Entertainment Weekly's Top 100 Novels of All Time

[Mattrick]

I'll copy down the list here from the magazine itself. I own a decent number of them and just haven't read them and this list has made me want to read some of them sooner rather than later. Figured this thread could spur some good discussion! I'll start at 100 and go down to number one.

100 - The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)
99 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
98 - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
97 - The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
96 - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (1979)
95 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998 )
94 - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868 )
93 - Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992)
92 - The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (1943)
91 - The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958 )

90 - The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
89 - Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1895)
88 - The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
87 - White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
86 - A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (1990)
85 - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
84 - Clockers by Richard Price (1992)
83 - The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1993)
82 - Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999)
81 - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818 )

80 - Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (1913)
79 - Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012)
78 - A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (1961)
77 - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
76 - The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
75 - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
74 - Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997)
73 - The Spy Who came in From the Cold by John le Carre (1963)
72 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
71 - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

70 - Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
69 - Money by Martin Amis (1985)
68 - Middlemarch by George Elliot (1874)
67 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
66 - Howards End by E.M. Forster (1910)
65 - Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)
64 - Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
63 - Portnoy's Complaint by Phillip Roth (1969)
62 - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
61 - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1988 )

60 - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
59 - Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
58 - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
57 - The Children of Men by P.D. James (1985)
56 - Sophie's Choice by William Styron (1979)
55 - A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1995)
54 - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (2012)
53 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
52 - Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
51 - The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)

50 - Snow by Orhan Pamuk (2002)
49 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)
48 - The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
47 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1994)
46 - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)
45 - The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
44 - His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman (1995-2000)
43 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
42 - The Stand by Stephen King (1978 )
41 - Go Tell It on The Mountain by James Baldwin (1953)

40 - A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1993)
39 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
38 - The Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker (1991-95)
37 - The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
36 - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)
35 - A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe (1964)
34 - The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978 )
33 - Maus by Art Spiegelman (1986)
32 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
31 - Blindness by Jose Saramago (1995)

30 - Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
29 - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986)
28 - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
27 - A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle (1962)
26 - Invisble Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
25 - Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)
24 - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)
23 - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
22 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)
21 - An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925)

20 - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)
19 - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
18 - Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
17 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
16 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
15 - Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (1975)
14 - Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1867)
13 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
12 - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
11 - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

10 - Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (1952)
9 - Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
8 - The Rabbit quartet by John Updike (1960-90)
7 - The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007)
6 - My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918 )
5 - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
4 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
3 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
2 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
1 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1878 )

[Merlin1958]

"The Great Gatsby" at No. 2? I generally enjoy the "Classics" but that one is a snooze fest!!!



BTW Thank you very much for putting these is numerical order, Matts!!!!

[Mattrick]

I'll have to fix those darn smilies...dinner now though!

[pathoftheturtle]

I probably wouldn't describe The Great Gatsby just that way, but I don't think it really deserves all the praise it gets, either.

Did you hear about last year Ann Romney listed Anna Karenina as a favorite novel through her Pinterest account, and people were debating what she saw in it? Some even suggested that she maybe just likes books that she hears are good.

[Jean]

I'll have to fix those darn smilies...dinner now though!

bears have fixed them for you

[pathoftheturtle]

8)

Excellent.

Thanks for the thread, Matt.

[RainInSpain]

How interesting - Anna Karenina in the top spot. Not that I object, just didn't really expect it.

Good to see An American Tragedy make the list - it was one of my favorite books for quite a few years when I was a teenager. Still enjoy rereading it once in a while.

[Mattrick]

What's funny is I've read more from the top 25 than the next 75.

[RainInSpain]

Same here.

[Jean]

The ones bears have read (italicized are the ones they never finished):

99 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
94 - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868 )
92 - The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (1943)
91 - The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958 )

89 - Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1895)
85 - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
81 - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818 )

80 - Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (1913)
77 - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
71 - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

62 - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)

59 - Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
53 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

42 - The Stand by Stephen King (1978 )

32 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)

28 - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
24 - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)
23 - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
22 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)

19 - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
18 - Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
16 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
14 - Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1867)
13 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
12 - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)

10 - Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (1952)

7 - The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007)
5 - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
4 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
3 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
2 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
1 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1878 )

[pathoftheturtle]

...italicized are the ones (bears) never finished...

99 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
...

Wait, whut?

That's one of those books that I sometimes reread accidentally.
Like, when I intended to finish Proust, you know?
I'll find myself halfway through HG instead, you know?
You know what I mean, don't you?

No?

[needfulthings]

NUMBER 99


NUMBER 101?

Spoiler:

[Merlin1958]

NUMBER 99


NUMBER 101?

Spoiler:

Funniest book ever written!!! I remember laughing out loud on the L.I. R.R. whilst reading it!!!

