Originally Posted By Jafar30 How many have you read? A - B The Adventures of Augie March-No Saul Bellow All the King's Men-No Robert Penn Warren American Pastoral-No Philip Roth An American Tragedy-No Theodore Dreiser Animal Farm-Yes George Orwell Appointment in Samarra-No John O'Hara Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret-No Judy Blume The Assistant-No Bernard Malamud At Swim-Two-Birds-No Flann O'Brien Atonement-No Ian McEwan Beloved-No Toni Morrison The Berlin Stories-No Christopher Isherwood The Big Sleep-No Raymond Chandler The Blind Assassin-No Margaret Atwood Blood Meridian-No Cormac McCarthy Brideshead Revisited-No Evelyn Waugh The Bridge of San Luis Rey-No Thornton Wilder C - D Call It Sleep-No Henry Roth Catch-22-Yes Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye-Yes J.D. Salinger A Clockwork Orange-Yes Anthony Burgess The Confessions of Nat Turner-No William Styron The Corrections-No Jonathan Franzen The Crying of Lot 49-No Thomas Pynchon A Dance to the Music of Time-No Anthony Powell The Day of the Locust-No Nathanael West Death Comes for the Archbishop-No Willa Cather A Death in the Family-No James Agee The Death of the Heart-No Elizabeth Bowen Deliverance-No James Dickey Dog Soldiers-No Robert Stone F - G Falconer-No John Cheever The French Lieutenant's Woman-No John Fowles The Golden Notebook-No Doris Lessig Go Tell it on the Mountain-No James Baldwin Gone With the Wind-No Margaret Mitchell The Grapes of Wrath-Yes John Steinbeck Gravity's Rainbow-No Thomas Pynchon The Great Gatsby-Yes F. Scott Fitzgerald H - I A Handful of Dust-No Evelyn Waugh The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter-No Carson McCullers The Heart of the Matter-No Graham Greene Herzog-No Saul Bellow Housekeeping-No Marilynne Robinson A House for Mr. Biswas-No V.S. Naipaul I, Claudius-No Robert Graves Infinite Jest-No David Foster Wallace Invisible Man-No Ralph Ellison L - N Light in August-No William Faulkner The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe-Yes C.S. Lewis Lolita-No Vladimir Nabokov Lord of the Flies-No William Golding The Lord of the Rings-Yes J.R.R. Tolkein Loving-No Henry Green Lucky Jim-No Kingsley Amis The Man Who Loved Children-No Christina Stead Midnight's Children-No Salman Rushdie Money-No Martin Amis The Moviegoer-No Walker Percy Mrs. Dalloway-No Virginia Woolf Naked Lunch-No William Burroughs Native Son-NoRichard Wright Neuromancer-No William Gibson Never Let Me Go-No Kazuo Ishiguro 1984-Yes George Orwell O - R On the Road-No Jack Kerouac One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-Yes Ken Kesey The Painted Bird-No Jerzy Kosinski Pale Fire-No Vladimir Nabokov A Passage to India-No E.M. Forster Play It As It Lays-No Joan Didion Portnoy's Complaint-No Philip Roth Posession-No A.S. Byatt The Power and the Glory-No Graham Greene The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie-No Muriel Spark Rabbit, Run-No John Updike Ragtime-No E.L. Doctorow The Recognitions-No William Gaddis Red Harvest-No Dashiell Hammett Revolutionary Road-No Richard Yates S - T The Sheltering Sky-No Paul Bowles Slaughterhouse-Five-No Kurt Vonnegut Snow Crash-No Neal Stephenson The Sot-Weed Factor-No John Barth The Sound and the Fury-No William Faulkner The Sportswriter-No Richard Ford The Spy Who Came in From the Cold-No John LeCarre The Sun Also Rises-No Ernest Hemingway Their Eyes Were Watching God-No Zora Neale Hurston Things Fall Apart-No Chinua Achebe To Kill a Mockingbird-Yes Harper Lee To the Lighthouse-No Virginia Woolf Tropic of Cancer-No Henry Miller U - W Ubik-No Philip K. Dick Under the Net-No Iris Murdoch Under the Volcano-No Malcolm Lowrey Watchmen-Yes Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons White Noise-No Don DeLillo White Teeth-No Zadie Smith Wide Sargasso Sea-No
Originally Posted By vbdad55 Haven't seen the article yet, do they rank them or just list by alphabet ?
Originally Posted By Jafar30 Yes the list in alphabetical order <a href="http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/2005/ 100books/the_complete_list.html</a>
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan (And 7 of those were in high school -- you know, when they make you read a book and overanalyse it to death, wringing any possible enjoyment out of it with a never-ending search for stuff like symbolism?)
Originally Posted By JohnS1 Hey - where's my book on that list??? I've read about 25 of those. I prefer 19th century lit, to be honest.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Stupid Time, stopping at 25... #26: Live! from Death Valley: Dispatches from America's Low Point (John, please tell me that your book isn't packed with hidden symbolism. I always imagine that lit. teachers dream up all sorts of hidden obscure meanings in these books, and that somewhere far away the original author is going, "Huh!? It was just a damn adventure story about some prep school kids on an island, for cryin' out loud!"
Originally Posted By JohnS1 Another thing - why is it best books since 1923? What's significant about the year 1923? Was the American public illiterate before that year? And yes, Toonie, my book is fraught with symbolism! Surely you must have deduced that sand is symbolic with the passage of time, salt is symbolic of upper class power and heat is symbolic of unbridled sexual passions. Sheesh, next time I'll try to spell it out for SOME of you! (-;
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Time Magazine began publishing in 1923. Anything written before that was ahead of its Time.
Originally Posted By LuLu haha! I know I read a few of these in high school. I have to admit that that was so long ago, I don't even remember for sure about some of them! I probably have only read 1 since then! I'm not a big fiction reader. Lately, I rarely read at all, other than online and the newspaper. Sad!
Originally Posted By Jafar30 LOL One book that is one their is a graphic novel, Watchmen,which is very good but I'm not sure it should be on the list. And Jim in Merced I agree that Green Eggs and Ham should be on there or some Dr. Seuss book. I mean how many of us got our start reading Dr. Seuss?
