The top 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century

I found this somewhere on the net. Since I've been coming here there have been several times when someone would post a Top 100 list by a magazine like Rolling Stone on the music forum, so I thought it might be interesting to post this here. What do you all think of the selections and the orders, and which have you read so far? This was, by the way, compiled by the editorial board of the Modern Library.

(I'll put a * next to the ones I've read so far)

1. Ulysses: James Joyce *(Currently reading)
2. The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald *(Well, I almost finihsed it but I never got around too, since it was my schools copy and I had to give it back)
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: James Joyce
4. Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov *(I read about 50 pages at once, but I was borrowing it from this guy I had a class with. I will be buying my own copy soon)
5. Brave New World: Aldous Huxley *
6. The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner
7. Catch-22: Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon: Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers: D.H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck *(Same as The Great Gatsby)
11. Under the Volcano: Malcolm Lowery
12. The Way of All Flesh: Samuel Butler
13. 1984: George Orwell *
14. I, Claudius: Robert Graves
15. To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy: Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut (will be getting this soon, since I loved Cat's Cradle)
19. Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison
20. Native Son: Richard Wright
21. Henderson The Rain King: Saul Bellow
22. Appointment in Sammarra: John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy): John Dos Passos
24. Winesburg, Ohio: Sherwood Anderson
25. A Passage to India: E.M. Forster
26. The Wings of the Dove: Henry James
27. The Ambassadors: Henry James
28. Tender Is the Night: F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy: James T. Farrell
30. The Good Soldier: Ford Madox Ford
31. Animal Farm: George Orwell *
32. The Golden Bowl: Henry James
33. Sister Carrie: Theodore Dreiser
34. A Handful of Dust: Evelyn Waugh
35. As I Lay Dying: William Faulkner
36. All the King's Men: Robert Penn Warren
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey: Thornton Wilder
38. Howards End: E.M. Forster
39. Go Tell It On The Mountain: James Baldwin
40. The Heart of the Matter: Graham Greene
41. Lord of the Flies: William Golding *
42. Deliverance: James Dickey
43. A Dance to the Music of Time: Anthony Powell
44. Point Counter Point: Aldous Huxley
45. The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway
46. The Secret Agent: Joseph Conrad
47. Nostromo: Joseph Conrad
48. The Rainbow: D.H. Lawrence
49. Women in Love: D.H. Lawrence
50. Tropic of Cancer: Henry Miller
51. The Naked and the Dead: Norman Mailer
52. Portnoy's Complaint: Philip Roth
53. Pale Fire: Vladimir Nabokov
54. Light In August: William Faulkner
55. On the Road: Jack Kerouac *
56. The Maltese Falcon: Dashiell Hammett
57. Parade's End: Ford Madox Ford
58. The Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton
59. Zuleika Dobson: Max Beerbohm
60. The Moviegoer: Walker Percy
61. Death Comes to the Archbishop: Willa Cather
62. From Here To Eternity: James Jones
63. The Wapshot Chronicles: John Cheever
64. The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger *
65. A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess *
66. Of Human Bondage: W. Somerset Maugham
67. Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad
68. Main Street: Sinclair Lewis
69. The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton
70. The Alexandria Quartet: Lawrence Durrell
71. A High Wind In Jamaica: Richard Hughes
72. A House for Miss Biswas: V.S. Naipaul
73. The Day of the Locust: Nathaniel West
74. A Farewell to Arms: Ernest Hemingway
75. Scoop: Evelyn Waugh
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Muriel Spark
77. Finnegans Wake: James Joyce
78. Kim: Rudyard Kipling
79. A Room With a View: E.M. Forster
80. Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh
81. The Adventures of Augie March: Saul Bellow
82. Angle of Repose: Wallace Stegner
83. A Bend in the River: V.S. Naipaul
84. The Death of the Heart: Elizabeth Bowen
85. Lord Jim: Joseph Conrad
86. Ragtime: E.L. Doctorow
87. The Old Wives' Tale: Arnold Bennett
88. The Call of the Wild: Jack London *
89. Loving: Henry Green
90. Midnight's Children: Salman Rushdie
91. Tobacco Road: Erskine Caldwell
92. Ironweed: William Kennedy
93. The Magus: John Fowles
94. Wide Sargasso Sea: Jean Rhys
95. Under the Net: Iris Murdoch
96. Sophie's Choice: William Styron
97. The Sheltering Sky: Paul Bowles
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice: James M. Cain
99. The Ginger Man: J.P. Donleavy
100. The Magnficent Ambersons: Booth Tarkington

Geez, I really haven't read that many of them, which surprised me since I've read hundreds of books; but then again this is only for books written in the English language from 1900-1999.

 

Interesting list. I didn't know that Lolita was in English, I thought that it was in Russian origianaly.

I notice that Lord of the Rings is not on the list.

 

The Great Gatsby as the second????? They've GOT to be kidding!

 

Nabokov wrote Lolita in English and then translated it to Russian.

Anyway, a list like this where you don't find such great authors as Tolkien, Milne, Bradbury and Le Guin just can't be taken seriously.

Oh, and wiuf - the XXth century lasted from 1901-2000. That's how it goes.

 

5. Brave New World: Aldous Huxley
64. The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger

w00tness!! I am now happy..

 

NOT one single entry from Tom Robbins? That list has some great books, but ommiting Tom from the list is a major oversight.

 

I just cannot believe that The Lord Of The Rings isn't on the list. The people who made that list are stupid idiots!!!!

But it's pretty interesting.

 

Yeah, I know I'm a fucking idiot, thanks so much for pointing it out!

 

that's the modern library list... i've seen it before, they publish it everywhere. i've read about 20 of them

 

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is the worst book I've ever read!

 

I'm suprised Hemingway's books are so low on the list.

 

Wow, I need to catch up on some reading, I've only read a handful of those.
I was thinking of reading The Grapes of Wrath, as I have a book with 5 of John Steinbeck's novels in it, but have only read Of Mice and Men.

 

I dont like many on the list! The great gatsby i thought was terrible.

 

1984, animal farm, brave new world, a clockwork orange (movie) is as close as I get