I guess I should list the books (they are listed 10-1, don’t know if that’s a meaningful ranking or not):
10. “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
9. “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin
8. “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo and
“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
7. “1984” by George Orwell
6. “Democracy in America” by Alexis De Tocqueville
5. “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith
4. “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville
3. “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
2. “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli
1. “Ulysses” by James Joyce
Of your list I have read THE PRINCE, MOBY DICK, 1984 (and Brave New world). Plus the Homer version of Ulysses (The Odyssey, The Illiad, and Virgil’s The Anead.
I don’t care much for Victorian novels. Silas Mariner broke me of that in school. I HATED that story. Dull,dull, dull!
I loved the Rafael Sabatini novels, the P C Wren (Beau Geste) trilogy, and the novels of C S Forrester (Beat to Quarters)trilogy. Reading these novels kept me sane in high school.