Article: The 50 best books of the past 100 years

[GrandePdre]

LINK

Glaring omissions: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man

THE LIST

50. A Fringe of Leaves (1976)
Patrick White

49. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Zora Neale Hurston

48. White Noise (1985)
Don DeLillo

47. Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Evelyn Waugh

46. The Corner That Held Them (1948)
Sylvia Townsend Warner

45. A Fine Balance (1995)
Rohinton Mistry

44. The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
Saul Bellow

43. Rabbit, Run (1960)
John Updike

42. Regeneration (1991)
Pat Barker

41. Brave New World (1932)
Aldous Huxley

40. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Ernest Hemingway

40. The Golden Notebook (1962)
Doris Lessing

38. Nights at the Circus (1984)
Angela Carter

37. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
DH Lawrence

36. Blood Meridian (1985)
Cormac McCarthy

35. The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
JD Salinger

34. Never Mind (1992)
Edward St Aubyn

33. Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Ernest Hemingway

32. The Death of the Heart (1938)
Elizabeth Bowen

31. Olive Kitteridge (2008)
Elizabeth strout

30. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)
Tom Wolfe

29. The Power and the Glory (1940)
Graham Greene

28. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)
Patricia Highsmith

27. Wolf Hall (2009)
Patricia Highsmith

26. The Bell Jar (1963)
Sylvia Plath

25. The Color Purple (1982)
Alice Walker

24. Atonement (2001)
Ian McEwen

23. A House for Mr Biswas (1961)
V.S. Naipaul

22. The Blue Flower (1995)
Penelope Fitzgerald

21. Lord of the Flies (1954)
William Golding

20. Gilead (2004)
Marilynne Robinson

19. Disgrace (1999)
JM Coetzee

18. The God of Small Things (1997)
Arundhati Roy

17. A Suitable Boy (1993)
Vikram Seth

16. The Remains of the Day (1993)
Kazuo Ishiguro

15. Never Let Me Go (2005)
Kazuo Ishiguro

14. Housekeeping (1980)
Marilynne Robinson

13. A Passage to India (1924)
EM Forster

12. The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Margaret Atwood

11. Giovanni’s Room (1956)
James Baldwin

10. Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Virginia Woolf

9. Things Fall Apart (1958)
Chinua Achebe

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
George Orwell

7. To the Lighthouse (1927)
Virginia Woolf

6. Lolita (1955)
Vladimir Nabokov

5. Beloved (1987)
Toni Morrison

4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Muriel Spark

3. Midnight’s Children (1981)
Salman Rushdie

2. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Jean Rhys

1. The Great Gatsby (1925)
Salman Rushdie

 

[J_Dee]

LINK

Glaring omissions: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man

Those would all be in my top 25.

I've read 1 (though not Salman Rushdie's version ), 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 21, 26, 35, 36, and 41.

 

[_Mav_]

No Cujo, no care.

 

[CUJO_1970]

No Cujo, no care.

Is what I’m sayin.

 

[Tskware]

Read ten of them, but have not heard of probably 20 on the list. Most recent I read was "Beloved" which was not my up of tea, can't see it being no. 4 on the list.

 

[MrHotDice]

Any list that doesn’t have To Kill A Mockingbird is a fraud.

 

[UnfrozenCatfanLawyer]

No “Superfudge”? WOW

 

[HymanKaplan]

The Bell Jar - making depression and suicidal thoughts in teenage girls fashionable since 1963

 

[HymanKaplan]

Hemingway on there twice, but no Vonnegut? Preposterous...

At least they got Gatsby right.

(and To Kill a Mockingbird is vastly overrated, there is NO way that that melodrama should make the list)

Catcher in the Rye shouldn't be on there either. Portnoy's Complaint is a much better book (and is in a similar vein)

An American Tragedy >>>>>>> Talented Mr. Ripley (thematically similar, exponentially better)

Catch 22 should be on there.

Last of the Mohicans not on there? Absurd

No Faulkner? Good lord...

 

[WildcatFan1982]

I worked at the Seelbach for a year and had to tell about 50 people a day about the connection between the hotel and the book. Also we had all sorts of "gatsby" parties. I want to punch F Scott Fitzgerald in the taint.

 

[the nail at the foul line]

Vanna Speaks surprisingly left off.

Salman Rushdie used the pen name FS Fitzgerald.

 

[GrandePdre]

Last of the Mohicans not on there? Absurd

LOL that came out in the 1700s. This is just the last 100 years list. I agree with all you said except the To Kill a Mockingbird assessment.

 

[LineSkiCat14]

Uh yes, I, too read almost all of these..

