful story and as romantic and loving uh as it possibly be.

It's essentially Beauty and the Beast turned into a novel. It's great. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Some people are Jane Eyre people, some people are Wuthering Heights people.

I I am a Jane Eyre person, but Wuthering Heights is a great and complex novel.

So what did I give Jane Eyre? I gave it an A. I'll give this an A as well. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. S. It is again, one of the top 10 novels of all time.

You know, people don't read Tolstoy because his books are so long. I think Anna Karenina is 800, 900 pages.

War and Peace is closer to 1,200 pages. Both are incredibly readable, like reading comic books. They're so entertaining. I don't even know which one to pick as being more entertaining.

War and Peace has some philosophy, it uh, that slows it down, but Anna Karenina, great from beginning to end. As many of you know, it's Genucel's 25-year anniversary right now.

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genucel.com/klavan YT. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. You can read all about it in my book, Truth and Beauty.

It is a wonderful book. I would give it a B. Uh, put it up there with the really top-notch novels. It's not one of the greatest of great novels, but it is a top-notch novel, an essential piece of uh reading about what it means to create life without women and the hostility toward women we see today, which I think Mary Shelley saw coming.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, a book about a basically, it really is, and it's a, it's a beautifully, beautifully written novel.

I will give that also a B. It's close to an A. No, it is, it's a great novel, but there is something about it that's off-putting even to me.

But it is terrific and the language is beautiful and um I I think it's a really, really, really good novel.

This one is a tough one for me. Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

People love Moby Dick, and I don't want to dis it, but I will. I give it a B. It's a, it is a great 130-page novel written over 500 pages.

I I just, the the thing that everybody feels makes it great is the maundering.

Herman Melville was deeply affected by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a trans, what do they call, transcendentalist. And he puts all this transcendental philosophy into the story of hunting the whale.

The whale stuff is great, the adventure stuff is great, some of the philosophizing are great, but by the I've read it three times trying to get the goodness of it, why everybody loves it so much.

anyway, I just don't think it's as good as people say it is. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. I will give this an A. I'm just about to reread Lord of the Rings.

I found it wordy. I like the movies better, enjoyed the movies better, but I'm going to reread it and see if maybe I missed something.

It's just so much, but you got to give it credit. It started a genre.

Every trope in the genre of fantasy comes from Tolkien. It is an insanely brilliant, uh, piece of social engineering. The things he created are great.

I think it could be cut in half, but it's still people love it. It's people's favorite novels. So what did I say?

Hey, let's we'll put it on A. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, also an S. He gets to in the he's one of the top. There aren't that many novelists at Leo Tolstoy's level.

War and Peace also belongs in the top. I know it's 1,200 pages, but it's every page of it is great.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. See, an overrated she's overrated 'cause she's a black woman. I'm sorry.

That's why she's overrated. Is it because I'm black? Yeah, you know, it's it's it's good, but it's not that great.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens is is a Tolstoyan level author. This is not one of his greatest books, so I'll give it an A, but everything he writes is beautifully one of the greatest prose stylists who ever lived, great storyteller, amazing characters, and Great Expectations is from anyone else it would be the best novel ever.

It's just he's written better. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. I haven't read that in a long, long time.

I'm going to give it a B. It's very, very popular. People love it. Maybe it's better than I remember it.

I remember reading it thinking it was it was good but not great. But like I said, it's been a long time. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

Dumas. The most entertaining novel ever written. 1,400 pages. I am an extremely slow reader. I read 400 pages of it in one day. I just could not put it down.

It is as entertaining as anything. I'm giving it an S just because it's the most entertaining novel ever written.

The Odyssey by Homer, S. It's foundational. There is there is no literature without Homer. I am disart. I this bir Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

Good book. Uh, I give it a B. It's an interesting book, an interesting look at uh, you know, America in its time, especially from a black author.

You know, I think it's it's good. It's a top-notch American novel. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

I'm going to give it an A. It is the foundational American novel. It's got flaws.

I'll give it an A. It's a great if if A's are still great novels, I will give it an an A. It is not one of the greatest novels ever written, but it may be the greatest American novel ever written, but it is terrific.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gets an A. The Iliad by Homer is an S.

I mean, come on, there is there just is no there's no thought without Homer. Homer is uh, you know, the foundational author.

We all stand on him and the Bible. Ulysses by James Joyce. You know, I'm going to put that at the S level.

It's a very difficult novel, uh, a modern novel. It's the, the end of novel writing. The art forms always reach the end of their pinnacle by having that hyper-intellectual piece that is not for everybody.

That's Ulysses, and yet it is that one great novel.

Everything written like it is below it. So I'm going to give it an S. That was an excellent list. I was really expecting it to, uh, to be really less than that.

I, you know, I don't have a favorite novel because I've read all of them.

So, but I will say there's no question that Crime and Punishment is the novel that affected me most in life. Uh, to me, the worst writer who ever lived is Gertrude Stein.

There, there are many, many, many bad, bad writers, but Gertrude Stein is the worst writer. I don't think she ever wrote a novel, but it doesn't matter.

Every word she wrote, some of her periods are bad. The spaces between her words are bad.

Uh, every, she looks bad. Everything about her is bad. That was actually pretty interesting. I was surprised at how many of those books were among the actual greatest books, uh, greatest novels ever written.

So, good for the internet. You're not as stupid as you look. If you thought that video was one of the greatest works of literature ever, like and subscribe.

Even if you didn't, also subscribe to The Andrew Klavan Show wherever you get your podcasts.

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