Official Lists

feminista Modern Library Radcliffe Modern Library readers Best Ever Gay & Lesbian BBC

Combined, this is what I meant to read in 2001, the first year of this endeavor; now that I've read the obvious titles, chipping away at the others might not change much.

Feminista

Now being updated here: Feminista

Source: http://www.feminista.com/v2n3/100.html

Modern Library

Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
Validity: I probably could have spared myself this entire effort if when I first came across the list had I not misread MLA as "Modern Library" (an imprint of Random House) as "Modern Language Association." When I thought it was the MLA I gave the list a lot more weight. Deliverance but not To Kill a Mockingbird can mean only that the publishing house wanted to sell titles it hadn't previously offered under that imprint.
How many I had read as of December , 2000, 27; after the first year, December 2001, 47. As of December 2006, 67.
How many more I intend to read: I don't expect I'd ever manage Finnegans Wake, but I believe it deserves its place. I figure I'll survive without reading too much Henry James and I flatly refuse to read another Dreiser novel. I submit that more than half of this list dates from the first half of the century because the older books are cheaper for Modern Library to reprint, and not only because the impact and import of newer books must be by definition less.

  1. James Joyce, Ulysses May 2004
  2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
  3. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man January 2001
  4. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February 2001
  5. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  6. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
  7. Joseph Heller, Catch-22
  8. Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon November 2000
  9. D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers December 2000
  10. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
  11. Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
  12. Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh November 2004
  13. George Orwell, 1984
  14. Robert Graves, I, Claudius
  15. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December 2002
  16. Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
  17. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter February 2001
  18. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
  19. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May 2002
  20. Richard Wright, Native Son
  21. Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King January 2006
  22. John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra October 2005
  23. John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (trilogy)
  24. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
  25. E.M. Forster, A Passage to India February 2005
  26. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
  27. Henry James, The Ambassadors
  28. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night March 2001
  29. James T. Farrell, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy
  30. Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier December 2005
  31. George Orwell, Animal Farm
  32. Henry James, The Golden Bowl
  33. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
  34. Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust May 2001
  35. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
  36. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men August 2004
  37. Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey October 2004
  38. E.M. Forster, Howards End
  39. James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain January 2001
  40. Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
  41. William Golding, Lord of the Flies
  42. James Dickey, Deliverance February 2001
  43. Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (series)
  44. Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
  45. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
  46. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
  47. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
  48. D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
  49. D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October 2004
  50. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
  51. Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
  52. Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint September 2006
  53. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire June 2002
  54. William Faulkner, Light in August April 2001
  55. Jack Kerouac, On the Road March 2001
  56. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
  57. Ford Maddox Ford, Parade's End
  58. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence January 2001
  59. Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
  60. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
  61. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
  62. James Jones, From Here to Eternity
  63. John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicles
  64. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
  65. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
  66. W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
  67. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
  68. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street October 2004
  69. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth February 2001
  70. Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
  71. Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
  72. V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas
  73. Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
  74. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
  75. Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
  76. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  77. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
  78. Rudyard Kipling, Kim January 2001
  79. E.M. Forster, A Room With a View
  80. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
  81. Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
  82. Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose July 2001
  83. V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
  84. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart February 2001
  85. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
  86. E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime January 2001
  87. Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale
  88. Jack London, The Call of the Wild November 2004
  89. Henry Green, Loving
  90. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children July 2002
  91. Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road July 2001
  92. William Kennedy, Ironweed April 2001
  93. John Fowles, The Magus March 2001
  94. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
  95. Iris Murdoch, Under the Net August 2001
  96. William Styron, Sophie's Choice December 2004
  97. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
  98. James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice February 2003
  99. J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
  100. Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons February 2001

Radcliffe

Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100rivallist.html
Validity: I have no idea what the Radcliffe Publishing Course is like. I assume it's accredited. I like this list because it's the only one to include children's books. Also because I've read more of it than I have of the others.
How many I had read as of December 2000, 55; in the first year, to December 2001, 61; and as of December 2006: 82.
How many more I intend to read: I figure most of these are worth trying.

