Top 100 English-Language Novels of 20th Century--Get Over It
Dick Meyer is National Public Radio's (NPR's) editorial director for digital media and he has a list of the top 100 20th-century novels in the English language. It's his list and he's not apologizing for it, either:
The top 10 in his list are:
He links to Modern Library's list, which includes their board's list and a readers' list which, not-surprisingly, differ. The latter seems to have a few more genre works in it.
I was going to compile a list of lists of top 100 novels, but found this convenient blog post, and surprisingly, all the links worked at the time of posting. The blog is "Guldasta."
I am not a learned or prolific reader of novels. My taste is probably medium-brow, male and parochial in many ways. Tough. It's my list. I included two books that probably aren't novels: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Fabulous Small Jews. Lots of innovative, modern stuff didn't make it because I am not good at reading it.
The top 10 in his list are:
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
- Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow
- A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
He links to Modern Library's list, which includes their board's list and a readers' list which, not-surprisingly, differ. The latter seems to have a few more genre works in it.
I was going to compile a list of lists of top 100 novels, but found this convenient blog post, and surprisingly, all the links worked at the time of posting. The blog is "Guldasta."


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