The top 10 books of all time

2. "Madame Bovary," by Gustave Flaubert

"Madame Bovary, c'est moi," Flaubert once declared, meaning that he'd put that much of himself into the bored, beautiful housewife at the center of his 1857 tale of provincial adultery. The story is now 150 years old, but readers of both sexes continue to find themselves and their neighbors in its pages.

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