  1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
  2. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
  3. John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
  4. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
  5. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
  6. James Joyce, Ulysses May 2004
  7. Toni Morrison, Beloved
  8. William Golding, The Lord of the Flies
  9. George Orwell, 1984
  10. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
  11. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February 2001
  12. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
  13. E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
  14. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  15. Joseph Heller, Catch-22
  16. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  17. George Orwell, Animal Farm
  18. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
  19. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
  20. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
  21. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
  22. A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
  23. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
  24. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May 2002
  25. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
  26. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
  27. Richard Wright, Native Son
  28. Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  29. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
  30. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
  31. Jack Kerouac, On the Road March 2001
  32. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
  33. Jack London, Call of the Wild November 2004
  34. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December 2002
  35. Henry James, Portrait of a Lady July 2004
  36. James Baldwin, Go Tell in On the Mountain January 2001
  37. John Irving, The World According To Garp
  38. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men August 2004
  39. E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
  40. J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
  41. Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List
  42. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence January 2001
  43. Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
  44. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
  45. Upton Sinclair, Jungle
  46. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
  47. L. Frank Baum, Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  48. D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover April 2005
  49. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
  50. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
  51. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
  52. E.M. Forster, Howards End
  53. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood May 2001
  54. J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
  55. Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses
  56. Toni Morrison, Jazz March 2002
  57. William Styron, Sophie's Choice December 2004
  58. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! September 2004
  59. E.M. Forster, A Passage To India March 2005
  60. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
  61. Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find October 2005
  62. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night March 2001
  63. Virginia Woolf, Orlando December 2005
  64. D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers December 2000
  65. Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities
  66. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
  67. John Knowles, A Separate Peace
  68. William Faulkner, Light in August April 2001
  69. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
  70. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
  71. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
  72. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
  73. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
  74. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
  75. D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October 2004
  76. Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
  77. Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
  78. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
  79. Dashiell Hammett, Maltese Falcon
  80. Norman Mailer, Naked and the Dead
  81. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
  82. Don Delillo, White Noise
  83. Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
  84. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
  85. H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds
  86. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
  87. Henry James, Bostonians
  88. Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
  89. Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop
  90. Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
  91. F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
  92. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  93. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
  94. Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt May 2002
  95. Rudyard Kipling, Kim January 2005
  96. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Beautiful and the Damned
  97. John Updike, Rabbit, Run
  98. E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear To Tread
  99. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street October 2004
  100. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children July 2002

MLA Readers

Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
Validity: None. To Kill a Mockingbird is in the top ten, as it ought to be and as Radcliffe has it (Feminista didn't order its choices), but so are all four of Ayn Rand's novels and three by L. Ron Hubbard. Robert Heinlein might be a fine writer (I wouldn't know), but not fine enough to capture seven places; I'd never heard of Charles de Lint and he has eight. What this list shows is that Objectivism and science fiction and Christian Science lend themselves to zealotry and ballot-packing. Also any list that considers A Town Like Alice to be worth reading at all obviously is severely flawed.
How many I had read as of December 2000, 38; as of June 2006, 55.
How many more I intend to read: Few that don't occur in the other lists or in my own previous lists. I have meant to read Stranger in a Strange Land since high school, and the Robertson Davies trilogies since I came across The Lyre of Orpheus in 1991, and At Swim-Two-Birds since it was assigned to me in the fall of 1989.

