Baraka_Guru

This thread is related to the one created by Strange Famous, who put forth a list of top novels as voted on by Britons. It was a mixed list, and some of us took issue with what appeared on it and what didn't

That's the thing about lists. They're subjective. Well, here is another one.

The board of the Modern Library put forth this list of the top 100 novels. As an English grad and an editor, this list interests me because I'm assuming it was chosen with the interest of the art of the novel in mind, not merely popularity.

So... how many of these have you read?

My tally:
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
13. 1984 by George Orwell
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys

Not much better than the other list. Here I've read 15% of the list. The other list I read 10%.

How are you doing?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

jewels

I've read:

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy

Close to half. Subjective, for sure. I agree with most but many of the greats are missing.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

LordEden

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles

When I see a list like this, I just want to hit a library and start from the top.

__________________
Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

noodle

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
7. CATCH-22
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron



I'm not a fan of this list, either.

__________________

spindles

The only ones I've read were forced on my by school :

5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
I quite enjoyed this - not a bad book to study at school

85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
I wanted to poke hot needles in my eye rather than read this, but forced myself (given it was my last year of high school). Conrad (from what I remember) has a propensity to use 10 words when 1 will do. He ends up with sentences that take up half a page and you have to re-read several times to understand wtf he is saying. I would rather die a slow and painful death than have to read this again (22 years later).

edit: btw I read quite a lot, but obviously nothing that can be termed a 'classic'

---------- Post added at 09:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:41 AM ----------

The other thread - I've read 30 of the 200. It is much more a 'popular' list and contains a lot more modern literature. Having said that it obviously contains things I'll never read - a lot of Pratchett, who I just don't enjoy reading...

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

Reese

I've only read or partially read a few of them. I think I've finished 4 of them and tried reading 3-4 others.

Wonder why Call of The Wild made the list and Moby Dick didn't? Wonder why Charles Dickens doesn't have a single novel listed, nor does Mark Twain. I guess you can't include everyone.

__________________
“It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” - Dave Barry

Charlatan

17% of the list. It's actually a lot more than I thought there would be. I read a lot and there are a few on this list that I've tried to read but just lost interest and put the book down. The problem with lists like this is that, like many of these sort of things, it becomes yet another method of measuring your dick.

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
7. CATCH-22
13. 1984 by George Orwell
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Fremen

Not a very big percentage for me.
Does it count that I've seen most of the movies of the other ones?

4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

__________________
Google

Reese

Ha, I was thinking that, I've probably seen all of the movie versions of the books listed here.. Heck, The books on the list I did read were because I saw the movie. Except Call of the Wild, I read that in school before seeing the movie.

I read a LOT more of the books listed in SF's thread. I just like more modern books and books that stand the test of time. I don't care how well written The Great Gatsby was, I found it to be snobbish and unreadable.

__________________
“It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” - Dave Barry

jewels

I'm surprised that no one's else has read some of these for American Lit courses. No fans of classics? I wonder what theyre teaching instead.

Great Gatsby snobbish and unreadable? You're thinking of the characters and settings. . You must've enjoyed James Fenimore Cooper.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Baraka_Guru

I was edumacated in Canada, and I didn't opt to take any American-specific courses. The only exception was a course entirely on Henry James. What's interesting is that Wings of the Dove is on this list, but it's one of the few of his I haven't read.

Most of my degree focused on Canadian and British literature, and a good proportion of that was poetry.

My problem? There's a good number of authors on this list I've never even heard of.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

mixedmedia

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron

---------- Post added at 09:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 AM ----------

I would imagine this list is slanted towards novels that Modern Library has published...

and The Great Gatsby was a beautiful novel...one of my all-time favorites.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Daniel_

I call bullshit on #1 - it's a book people say they ought to pick, not a book people have read.

Here's my selections:


1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
7. CATCH-22
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling

And YES, I read Ulysses all the way through, and NO I didn't think it was as confusing as people say.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

Willravel

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
7. CATCH-22
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain

Seriously? No Old Man and the Sea? No War and Peace? No Crime and Punishment? No Dune?!

I have trouble taking this list seriously.

CinnamonGirl

4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
13. 1984 by George Orwell
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London


...I feel inadequate. Immensely.

__________________
"...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world."


"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Baraka_Guru

It's a novella.

They're Russian.

It's genre fiction....

You will notice this lists more or less covers the U.K. and the U.S.

There's also no Robertson Davies....or Michael Ondaatje.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

cellophanedeity

I didn't really care for most of these novels. It's a shame that there's nothing Canadian on there. Perhaps we should make our own list.

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
7. CATCH-22
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
13. 1984 by George Orwell
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

Edit:

Margaret Atwood has a nice intro to a Canadian list

__________________
who am I to refuse the universe?
-Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

snowy

What's odd about this list to me is that while I haven't read a number of the books on it, I've read a number of other books by the authors on the list.


2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

I have a lot of reading to do. Yes, I really did read Deliverance. It was for a class. And I can't believe no one else has read Brideshead Revisited. I love that book.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

braisler

Let's see:

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain

So 20% of that list from what I can recall. Most of those were ones that I read in high school. Some were forced on me, others I actually enjoyed reading.

