your favorite 20th century novels?

[THX-1138]

I don't know if this has been discussed before,but i need a list of the best of the 20th novels.So post yours,that'll be helpful

Thanx

[Morrisonhotel]

Ok. I'm bound to think of some more but here is a primary list of what I consider to be among the best (and my favourite) novels of the 20th century:
Lanark - Alasdair Gray
Poor things - Alasdair Gray
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
Ulysses - James Joyce (in fact, all of Joyce's novels)
The Lake - George Moore
If not now, when? - Primo Levi
The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi
Spring Snow (actually, for that matter, all of the Sea of Fertility Tertalogy) - Yukio Mishima
Less than zero - Bret Easton Ellis
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Oranges are not the only fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Big Sur - Jack Kerouac
On the road - Jack Kerouac
Naked Lunch - William S Burroughs
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Dangling Man - Saul Bellow
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One hundred years of solitude
George Orwell - Down and out in Paris and London
George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia
James Baldwin - Go tell it on the mountain
Richard Wright - Native Son
H.G. Wells - Ann Veronica
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim

[THX-1138]

thanx very much morrison

[AimusSage]

to add to morrison's list are a few of my favourites that have not yet been metioned:

Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
1984 - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell

[Morrisonhotel]

Of course! How could I forget Golding?

[Morrisonhotel]

J.G. Ballard's Crash

[Stieg]

The eclectic random fifteen of this week (impossible for me to list a definitive choice):

1984 - George Orwell
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Dogs - Robert Calder
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Hell House - Richard Matheson
The Hill of Dreams - Arthur Machen
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
I, Cladius - Robert Graves
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
World War Z - Max Brooks

[The_11th_Doctor]

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
From Russia, With Love - Ian Fleming
1984 - George Orwell
On the Road -Jack Kerouac
Any of the Jeeves stories by P.G. Wodehouse

Gosh, I know there are others that I love, but it's late....

[JBI]

Must not forget Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

[crisaor]

Adolfo Bioy Casares - Diario de la Guerra del Cerdo
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Arturo Pérez Reverte - El Club Dumas
G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Crónica de Una Muerte Anunciada
George Orwell - 1984
J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
Miguel de Unamuno - Abel Sánchez
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose
Will Ferguson - Hapiness TM

[papayahed]

I really liked

The Eight - Katherine Neville (mostly for entertainment purposes)
Blindness - Jose Saramago
that adventures of the dog at night one (I never get the title straigt) - Mark Haddon

[frangipani]

Toni Morrison - Beloved.

[Stieg]

Another fifteen favorites,

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
All Quiet On The Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
The Auctioneer - Joan Samson
Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Donovan's Brain - Curt Siodmak
Fevre Dream - George R R Martin
Forever War - Joe Haldeman
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Hell's Angels - Hunter S Thompson
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
On The Beach - Nevil Shute
Song of Kali - Dan Simmons
Starship Troopers - Robert Heilein
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

[THX-1138]

I really liked

that adventures of the dog at night one (I never get the title straigt) - Mark Haddon

:lol: you mean (the curious incident of the dog at the night time ) that is one of my favorites too

____________________


great lists

[manolia]

Since many of my favourite books are already mentioned, i'll add to the list:

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently-Douglas Adams
Colour of magic light fantastic-Terry Pratchett
Guards Guards-Terry Pratchett
Men at arms-Terry Pratchett
It-Stephen King
Salems Lot-Stephen King

[vheissu]

I like this sort of threads, it's the best way to get new titles of books to read!

I'll add a few, I don't think they've been mentioned yet:

Nights at the circus + The passion of the new Eve by Angela Carter
The magus by John Fowles
Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie
The tesseract by Alex Garland
The book of laughter and forgetting by Milan Kundera

[frangipani]

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

[papayahed]

:lol: you mean (the curious incident of the dog at the night time ) that is one of my favorites too

____________________


great lists

HaHa that's exactly the one.:lol: Boy I sure mangled it that time!!

[Stieg]

Here are twenty more, twentieth century if anything represents diversity and innovative literature.

Burnt Offerings - Robert Marasco
Captain Blood - Rafael Sabatini
Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
Fletch - Gregory McDonald
The Hombre from Sonora - Charles Willeford
The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Siddons
The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye - Horace McCoy
The Other - Thomas Tryon
Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Pop. 1280 - Jim Thompson
The Purple Cloud - M P Shiel
Savage Night - Jim Thompson
Scaramouche - Rafael Sabatini
The Sea Hawk - Rafael Sabatini
The Shark Infested Custard - Charles Willeford
The Stand - Stephen King
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - Horace McCoy

[metal134]

I still have many 20th century classics to read (some of which are sitting on my shelf just waiting for me to get to them!), many of which have been listed here. But out of what I have read, here are my favorites;

Catch 22
The Sound and the Fury
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World
1984
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Rings
It
The Stand

[mS_?]

