“What are Andrew Sean Greer’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Greer’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by Andrew Sean Greer and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of Andrew Sean Greer

6 ) The Path of Minor Planets

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 5
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 5

In 1965, on a small island in the South Pacific, a group of astronomers gather to witness the passing of a comet, but when a young boy dies during a meteor shower, the lives of the scientists and their loved ones change in subtle yet profound ways. Denise struggles for respect in her professional life, married Eli becomes increasingly attracted to Denise and her quixotic mind, and young Lydia attempts to escape the scientists

5 ) The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 6

So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max’s father declares him a ‘Nisse’, a creature of Danish myth: for the baby boy has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Yet, as Max ages, his body will grow younger…Max’s curse will prove also his blessing: in youth, he falls hopelessly for neighbourhood girl Alice. But with age he will grow into a stranger to her eyes, and so be granted another chance at love.

3 ) Less

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 5
• LibraryThing: 3

It’s no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful.”–Christopher Buckley, New York Times Book Review Who says you can’t run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town? ANSWER: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.

3 ) The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 2
• LibraryThing: 4

It is 1985, and Greta Wells wishes she lived in any time but this one: she has lost her brother to AIDS, her lover Nathan to another woman, and can not seem to go on alone. To ease her sadness, her doctor suggest an unusual procedure, one that opens doors of insight into the relationships in her life, her conflicting affections, and the limitations put on a woman’s life. Throughout, Greta glimpses versions of war, history, herself, and the people she loves, and as the procedures come to an end, she realizes she must make a choice: one which will close every door but one, forever.

2 ) The Story of a Marriage

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 2
• LibraryThing: 2

From the bestselling author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a love story full of secrets and astonishments set in 1950s San Francisco “We think we know the ones we love.” So Pearlie Cook begins her indirect and devastating exploration of the mystery at the heart of every relationship, how we can ever truly know another person. It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset district of San Francisco, caring not only for her husband’s fragile health but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep and everything changes. All the certainties by which Pearlie has lived are thrown into doubt. Does she know her husband at all? And what does the stranger want in return for his offer of $100,000? For six months in 1953, young Pearlie Cook struggles to understand the world around her, most especially her husband, Holland.

1 ) How It Was for Me

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 1

An auspicious debut of American realistic short fiction, How It Was for Me manages to strike every emotional tone from sweetness to despair, like a short symphony. The dominant tone is one of rueful self-recognition, often in retrospect. In “Lost Causes,” for example, a man looks back on a four-month period in his early twenties in which he was, for the first and last time, achingly beautiful, the sort of boy who makes even straight men stare in appreciation. He had no idea at the time that he been transported into beauty, and even now, recalling his brief blossoming, remembers it only through “the evidence of my face’s effect: men fixing my computer for free, paying for my bus fare, arguing over me in bars.” He made no important use of this four-month window, and it passed, leaving only photographs. The handsome protagonist of “The Walker” is similarly unaware, a widower who spends the evenings of his grief escorting wealthy divorcees and widows to the opera.

Andrew Sean Greer’s Best Books

Andrew Sean Greer Review Website Bibliography Rankings