 

[HymanKaplan]

Yeah, I overlooked the century mark. LOL

(I figured I was going to get flak over the TKAM comment.)

 

[Hank Camacho]

Read ten of them, but have not heard of probably 20 on the list. Most recent I read was "Beloved" which was not my up of tea, can't see it being no. 4 on the list.

That's one of those books that everyone pretends to love because it isn't socially acceptable to say anything otherwise. Same with Margaret Atwood. There are so many better women writers than that hackneyed crap.

Props to the list creator(s) on not including that POS Ulysses.

 

[Ron Mehico]

I don’t think I’ve read a single one of those

 

[rudd1]

-nothing from Hesse, Camus, Koestler, Dos Passos or Vonnegut? And hemingway has two on the list? Rich Brooks and I think this list is bullshit.

 

[HymanKaplan]

100 Years of Solitude getting left out tells you all you need to know, not to mention The Stranger.

rudd - good call on Koestler.

 

[P19978]

Non-fiction only for this guy.

As an aside, for those that have Amazon Prime, there tons of good books for free; both fiction and non fiction.

 

[Kaizer Sosay]

Agree with whoever said Catch 22 should be on the list. As should In Cold Blood.

Also...no Hunter S. Thompson? WTF???

 

[CC_332]

So I've read a whopping zero of those. Cool.

 

[CastleRubric]

The Gulag Archipelago

Brave New World

Island

1984

A Warning to the West

 

[HymanKaplan]

LTTWA is undoubtedly the best read rock band in history.

 

[gamecockcat]

Only read about 5. Think Great Gatsby is uber-overrated, both book and movie (I'd put it on the same pedestal as 'Citizen Kane' as greatest movie). Many of those listed, I'd never heard of. Actually a bit surprised that The Godfather or LOTR or Pat Conroy, Gone With the Wind, etc. didn't make the list. So many genres - don't think I saw any mysteries, fantasy/sci-fi, etc. Basically impossible to come up with a 'best of' list that a majority of people would agree with.

 

[wildcatsboston1984]

Haven't read much on here. Most of what I read is classics out of copyright since I can legally get them as free ebooks.

Read
Their Eyes Were Watching God**'
The Catcher in the Rye**
1984
The Great Gatsby

Probably at least 20 more are on my future reading list. Rest I have never heard of but will look into.

**means also on my reading list because I was forced to read it in HS or earlier and I never really gave anything a chance if I was forced to read it.

 

[UK82]

I've read several on the list but Lonesome Dove should at least have gotten a consideration. Maybe it did. Best book I've ever read.

 

[the nail at the foul line]

These lists are always a joke. No disappointment here.

 

[Lexie's Dad]

Lists are all from one perspective. I only care if I found it interesting.

I read none

Handmaid's Tale, but no Atlas Shrugged?

Okay....

 

[birdforbogey]

Where the Red Fern Grows. Come on people.

 

[rbs]

In the area of popular books:

Charles Dickens books like … A Tale of Two Cities

J.R.R. Tolkien books like …. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit

C.S. Lewis

Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

…. and what about Dr. Seuss …LOL.

 

[hmt5000]

LOTR is the second best selling book series all time. Not sure how that doesn't make the list at all.

Steven King should be on there a couple times.

 

[cole854]

None of the critics who made this list have ever read Mad magazine, The Hardy Boys, or Archie, and they were all triple vaxxed and wore 6 masks.

 

[ABlockalypseBrow]

I’m happy they at least included 1984 and Brave New World.

Gatsby…never got the hype. Read it in AP English and the teacher kept going on about all the “symbolism”, how certain colors meant certain things smh. Sounded like trying to make a mid book into something special.

 

[Tskware]

McCarthy's "The Road" is >>>> "Blood Meridian", IMO. Border Trilogy is also fantastic, just did not think BM was all that great.

 

[christophero]

Lord of the Rings is surely top 50, even though it is fantasy.

 

[Nightwish84]

Meh, give me something genre-related and I'm good. Maybe The Godfather or a classic King novel. If we're going classics, Johnny Got His Gun.

 

[Blueworld_3.0]

Dune, LOTR, Foundation, ...?
No Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Burroughs? Why is science fiction/fantasy always missing from these lists?

 

[ZenCatFan73]

No LOTR no care.

 

[WildcatFan1982]

there is a noticeable lack of John Grisham and Michael Crichton on there

 

[christophero]

I'm a King fanboy; but I would think 50 years from now you'd probably see The Shining or the Stand on that list. Those novels have themes that go beyond horror.