  1. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  2. Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
  3. L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
  5. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
  6. George Orwell, 1984
  7. Ayn Rand, Anthem
  8. Ayn Rand, We the Living
  9. L. Ron Hubbard, Mission Earth
  10. L. Ron Hubbard, Fear
  11. James Joyce, Ulysses May 2004
  12. Joseph Heller, Catch-22
  13. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby
  14. Frank Herbert, Dune
  15. Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
  16. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land October 2005
  17. Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice
  18. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  19. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
  20. Geroge Orwell, Animal Farm
  21. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
  22. John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
  23. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
  24. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
  25. William Golding, Lord of the Flies
  26. Jack Schaefer, Shane
  27. Nevil Shute, Trustee From the Toolroom
  28. John Irving, A Prayer For Owen Meany
  29. Stephen King, The Stand
  30. John Fowles, French Lieutenant's Woman
  31. Toni Morrison, Beloved
  32. E.R. Eddision, Worm Ouroboros
  33. William Faulkner, The Sound And the Fury
  34. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita February 2001
  35. Charles De Lint, Moonheart
  36. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! September 2004
  37. W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
  38. Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood December 2005
  39. Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
  40. Robertson Davies, Fifth Business August 2005
  41. Charles De Lint, Someplace To Be Flying
  42. Jack Kerouac, On the Road March 2001
  43. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
  44. Charles De Lint, Yarrow
  45. H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
  46. Miceky Spillane, One Lonely Night
  47. Charles De Lint, Memory And Dream
  48. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse December 2002
  49. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
  50. Charles De Lint, Trader
  51. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
  52. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter February 2001
  53. Margaret Atwood, Handmaid's Tale
  54. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
  55. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
  56. Nevil Shute, On the Beach January 2001
  57. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man January 2001
  58. Charles De Lint, Greenmantle
  59. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game April 2003
  60. Charles De Lint, Little Country
  61. William Gaddis, Recognitions
  62. Robert Heinlein, Starship Trooper
  63. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
  64. John Irving, The World According To Garp
  65. Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
  66. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House May 2001
  67. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
  68. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
  69. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man May 2002
  70. Terri Windling, Wood Wife
  71. John Fowles, The Magus March 2001
  72. Robert Heinlein, Door Into Summer
  73. Robert Pirsig, Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
  74. Robert Graves, I, Claudius
  75. Jack London, Call of the Wild November 2004
  76. Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds January 2003
  77. Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
  78. Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
  79. Richard Adams, Watership Down
  80. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
  81. Tom Clancy, Hunt For Red October
  82. Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
  83. Robert Heinlein, Puppet Masters
  84. Stephen King, It
  85. Thomas Pynchon, V.
  86. Robert Heinlein, Double Star
  87. Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy
  88. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
  89. William Faulkner, Light in August April 2001
  90. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  91. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms
  92. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
  93. Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
  94. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
  95. Charles De Lint, Mulengro
  96. Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
  97. Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood
  98. Richard Bach, Illusions
  99. Robertson Davies, Cunning Man
  100. Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses

The 2001 Lists Merged

In the four lists of 100 books each, there were 292 discrete titles. M, R, F, and O exclusively listed 221 of them (M 45, R 8, F 85, and O 54) and 71 were shared.

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Manchester Guardian reports a Norwegian book club's poll of 54 worldwide authors' opinion of the 100 most important fictional works of all time. As of May 2002 when I started, I'd read 42; as of June 2006, 55. And The Aeneid is was my book of shame.

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"As published in the June 22, 1999 issue of The Advocate, the 100 best lesbian and gay novels, as selected by the Publishing Triangle, an assocation of gay men and lesbians in publishing."

As of December 2006, 26. Several appear on the Feminista list.