__________________
---
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
---

Baraka_Guru

I've read his Loved One. I loved it.

I'm sure Brideshead is on my list somewhere.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain


57 of them.
i have to say that this list is really arbitrary.
for example, that an f scott fitzgerald novel is ranked so far above anything by faulkner...it's unbelievable.
that pale fire is 53.
i could go on and on.
i'm a little cranky today.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

FelixP

I've only read 1984, Animal Farm, and Call of the Wild. I started to read Ulysses, but I found it to be an ostenatious display of psuedo-intelligence. There are a few books on there that I would like to read, and many I've never heard of. I tend to stick to military books, both fiction and non-fiction. I also like Greek and Roman mythology: The Iliad, Works and Days, Metamorphoses, etc.

Why no Tolstoy? What the fuck?

__________________
Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

"I have just returned from visting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world." --Douglas MacArthur

Willravel

Oh, right.
That's true, but I didn't see that this list was only for Yanks and Brits.

roachboy

i dont get the hostility to joyce. what's it about? why does everything have to be easy? why does everything have to be written the same way? who makes these stupid rules?

of rm, ulysses changed the way i think, the way i read, the way i write.
but i also learned that especially the first time through it's good to read with a group. after the first couple chapters especially. when you get to the proteus section (the third chapter, the one on the beach) you're in a different literary world. it's worth the effort, i think.

there are a million books that should be on that list, and alot that shouldn't.
why no pynchon for example?

but if you expand the idea of what literature is beyond the anglo-world, the list is just a joke.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

levite

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller

9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves

16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright

25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster

28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald

31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell

35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin

41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey

45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway

47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett

58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton

62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones

64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway

76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh

85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow

88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys

96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain

Which I believe gives me a total of 65, though I may have miscounted.

Not on here, but I did read by cited authors:

Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
Seize The Day, by Saul Bellow
The 42nd Parallel (first book in Dos Passos' USA trilogy: it sucked so much I couldn't bring myself to read the next two)
Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
O Pioneers, by Willa Cather
It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

I must say that I find this to be a dreadful list. I read the majority of these works in high school and college, for the express purpose of gaining a familiarity with the canon of the English-language novel. I found the majority of them to be boring, stiff, and dry. I went through both of the "great works" of Joyce, and though I am not a particularly stupid person, I still don't know what the fuck he was talking about. Dreiser and Cather were both so agonizingly bad I nearly shot myself. And even with Kipling's Kim, which wasn't bad, why bother with it when it is of such stunningly lower quality than his short stories?

What I want to know is, where on this list are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Where is Uncle Tom's Cabin? Where is Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage? How about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Babbit, The Jungle, or Animal Farm? Ford Madox Ford, a wholly undistinguished and deeply boring writer gets, what, two or three titles on this list, but Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit don't either make the cut?!! Only one title by Dashiell Hammett? NOTHING by Raymond Chandler? Nothing by Edgar Rice Burroughs? No Herman Wouk, no Ray Bradbury, no Isaac Asimov?! No Ian Fleming, no Robert Heinlein, no Frank Herbert? Nothing by Zora Neale Hurston or Leon Uris or Ayn Rand. Haley's Roots, a big no. Nothing by Eric Ambler or Agatha Christie or John LeCarre. No Watership Down? Yes to a crapload of titles by Evelyn Waugh, but no to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? For that matter, Deliverance gets in, but Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is out?

You see where I'm going with this. This is in no way shape or form a list of the 100 best, most popular, or most influential novels of the past 100-odd years: this is a list of 100 novels recommended by your least favorite English Lit professor in college because he thinks they represent "real" literature as opposed to "genre fiction" which is somehow innately tainted with being less literary in some way. At least, that's how it looks to me.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Baraka_Guru

I agree, roachboy, as far as my minimal exposure to Joyce will allow me.

I'm not afraid to admit that I had a single failed attempt at reading Ulysses. (I'm willing to believe that 80% of those who claim to have read it have not read its entirety....but I could be wrong.)

My issue is that I'm somewhat ignorant of organized religion and the culture and history surrounding it. This immediately means a good portion of the references are lost on me. This is what dissuaded me from continuing past the first 100 or so pages.

In hindsight, I wish I had continued my trek. I don't think anyone gets all the references, and now I know it's not about getting them. It's about your own experience with the work.

Ulysses is a heavy weight dangling over my head. It taunts me. I hope to read it before I'm dead.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

FelixP

I'd like to think I'm not a moron, and I too had no idea what the fuck Joyce was trying to say. Granted, I gave up after only fifty or so pages, but I still don't get it. The regular parts of the story were quite boring. I'm all for vague symbolism, but I just couldn't connect much of what he was saying during the "stream of consiousness" parts. Reading Ulysses was alot like tripsitting for someone on acid: sure, what they have to say is important and significant, but only to his or herself, and maybe a few people in a similar condition.

I noticed there wasn't any Stephen King, or Steakley, or, once again, Tolstoy. I think in America there's a tendency to label certain books as "classics" and then push them onto other people. A good example is the LotR trilogy. The Hobbit was good as a twelve year old, but as a highschooler the trilogy itself was boring as hell. It lacked the same charisma and enchantment of the Hobbit, and was filled with plot holes.

Basically the longest books with the most challenging words are the best books. Who gives a shit about plot or catharsis when you can just as easily write something long, dry, and filled with lesser-known words in an unorthodox way?

__________________
Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

"I have just returned from visting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world." --Douglas MacArthur

roachboy

why does the question of whether one is or is not "stupid" come into play?
it's just a different way of reading. you can work your way into it. once you figure it out for yourself, it offers alot of possibilities for doing other kinds of work. it can open your head.
there are crib sheets you can get ahold of for ulysses that help with seeing the structure and with some of the allusions. i read it with a set of them. i think most people do. they're a way of getting let in. there's nothing wrong with using them: you aren't less a skilled reader for it.

finnegans wake is more a challenge: all surfaces and dreamings. it's not clear there's a thing to get. but there are many fantastically lovely bits.

but i'm not a particular fan of straight narrative fiction. i think it presents a flat world full of flat characters in the main. maybe this is the sort of situation working with joyce gets you into. it's how i landed there i think. but i spent quite a long time working on joyce's work.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

mixedmedia

My sister spent a lot of time studying Irish literature while getting her master's in creative writing. She had a really hard time with Joyce at first, she hated him - and my sister is very smart, there's no doubt about that. But, by being forced to read almost all of his works, she finally just gave in and came to really love him. She had a similar experience with Ernest Hemingway, lol.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

roachboy

the gateway drug really is the short story at the end of dubliners, "the dead."

this question of feeling stupid because something works in a framework that's different from what folk are used to is an ongoing concern of mine, really.
i went at it through joyce here because his work is something of a lightening rod for that response.

i'm not in any way comparing myself to joyce here, but in the sound work i do, i run into this response as well. folk seem to assume that work should be accessible immediately to them. if it isn't, they initially feel there's something wrong with them, then they transfer it onto the piece and by extension onto the person who made the piece.
what i know is, for example, 12 tone music is not intuitively available to folk who are steeped in ways of organizing sound which are typical for european classical music (straight music). you have to train yourself into hearing it. but that training usually happens because you find something beautiful in a piece that's organized that way and so it begins with being attracted to a piece and happens through that attraction and so isn't seen as training. for me, it was anton webern's op. 30 for piano, and it was the ways in which the spaces between notes operated. i'd never heard anything like it before. with joyce, it was the proteus chapter from ulysses, the one in which stephen is walking along the beach. it was a little thing, the description of a dog running across the sand, the way it shape shifted.

what these things eventually opened onto was the possibility that one could make things--sound pieces, writing, whatever--as conceptual actions. so you could take on and manipulate the conventions that inform regular experience of the world and within that experience of made objects.
if you're going to work that way, it doesn't make sense to treat those same conventions as if they were transparent--given in advance along with the world itself. what's given are sets of rules that enable certain types of experience. these are culturally conditioned. they're arbitrary outside that conditioning process. they could be otherwise. but you, making stuff, are yourself inside those same conventions and rely on them to communicate--so the obvious move is to feed these conventions back onto themselves and, in the process, try to open up and explore alternate spaces. which may be effects of feedback. phantom places. or they could be experiments with switching registers--moving from the usual modes of explicit experience to one that envokes underlying modes of perception, of being in the world.

what this means for a listener or a reader is that they have to open themselves up to the experience, even if its alien. more importantly, what it means is that it puts listeners or readers into the position of actively making their experience of a piece or environment. which we all do, all the time.

the gambit is that something happens within the piece that hooks you as listener or reader into coming along for the ride, into making the ride for yourself that you see yourself as being along for. because there's no single experience to be had: there's no right way to know this kind of work. there are only ways of knowing. it's a world of partial viewpoints we inhabit. the idea that there's a single order to things and that, as a consequence, a right and wrong way of knowing or experiencing something, is an illusion--a deep illusion---but an illusion nonetheless. there are partial views and the environments that condition or constrain them.

anyway, this is perhaps a digression.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Anormalguy

7. CATCH-22
13. 1984 by George Orwell
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

I'm a voracious reader, but apparantly I'm not as well read as I thought (I've probably read a few others on the list that I've forgotten about). I have read exceprts from some of James Joyce's works, & wouldn't read an entire book by him under the threat of a slow painful death. Why Philip Roth is on the list is beyond me.

I'm very surprised that To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee isn't on the list.

__________________
In a society where the individual is not free to pursue the truth...there is neither progress, stability nor security.--Edward R. Murrow

mixedmedia

it's true, though. There's a real tendency for people to become defensive when confronted with something they don't understand, particularly with creative works and sometimes it leads to extreme emotions - and extreme conclusions. In general, folks don't like a good mystery without the implementation of recognizable processes leading to a foreseeable point of revelation. Otherwise, what's the point? - I think is how it goes.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce