The Bucket List Bookshop’s top 100 list is based on a whole load of sources, including international and national prizes, sales, reader ratings and expert lists. Here are all the sources behind the Bucket List.
The Bucket List and its sources are updated every January, so if you’ve got feedback, ideas or additions, we’d love to hear from you!
Prizes
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature goes “to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction…” (excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel).
The Nobel Committee – of three to five people – examine nominations and cut down the long list of about 200 names to 15, which they present to the Swedish Academy. This is condensed to five names, and the Academy reads their work over the summer. In October, they choose the winner.
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 110 times to 114 Nobel Laureates since 1901. The nomination files are sealed for 50 years; the Bucket List takes into account the winners and known nominees since 1901.
Man Booker Prize
“… the Man Booker has become influential beyond the wildest dreams of its founding fathers.” – Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation from 2006 to 2015.
The Man Booker Prize, for “the best novel in the opinion of the judges,” has been running since 1969. It aims to “promote the finest in fiction” by awarding the best novel written in English and published in the UK every year. The judging panel – which has included writers and poets, critics, academics, actors and even politicians – represents the “common man,” helping build trust in the audience.
The winner of The Man Booker Prize receives £50,000, and shortlisted authors receive a cheque for £2,500 and a designer bound copy of their book.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the winning and shortlisted books since 1969.
Man Booker International Prize
The Man Booker International Prize was awarded every two years between 2005 and 2015 “to a living author who published fiction either originally in English or whose work was generally available in translation in the English language.” The prize has since been changed to a prize for fiction in translation and merged with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, awarded annually “for a single work of fiction, translated into English and published in the UK.”
The author of the winning book and the translator split the £50,000 prize; each shortlisted author and translator split a prize of £1,000.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the winning and shortlisted books since 2005.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded “for distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” One of many prizes also spanning journalism, music and photography, it has been awarded annually since 1948.
Every year, about 1,000 books are sent to five letters juries for judging in several categories, including fiction. The winner is awarded $15,000.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners and nominees since 1948.
Neustadt International Prize for Literature
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is “the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists, and playwrights are equally eligible.” It was founded in 1969 as the Books Abroad International Prize for Literature.
The prize is highly international; after only three years, 34 jurors from 25 countries had chosen finalists writing in 13 different languages. To date, only four countries (Canada, Colombia, India, and Poland) have been represented more than once.
The winner receives $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver and a certificate.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners and nominees since 1969.
Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards has five categories, recognizing “some of the most enjoyable books of the year, written by authors based in the UK and Ireland.” The categories are novel, first novel, children’s book, poetry and biography.
The Costa Awards prize is considered more “populist” than the Man Booker Prize. The winning books are selected from shortlists by five distinct panels of judges.
Publishers nominate books for the prize before the end of June every year, paying a £5,000 fee if the book is shortlisted. The winner of each category receives £5,000, and an overall winner receives £25,000.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners in the novel category since 1971.
America Award
The America Award is a lifetime achievement award for international writers, considered to give alternatives to the Nobel Prize. It was first presented in 1994.
The rotating jury of between six and eight includes American poets, prose writers, playwrights and literary critics.
The prize is sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, Inc., in loving memory of Anna Fahrni, and by the publisher Green Integer. There is no prize money awarded.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners since 1994.
Women’s Prize for Fiction
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is “the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman. Founded in 1996, the Prize was set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.”
In the autumn, the Society of Authors invites UK publishers to nominate books. The following June, a panel of five women choose the “best, eligible full-length novel in English.” The key criteria are accessibility, originality and excellence in writing by women.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners and nominees since 1996.
National Book Award
The National Book Award goes to books written by an American citizen and published by an American publisher. Established in 1950, it is administered by the non-profit National Book Foundation.
The Foundation selects 20 judges every year – five for each of the four award categories (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature). Until 2013, judges were well-respected writers, but others have since been included, such as critics, librarians and booksellers. Each panel reads the books submitted over the summer – sometimes numbering in the hundreds – and the winner is not revealed until the final awards ceremony.
The night before the reveal, each finalist receives a prize of $1,000, a medal and a citation from the panel at a private Medal Ceremony. The four winners are announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner, where they each receive $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners and finalists of the fiction award since 1950.
Franz KafkaPrize
The Franz Kafka Prize is an international literary prize hosted in the Czech Republic, run by the Franz Kafka Society and co-organized by the city of Prague. Its mission is “the evaluation of artistically exceptional literary creation of contemporary authors whose work addresses the readers regardless of their origin, nationality and culture, as well as the work of Franz Kafka, one of the greatest authors of modern world literature.”
An international jury of prominent figures from literary science and history meets once a year and each member votes in private. Candidates must be living, but can be any age or nationality, and at least one of their works must be available in Czech.
The criteria for winning the prize are “the quality and exclusivity of the artwork, its humanistic character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times.” The winner receives $10,000, a diploma and a miniaturised model of the Franz Kafka Monument in Prague.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners of the prize since 2001.
Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service
The Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service were created to “reward and encourage the best of human performance worldwide.” Influential American business executive and philanthropist Ralph Hayes instructed the awards to be made in his will, to recognise outstanding achievements in the dramatic arts, literature, science, invention, mass communications, public service, government and sociology.
The awards have been presented by PNC Bank since 1979. Each winner – almost 200 so far – receives a $75,000 prize, which is presented at an invitation-only dinner. In total, $6 million has been awarded, funded by the Common Wealth Trust.
The Bucket List takes into account the winners of the literature award since 1979.
Sales
Best-selling books – Wikipedia (various sources)
What are the world’s best-selling books? Some helpful people have pulled together a lot of data from “reliable, independent sources” to make a list on Wikipedia. The page “provides lists of best-selling individual books and book series to date and in any language,” not including comics or textbooks.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the best-selling individual books listed.
Best-selling authors – Wikipedia (various sources)
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly how many books an author has sold, but Wikipedia’s diligent contributors have pulled together approximate numbers from reliable sources, to produce “a list of best-selling fiction authors to date, in any language.” The list only features authors with sales of 100 million or more, and it doesn’t include authors of comics.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors listed.
Nielsen Book Scan UK sales – all-time best-selling books
There’s a bit more accuracy in Nielsen Book Scan UK sales, although they are limited to the UK. Based on its own UK sales data, Nielsen compiled a list of the top 100 best-selling books of all time.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Reader ratings
Books With a Goodreads Average Rating of Over 4.5 and With At Least 100 Ratings
If you want to find an avid reader, Goodreads is the place to start looking. The social media network for readers hosts thousands of lists, which are generated by readers and run on reader votes. One such list is “Books With a Goodreads Average Rating of Over 4.5 and With At Least 100 Ratings.”
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Goodreads Best Books Ever
Here comes the Goodreads community again, with a list of “the best books ever.”
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Amazon Most popular authors
Amazon sells more than a million e-books every day, not to mention the real books being shipped out globally by the minute. As the world’s biggest online bookshop, it’s a good place to get an idea of what’s selling. Amazon’s “Most popular authors” list shows whose books are selling the most copies.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors listed.
Amazon Top 20 best-selling books of all time
Amazon’s records provide a list of the “Top 20 best-selling books of all time.”
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
The Best 100 Authors
An ongoing online poll has produced a list of the “Top 100 authors of all time voted by regular people.” The Best 100 Authors list is made up of reader votes.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors listed.
The Best Writers of All Time
Ranker, “a leading digital media company for opinion-based, crowdsourced rankings on just about everything,” hosts The Best Writers of All Time list. “The writers on this list are the best in history, writing books, plays, essays, and poetry that has stood the test of time and make up the world’s canon of literature and written work.”
The list is generated and adjusted by reader votes; at the time of writing, 16.9k voters have cast 161.7k votes on the list.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors listed.
Best Books Ever
The Book Depository, one of the world’s leading online bookstores with more than 18 million titles, produced a list of the best books ever written, which was quickly criticised by readers. The editors took notice of the readers’ own choices: “we believe in listening to our customers… so here’s your list of the top books of all time, as selected by you.” The result is the Best Books Ever list.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Bucket List Bookshop
Every year we ask the Bucket List Bookshop community to share their favourite books.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Expert lists
Top 100 Works in World Literature
A panel of 100 authors, including Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie, from 54 countries came up with the Top 100 Works in World Literature – the books they considered to be the “best and most central works in world literature.” The poll was carried out in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute
The list is not ranked, but the editors revealed that Don Quixote received fifty percent more votes than any other book.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Novels and Novelists, A Guide to the World of Fiction (1980)
In the book Novels and Novelists, A Guide to the World of Fiction (1980), Martin Seymour-Smith and his co-contributors chose 55 works of fiction representing the best ever written. The works eceived full marks on four criteria: readability, characterization, plot and literary merit.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
For the Love of Books
Author Ronald Schwartz asked 115 major writers about their favourite books, and published their responses in For the Love of Books.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
The Ideal Library
The Ideal Library was composed by 100 prominent cultural figures (mostly writers); the final list includes works that received two or more votes.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
The Top 10: The Greatest Books of All Time
J. Peder Zane’s The Top 10 lists the top ten books chosen by each of 125 writers, boiled down to the top 100 overall.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
100 Life-Changing Books
In the project The Book That Changed My Life, National Book Award-winning authors selected 100 life-changing books.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
100 books to read in a lifetime
Amazon’s back, with the editors’ pick of 100 books to read in a lifetime.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
100 Greatest novels of all time
The Telegraph’s literary critics chose what they considered the best novels ever written, published in a countdown in 100 Greatest novels of all time.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
Two years after his last list, writer and editor Robert McCrum put together his list of the 100 greatest novels written in English, in The 100 best novels written in English: the full list.
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
Book awards: The 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians
Librarians know a thing or two about what makes a good book. In The 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians, they select the 100 best books (with a few recommendations that didn’t make the cut).
The Bucket List takes into account the authors of the books listed.
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