  1. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
  2. James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
  3. Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
  4. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
  5. Andre Gide, The Immoralist
  6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando December 2005
  7. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
  8. Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman February 2005
  9. Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
  10. Audre Lorde, Zami
  11. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray October 2005
  12. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
  13. Herman Melville, Billy Budd (high school, probably doesn't count)
  14. Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
  15. Andrew Holleran, Dancer From the Dance
  16. E.M. Forster, Maurice (early college)
  17. Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar
  18. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle January 2005
  19. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (summer of 1990 or 1991)
  20. Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
  21. Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding (2001)
  22. John Rechy, City of Night
  23. Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
  24. Isabel Miller, Patience & Sarah February 2006
  25. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
  26. Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
  27. Henry James, The Bostonians
  28. Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
  29. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina (1994ish)
  30. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (2001)
  31. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (fall 1988: Modern English lit)
  32. Mary Renault, The Persian Boy August 2006
  33. Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
  34. Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library
  35. Dorothy Bussy, Olivia
  36. Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
  37. Carol Anshaw, Aquamarine
  38. James Baldwin, Another Country
  39. Colette, Cheri
  40. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (after 1995)
  41. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1993ish)
  42. D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love October 2004
  43. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1994)
  44. Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies December 2006
  45. Robert Musil, Young Rorless
  46. James Purdy, Eustace Chisholm and the Works
  47. Terry Andrews, The Story of Harold
  48. John Horne, The Gallery
  49. June Arnold, Sister Gin
  50. Neil Bartlett, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall
  51. Christopher Bram, Father of Frankenstein
  52. William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
  53. Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories
  54. Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil
  55. Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (2002)
  56. Randall Kenan, A Visitation of Spirits
  57. Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
  58. Ronald Firbank, Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli
  59. Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia
  60. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (2002)
  61. Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters
  62. Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (>2000)
  63. Bertha Harris, Lover
  64. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1997)
  65. Violette Leduc, La Batarde
  66. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1997ish)
  67. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (high school)
  68. Petronius, The Satyricon
  69. Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
  70. Roger Peyrefitte, Special Friendships
  71. Jo Sinclair, The Changelings
  72. Jose Lezama Lima, Paradiso
  73. Irving Rosenthal, Sheeper
  74. Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres
  75. Christa Winsloe, The Child Manuela (Madchen in Uniform)
  76. Mark Merlis, An Arrow's Flight
  77. William Talsman, The Gaudy Image
  78. Alfred Chester, The Exquisite Corpse
  79. Geoff Ryman, Was 2004
  80. Violette Leduc, Therese and Isabelle
  81. Michel Tournier, Gemini
  82. Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty
  83. Rebecca Brown, The Children's Crusade
  84. Colm Tiobin, The Story of the Night
  85. Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)
  86. Jose Donoso, Hell Has No Limits
  87. Elana Nachman (Dykewomon), Riverfinger Women
  88. Tom Spanbauer, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon
  89. Dennis Cooper, Closer
  90. Honore de Balzac, Lost Illusions
  91. Elizabeth Jolley, Miss Peabody's Inheritance
  92. Virgillio Pinera, Rene's Flesh
  93. Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy
  94. Jo Sinclair, Wasteland
  95. May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing December 2006
  96. Paul Russell, Sea of Tranquillity
  97. Jacqueline Woodson, Autobiography of a Family Photo
  98. Jane DeLynn, In Thrall
  99. Joanna Russ, On Strike Against God
  100. Kate Millett, Sita

Another list, from here (a Hungarian journalist offers this as a list that Waterstone's, in association with the BBC, developed in September 1996) and linked courtesy of Mo. As of 19 June 2004, I had read 62; as of June 2006, 70. This is a readers' list, slightly more dignified than the MLA readers' list; I doubt I'm going to read any more Stephen King or start on Michael Crichton but I've never heard of Jung Chang or Wild Swans and that, along with others, is going on my to-read list.

  1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
  2. George Orwell, 1984
  3. George Orwell, Animal Farm
  4. James Joyce, Ulysses
  5. Joseph Heller, Catch-22
  6. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
  7. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
  8. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
  9. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
  10. Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
  11. Jung Chang, Wild Swans
  12. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
  13. William Golding, The Lord of the Flies
  14. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
  15. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  16. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
  17. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
  18. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
  19. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
  20. Albert Camus, The Outsider Camus had no such title in English and I figure this is the Englished Hungarian for L'Étranger.
  21. C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  22. Franz Kafka, The Trial
  23. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
  24. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  25. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
  26. Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
  27. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
  28. D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
  29. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
  30. Primo Levi, If This is a Man
  31. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
  32. Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory
  33. Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu
  34. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  35. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
  36. Toni Morrison, Beloved
  37. A. S. Byatt, Possession
  38. Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
  39. E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
  40. Richard Adams, Watership Down
  41. Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
  42. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
  43. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
  44. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
  45. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
  46. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  47. Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
  48. E. M. Forster, Howard's End
  49. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
  50. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
  51. Frank Herbert, Dune
  52. John Irvine, A Prayer for Owen Meany
  53. Patrick Süskind, Perfume
  54. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
  55. Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
  56. Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie
  57. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
  58. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
  59. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
  60. John Fowles, The Magus
  61. Graham Greene, Brighton Rock December 2005
  62. Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
  63. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
  64. Armistead Maupin, Tales from the City
  65. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
  66. Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin
  67. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
  68. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
  69. E. M. Forster, A Room with a View
  70. Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim July 2006
  71. Stephen King, It
  72. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
  73. Stephen King, The Stand
  74. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
  75. Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
  76. Roald Dahl, Matilda
  77. Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho
  78. Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  79. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
  80. Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
  81. D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
  82. Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
  83. Delia Smith, Complete Cookery Course
  84. Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling
  85. D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
  86. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
  87. Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 - A Space Odyssey
  88. Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
  89. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  90. Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom
  91. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
  92. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
  93. Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
  94. Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country
  95. Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
  96. Roddy Doyle, The Van
  97. Roald Dahl, The BFG
  98. Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
  99. Robert Graves, I, Claudius
  100. Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer

Either I've got to develop some resistance or people have got to stop making up lists, especially ones requiring as much cleaning up as this one did, in formatting, misspellings, and inconsistent inclusions of first names, even for the same author in different entries. A Montana State University graduate English class developed this list, which I also discovered through Mo. As of December 2004, 47; as of June 2006, 56. I like that the first five are before 1650 and that of those five, the two English ones are Jacobian. Whether anyone ever actually spoke English like that, certainly no one's written it that evocatively, purely yet imaginatively, utterly beautifully, since.

  1. The Collected Works of Shakespeare (I've read about a third)
  2. The Bible (which? I'll go with the King James)
  3. Cervantes, Don Quixote
  4. Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
  5. Ovid, Metamorphoses
  6. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
  7. Oresteia of Aeschylus
  8. Tao Te Ching-Lao Tzu
  9. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov June 2005
  10. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
  11. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
  12. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
  13. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
  14. Dante, Divine Comedy
  15. Poems of Wallace Stevens
  16. Arabian Nights
  17. Tolstoy, War and Peace
  18. Toni Morrison, Beloved
  19. Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges
  20. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
  21. Isak Dinesen, Anecdotes of Destiny
  22. Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy
  23. Roberto Calasso, Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony
  24. Somadeva, Katasaratsagura (Oceans of Story)
  25. Chekhov, short stories
  26. Bhagavad Gita
  27. James Joyce, Ulysses
  28. Brothers Grimm, fairy tales
  29. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
  30. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
  31. D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
  32. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
  33. Plato: Dialogues
  34. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
  35. Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
  36. Flannery O'Connor: Short Stories
  37. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
  38. Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
  39. Freud, Interpretation of Dreams
  40. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
  41. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
  42. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
  43. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
  44. Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
  45. William Yeats, Collected Poems (which collection? I've read lots and lots but not all)
  46. James Frazer, Golden Bough
  47. Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
  48. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
  49. Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
  50. Jan Potaki, Manuscript found at Saragossa
  51. Euripides, Bacchae
  52. William Thackery, Vanity Fair
  53. Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
  54. Virgil, Aeneid March 2006
  55. Tristan & Iseult, but which?
  56. William Blake, Collected Poems (again, which?)
  57. Golden Ass of Apuleius
  58. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Endgame
  59. Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems
  60. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
  61. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
  62. Jean Racine, Phaedre
  63. Poetics of Aristotle
  64. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
  65. Aristophanes, Lysistrata June 2006
  66. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
  67. Oscar Wilde, Importance of Being Earnest
  68. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
  69. E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
  70. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
  71. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
  72. Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night
  73. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
  74. Maria Vargos Llosa, Storyteller
  75. Heraclitus, Fragments
  76. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
  77. Epic of Gilgamesh
  78. Dostoevsky, The Idiot
  79. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
  80. Lady Murisaki, Tale of Genji
  81. Montaigne's Essays
  82. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
  83. Richard Wright, Native Son
  84. Emerson, On Nature
  85. Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus but not Goethe's Faust?
  86. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
  87. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
  88. John Milton, Paradise Lost winter 2005-2006
  89. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
  90. Richard Wright, Native Son.Does its appearing twice mean it's twice as good as anything else?
  91. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory
  92. George Eliot, Middlemarch
  93. Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord
  94. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
  95. Voltaire, Candide
  96. Fredrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
  97. E.M. Forster, Passage to India March 2005
  98. Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea December 2004
  99. Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques
  100. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God

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