Top 100 Novels of All Times: Our Final List

1. The Stand, by Stephen King (1978 )
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960)
3. The Dark Tower, by Stephen King (1982 - 2004)
4. It, by Stephen King (1986)
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1884)
6. 1984, by George Orwell (1949)
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (1953)
8. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (1954)
9. The Shining, by Stephen King (1977)
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (1865)
11. The Long Walk, by Stephen King (1979)
12. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R. R.Tolkien (1937-1949)
13. Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)
14. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
15. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (1951)
16. Harry Potter, by J.K.Rowling (2001 - 2011)
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945)
18. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger (1951)
19. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (1937)
20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1979)
21. Gulliver's Travels, by Johnathan Swift (1726)
22. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
23. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
24. The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty (1971)
25. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess (1962)
26. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (1954)
27. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (1961)
28. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris (1988 )
29. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
30. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
31. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (1818 )
32. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne (1870)
33. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1901 - 1902)
34. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (1969)
35. Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo (1862)
36. A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin (1996-2011)
37. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells (1897)
38. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
39. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605-1615)
40. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (1962)
41. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)
42. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
43. All Quiet on The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
44. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932)
45. The Scarlett Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
46. Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
47. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (1939)
48. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1861)
49. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
50. Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864)
51. Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)
52. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959)
53. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1719)
54. The Lost World, by A.Conan Doyle (1912)
55. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (1939)
56. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
57. Foundation, by Isaak Asimov (1951-1953)
58. Weaveworld, by Clive Barker (1987)
59. Interview With The Vampire, by Anne Rice (1976)
60. Charlotte's Web, by E.B.White (1952)
61. The Outsiders, by S.E.Hinton (1967)
62. Ghost Story, by Peter Straub (1979)
63. Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)
64. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
65. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (1847)
66. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813)
67. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
68. Candide, by Voltaire (1759)
69. The Time Machine, by H.G.Wells (1895)
70. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton (1990)
71. The Island of Dr.Moreau, by H.G.Wells (1896)
72. The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende (1979)
73. Psycho, by Robert Bloch (1959)
74. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
75. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo (1969)
76. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James (1898 )
77. The Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
78. The Castle, by Kafka (1922, first published 1926)
79. Tarzan of the Apes, by Burroughs (1914)
80. The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway (1926)
81. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (2003)
82. The Stranger, by Albert Camus (1942)
83. East of Eden, by Steinbeck (1952)
84. The Terror, by Dan Simmons (2007)
85. The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse (1943)
86. Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott (1820)
87. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (1818, posthumous)
88. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985)
89. Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith (1950)
90. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)
91. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (1962)
92. Watership Down, by Richard Adams (1972)
93. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (1973)
94. White Fang, by Jack London (1906)
95. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890)
96. The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
97. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
98. The Karamazov Brothers, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)
99. Jaws , by Peter Benchley (1974)
100. The Trial, by Franz Kafka (1914-1915, published in 1925)

Great work bears!!

Now I just need to start reading the ones I missed!

I've read only 70 of those

I didn't count in the ones I never finished, and they are amazingly many:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A Clockwork Orange
The Silence of the Lambs
A Song of Ice and Fire
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Dune
Foundation

Nice, but the top is way too King-biased. Understandably so but still.

I like it that 32 of the novels - that is, one third of the list - were written earlier than 20th century

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pablo

Nice, but the top is way too King-biased. Understandably so but still.

---

Concur.

We could get the interwebs all a flutter if we just massively distributed that list, LOL

Nice to see it all together finally. I have read 48 of these. The remaining 52, many of which have been on my radar for awhile will make up the greater portion of my reading list until I have read them.

EDIT: I have now read 72.

You need to forward the finalized list to, Brian Freeman at Cemetery Dance Publications who agreed to "Publish" it on the WWW. Good job, folks!!

In honor of The Stand:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven...b_5144119.html

Quote:

---

The last novelist to appear on the cover of Time, (In fact, the only author in the 21st century) was Jonathan Franzen when his dazzling novel, Freedom was released. The novelist before him, the last of the 20th century was Stephen King in 1999.

King is considered to be in the category of novelists known as genre writers, the "Master of Horror." He has published over 50 books, won many awards in genre categories, and was even recognized in 2003 by the National Book Foundation for his contribution to American letters with a lifetime achievement award.

Even with all of his awards, his storied history, and dozens upon dozens of bestsellers, Stephen King, in my opinion, is underrated. Naturally, a writer with the volume of work that King has is destined to be passed over for major literary awards because "truly" great writers that win prestigious awards such as The National Book Award and The Pulitzer Prize publish fairly irregularly. King, on the other hand, has consistently published one or two books a year for more than 40 years. Sure, some of his books are less than stellar, and some of them were better when adapted, but there is one novel in particular that King published, multiple times, that should go down as a 20th century classic, not only in the minds of readers, but book critics alike.

In 1978, The Stand was published for the first time. The Stories of John Cheever deservedly won the Pulitzer in 1979. It was also nominated for the National Book Award in '79, with the award going to Tim O'Brien's, Going After Cacciato. The other nominees included John Irving's wonderful The World According to Garp, Diane Johnson's Lying Low, and David Plante's The Family. The last two are most likely head-scratchers to most readers, even voracious readers. The Stand was not even nominated.

After King's popularity and sales increased, the complete and uncut version of The Stand was published in 1990. In 1991, The Pulitzer went to Rabbit at Rest by John Updike, with the other nominees including Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (The clear cut winner in my honest opinion) and another relatively unknown book, Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan. The National Book award went to Mating by Norman Rush, with four other nominees from the authors: Louis Begley, Stephen Dixon, Stanley Elkin, and Sandra Scofield.

In 1991, The Stand should have been considered for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. The complete version is over 1,000 pages, and is the only book besides David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that warrants that length and does not have any needless information.

I'm not saying that Stephen King should have won the Pulitzer or the National Book Award, but he most certainly should have been nominated for at least one of the two in 1991. After all, David Foster Wallace himself, stated that The Stand was among his all time favorite novels, and the late Wallace is considered by many literary critics to be the greatest writer of his generation.

Perhaps Stephen King has missed out on awards due to his volume of work, or because of the fact that he focuses on story over style. The Stand is without a doubt one of the greatest stories ever told. He may be considered the greatest genre writer alive, and his books are likely to be read for hundreds of years, most likely surpassing some of the nominees for both awards in 1991.

There are literature professors and book critics out there that cringe at his name, but the fact of the matter is that Stephen King is one of the greatest living writers. If you have any reservations about his knowledge of craft or his process, go ahead and read his memoir On Writing, an indispensable guide for any aspiring writer and also a book that should have been considered for more prestigious literary awards.

My reading habits primarily are of the "literary" nature, but Stephen King's knowledge of literature, his grasp of storytelling, and the art that he creates are worth taking a stand for, because without Stephen King, the book industry would be vastly different today.

---

Kind of have to agree about the SK bias (a quarter of the top 20) but that's to be expected.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jean

1. The Stand, by Stephen King (1978 )
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960)
3. The Dark Tower, by Stephen King (1982 - 2004)
4. It, by Stephen King (1986)
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1884)
6. 1984, by George Orwell (1949)
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (1953)
8. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (1954)
9. The Shining, by Stephen King (1977)
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (1865)
11. The Long Walk, by Stephen King (1979)
12. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R. R.Tolkien (1937-1949)
13. Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)
14. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
15. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (1951)
16. Harry Potter, by J.K.Rowling (2001 - 2011)
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945)
18. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger (1951)
19. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (1937)
20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1979)
21. Gulliver's Travels, by Johnathan Swift (1726)
22. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
23. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
24. The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty (1971)
25. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess (1962)
26. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (1954)
27. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (1961)
28. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris (1988 )
29. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
30. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
31. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (1818 )
32. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne (1870)
33. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1901 - 1902)
34. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (1969)
35. Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo (1862)
36. A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin (1996-2011)
37. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells (1897)
38. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
39. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605-1615)
40. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (1962)
41. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)
42. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
43. All Quiet on The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
44. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932)
45. The Scarlett Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
46. Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
47. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (1939)
48. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1861)
49. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
50. Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864)
51. Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)
52. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959)
53. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1719)
54. The Lost World, by A.Conan Doyle (1912)
55. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (1939)
56. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
57. Foundation, by Isaak Asimov (1951-1953)
58. Weaveworld, by Clive Barker (1987)
59. Interview With The Vampire, by Anne Rice (1976)
60. Charlotte's Web, by E.B.White (1952)
61. The Outsiders, by S.E.Hinton (1967)
62. Ghost Story, by Peter Straub (1979)
63. Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)
64. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
65. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (1847)
66. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813)
67. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
68. Candide, by Voltaire (1759)
69. The Time Machine, by H.G.Wells (1895)
70. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton (1990)
71. The Island of Dr.Moreau, by H.G.Wells (1896)
72. The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende (1979)
73. Psycho, by Robert Bloch (1959)
74. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
75. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo (1969)
76. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James (1898 )
77. The Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
78. The Castle, by Kafka (1922, first published 1926)
79. Tarzan of the Apes, by Burroughs (1914)
80. The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway (1926)
81. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (2003)
82. The Stranger, by Albert Camus (1942)
83. East of Eden, by Steinbeck (1952)
84. The Terror, by Dan Simmons (2007)
85. The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse (1943)
86. Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott (1820)
87. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (1818, posthumous)
88. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985)
89. Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith (1950)
90. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)
91. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (1962)
92. Watership Down, by Richard Adams (1972)
93. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (1973)
94. White Fang, by Jack London (1906)
95. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890)
96. The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
97. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
98. The Karamazov Brothers, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)
99. Jaws , by Peter Benchley (1974)
100. The Trial, by Franz Kafka (1914-1915, published in 1925)

---

I've only read 53 out of 100! Slacker!!

This is the most biased list I've ever seen lol.