I recently finished reading Maugham's The Razor's Edge which I commented on a few days ago , well that reminded me that Maugham wrote a book many years ago where he listed his ten favorite novel's. I no longer have the book but I do have the list. I've read all of them with the exception of Tom Jones and War And Peace which are on my list of things to read. The only problem is that the list is getting longer than the list of what I've already read. I used to say that I had of stack of books I intended to read, but there is simply no way one could stack books that high. Funny isn't it the more one reads the longer the list of what you want to read becomes. I think de Balzac's Old Man Goriot was my favorite on this list in fact I consider it one of the top ten I've ever read. If you haven't read it yet I recommend putting it on the top of your stack (or list). Okay so here's the list.

W. Somerset Maugham's Ten Greatest Novels*

1. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding;
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen;
3. The Red and the Black, Stendhal;
4. Old Man Goriot, Honoré de Balzac;
5. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens;
6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
7. Madam Bovary, Gustave Flaubert;
8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville;
9. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoi;
10. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky.