A friend of mine, another bibliophile, almost a decade ago came across a list of the Top 150 novels of the 20th century. McGettigan the Elder is this one. We’ve both engaged the list and seek completion. I’ve lopped off 87 of the 150 so far and am aiming to topple three more before year end. After becoming disenchanted three years ago with the readability of some books on this list I’ve settled on a steady pace of four books per year off the 150.
Here’s the thing about the list, many of those books are pretty crummy. Whoever compiled the list, I suspect, confused the meaning of ‘Top’ to mean evocative or cutting edge, rather than good or entertaining. But the joke, apparently, is on me, this McGettigan, and a few other suckers making progress toward completing the list.
My sister, JQ, has fallen prey to the 150. Determination and a good attitude keep her buoyant. My friend, and insurance agent, McBride is on it and nearly done! [If you seek a well read insurance agent licensed in California, I will gladly forward his contact coordinates upon request.]
Examples of bad literature that rank amongst the list:
Ulysses - James Joyce
Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
I will say this for the list, there have been a number of novels I really enjoyed that I might otherwise have never consumed.
Examples of good literature amongst the list:
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
The list of the Top 150 novels of the 20th century follows. But first, two notes:
Note 1: If you consider engaging the list, be careful. Think it over before you commit yourself. A long arduous journey stands before you like a thorn riddled hurdle.
Note 2: My dear friend McGettigan the Elder, if you scour the internets some lazy afternoon and rustle up a list of the Top 150 of the 21st century, I kindly request that you forget to forward it.
-klem
Top 150 Books of 20th Century
1.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
2.1984, George Orwell
3.Catch-22, Joseph Heller
4.The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
5.Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
6.Animal Farm, George Orwell
7.Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
8.Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
9.Ulysses, James Joyce
10.The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
11.Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
12.Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
13.The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
14.Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, J. Joyce
15.To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
16.The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
17.Native Son, Richard Wright
18.Beloved, Toni Morrison
19.Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
20.To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
21.The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
22.The Color Purple, Alice Walker
23.On the Road, Jack Kerouac
24.The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
25.The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
26.Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
27.The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
28.Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
29.Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
30.The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
31.A Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
32.My Antonia, Willa Cather
33.A Farewell to Arms, E. Hemingway
34.A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
35.I, Claudius, Robert Graves
36.Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
37.The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway
38.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
39.Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
40.Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Hurston
41.The Call of the Wild, Jack London
42.The World According to Garp, John Irving
43.A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
44.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
45.The Good Soldier, Ford Madox
46.The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
47.Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
48.One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
49.Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
50.U. S. A.(trilogy), John Dos Passos
51.Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
52.Sophie's Choice, William Styron
53.Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
54.Exodus, Leon Uris
55.All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
56.Rabbit Run, John Updike
57.The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
58.The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
59.Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
60.The Ambassadors, Henry James
61.From Here to Eternity, James Jones
62.Little House on the Prarie, Laura Ingall Wilder
63.The Golden Bowl, Henry James
64.Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne
65.The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
66.2001 : A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
67.Possession, A. S. Byatt
68.Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
69.All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich ReMarque
70.Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
71.Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
72.The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
73.Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
74.Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
75.Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
76.Roots, Alex Haley
77.Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
78.Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
79.Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
80.The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
81.Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
82.Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
83.Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
84.Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
85.The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
86.Dune, Frank Herbert
87.A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
88.The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
89.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum
90.Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, C S Lewis
91.Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
92.The Burger's Daughter, Nadine Gordimer
93.A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole
94.An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
95.The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
96.East of Eden, John Steinbeck
97.Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
98.Howards End, E. M. Forster
99.Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
100.Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
101.Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
102.Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
103.The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
104.The Wings of a Dove, Henry James
105.Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
106.The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell
107.Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
108.Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
109.The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
110.As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
111.The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
112.A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
113.A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
114.The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
115.Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
116.The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
117.White Noise, Don DeLillo
118.Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
119.The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
120.Deliverance, James Dickey
121.The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever
122.A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
123.Snow Falling Cedars, David Guterson
124.Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
125.Watership Down, Richard Adams
126.The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
127.The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
128.The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
129.A Death in the Family, James Agee
130.Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
131.Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
132.The Rainbow, Pearl S. Buck
133.A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
134.Pale Fire, Vladimir Nobokov
135.Ironweed, William P. Kennedy
136.Light in August, William Faulkner
137.Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
138.Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford
139.Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
140.Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
141.Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
142.Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
143.Call it Sleep, Henry Roth
144.For Whom the Bell Tolls, E. Hemingway
145.Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons
146.The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
147.Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
148.A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
149.The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
150.The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Source: http://www.friendswood.lib.tx.us/bookinfo/frpubtop150.htm
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