Spoiler:

Don't Panic and always have a towel!! LOL

[RainInSpain]

Funny that I also found The Hitchhiker's Guide hard to read. I did finish it, because it was highly praised by a friend of mine (a Russian living in the US), but I have never had the urge to reread. To me, "Three Men In a Boat", for example, is a much, much funnier book.

[Mattrick]

Catcher In The Rye is the funniest book I've ever read...though the farting in Dreamcatcher was fantastic.

[Merlin1958]

Funny that I also found The Hitchhiker's Guide hard to read. I did finish it, because it was highly praised by a friend of mine (a Russian living in the US), but I have never had the urge to reread. To me, "Three Men In a Boat", for example, is a much, much funnier book.

To each his own, right? I really appreciate the English "Dry" humor.

The entire concept for the 2nd book "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is a classic!!

[pathoftheturtle]

"Three Men In a Boat" is another nice example of British wit. I also like the off-the-wall science fiction in the Hitchhiker books. (And in the Dirk Gently books, although they're kind of different.) But to me it does not seem that it is funnier than any other writing ever anyway. I also see it as debatable whether it truly belongs on a top 100 list, (I'd say it probably does, just because, myself) but my initial point was only that I do not understand how it is hard to read. The first book, especially, has such flow. Of course, I can accept if not feeling it is a point which no one can explain; I just wanted to ask.

[Dan]

"The Great Gatsby" at No. 2? I generally enjoy the "Classics" but that one is a snooze fest!!!



BTW Thank you very much for putting these is numerical order, Matts!!!!

Hated it! Only book I've ever sold purely because I couldn't stand it.

[Stebbins]

Thank you for posting this, Mattrick! I always wanted to print out a copy of this, but online it's just a slideshow. I haven't read that many so far-- not even the whole Harry Potter series, and I was an early adpoter-- but now that I have it, I may be on it like white on rice. On the bucket life, fer sure.

Regarding TGG: It would most certainly be nowhere near my number two novel. However, I did think the end of the book was powerful. I thought the movie was the closest book adaptation I have ever seen, but it didn't (and probably couldn't) captured how sad it was no one really cared

Spoiler:

when he died.

. That theme really spoke to me. And I could see it on the list the way it is composed; the list and the novel. My question is, Where is Lord Of The Flies ???

[needfulthings]

HOPEFULLY ON YOUR BOOKSHELF

[pathoftheturtle]

[Jean]

...italicized are the ones (bears) never finished...

99 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
...

Wait, whut?

That's one of those books that I sometimes reread accidentally.
Like, when I intended to finish Proust, you know?
I'll find myself halfway through HG instead, you know?
You know what I mean, don't you?

No?

I know, I KNOW!!! I promise I'll give it another go. I think the main problem was that the book was a very old paperback, all falling apart, with the font pathetically small; now that I have my Kindle I totally intend to finish the books I put aside some time in the past - maybe not all of them, but certainly those recommended by my friends.

Funny that I also found The Hitchhiker's Guide hard to read. I did finish it, because it was highly praised by a friend of mine (a Russian living in the US), but I have never had the urge to reread. To me, "Three Men In a Boat", for example, is a much, much funnier book.

LOL!! Three Men in a Boat is such a classic book of a Soviet childhood! I bet you had known it by heart long before you learned your first English word.

[RainInSpain]

Totally, Jean! By the time I graduated from school, that old paperback of Three Men... was falling apart and its pages looked ages old from wear and tear.

And Mike, by "hard to read" I mean not being really interested in what happens next in the book. It was the very opposite of a page-turner for me. Also, this was a case when you read something, realize that "this was probably written with the intention to be very funny" and just shrug.
Read it in Russian, though, so I blame a bad translation, although it did not sound awkward as many bad translations do.

[pathoftheturtle]

I know, I KNOW!!! I promise I'll give it another go. I think the main problem was that the book was a very old paperback, all falling apart, with the font pathetically small; now that I have my Kindle I totally intend to finish the books I put aside some time in the past - maybe not all of them, but certainly those recommended by my friends.

Oh. Good, that makes me feel better.

And Mike, by "hard to read" I mean not being really interested in what happens next in the book. It was the very opposite of a page-turner for me. Also, this was a case when you read something, realize that "this was probably written with the intention to be very funny" and just shrug.
Read it in Russian, though, so I blame a bad translation, although it did not sound awkward as many bad translations do.

Oh. Darn, that makes me feel worse.
It's breezy and absurd. It messes with readers' expectations, with the intention, I think, to open minds just a little. But not having cared what happens next, I don't know how to respond to. Personally, I was excited by developments at least until some way into the fifth book.

[Mattrick]

I was very surprised to see no Orwell or Steinbeck.