Wow, I'm actually suprised no one mentioned Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, or Things Fall Apart by Chinue Achebe

[musicfreak12235]

I think On the Road is right up there with 1984, The Great Gatsby, and any Hemmingway but truly any Kerouac is a good read.

[Babbalanja]

I love the classic Modernists' stream-of-consciousness experiments:
Ulysses - James Joyce
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
Pointed Roofs - Dorothy Richardson

Comic genius in a philosophical vein:
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter

The Fifties and Sixties brought us the Beat authors:
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

I love the original postmodernists too. Imaginative metafiction here:
Giles Goat-Boy - John Barth
Gerald's Party - Robert Coover
V. - Thomas Pynchon

Work by some 20th-century stylists you might not know about:
The Women of Whitechapel - Paul West
Lookout Cartridge - Joseph McElroy
Kangaroo - Yuz Aleshkovsky

Newer fiction that I love:
Defiance - Carole Maso
Man or Mango? - Lucy Ellmann
Gloucesterbook - Jonathan Bayliss
Age of Wire and String - Ben Marcus
The Gold-Bug Variations - Richard Powers

[Niamh]

East of Eden- J Stienbeck
Hellfire- M Gallagher
LOTR- JRR Tolkin
Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime- M Haddon
Utterly Monkey- N Laird
merlin Trilogy- M Stewart
Bitterbynde saga- C Dart-Thornton
(more to come as soon as i wake up my sleeping brain....)

[bazarov]

Pasternak - Dr. Zhivago
Bulgakov - Master and Margarita
Orwell - 1984

[ejarg7]

Mine (in no particular order, except maybe for number 1):
1. To Kill A Mockingbird
2. The Great Gatsby
3. 1984
4. Animal Farm
5. In Cold Blood
6. The Devil's Dictionary

[chaplin]

As far as Russian works:

One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (or any Solzhenitsyn novel)
The Master and Margarita
Doctor Zhivago
Lolita

And as far as Stephen King:

Absolutely nothing, becuase all he writes is pure, pure drivel.

[Erik]

Thank you, Stieg for adding Johnny. Last week. Great read. Book shares are good things. Let me add a few.

Grossman - Life and Fate; Forever Flowing
Hegi - Stones From the River
the rest of Joyce's stuff.
Camus - The Stranger
Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy; An Equal Music

[Stieg]

Your welcome Erik :D

Glad you enjoyed it!

[Aunty-lion]

Wow, I'm actually suprised no one mentioned Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, or Things Fall Apart by Chinue Achebe

Seriously??? Are you really surprised?
I would have assumed that most people would hate Gravity's Rainbow. Surely in terms of "lovable popularity" it's not exactly up there with like, Lord of the Rings or one of those types of books. I'm not saying I didn't think it was great, but how many Gravity's Rainbow fanboys are there? Still, it's cool that you liked it. I have to admit I never finished it, but I got a lot out of it nonetheless.

I have to add Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace as one of my favourites, and yay for whoever it was that added The Third Policeman (teeheehee). Also Hunger by Knut Hamsun.

Actually, now that I think about it, there probably are a whole bunch of Pynchon fanboys. And this is a Literature website after all. I take it back, be as surprised as you like!!

[Panflute]

For Whom The Bell Tolls - Hemingway
Bint - Bordewijk
Dubbelspel - Frank Martinus Arion

[frivolity]

I really got confused...and went and checked the year of publishing of 'the castle' and 'the trial'.

[THX-1138]

the trial-1925.
the castle-1922

[likeminded]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is my new favorite title (this came out in 1996)
this novel seems like hitchhikers guide to the galaxy with way more omega acids or with some kind of injection of brain juice. he's not quite Thomas Pynchon, Vineland (my standard favorite title) is an excellent novel, so is anything by Denis Johnson, The Name of the World and Already Dead are two of my favorites, but if anyone else was as taken with Infinite Jest as i am please let me know. Why doesn't anyone talk about Tom Robbins anymore? too silly or hippy genre? i always liked him for a great light read. Has anyone else read "How I Became Stupid"? I read that and got rid of it recently and wished i held onto it. I loved it.

[Stieg]

And as far as Stephen King:

Absolutely nothing, becuase all he writes is pure, pure drivel.

I am not a big fan of Stephen King either, the other day at Borders there was a young kid like 10-12 years old with his mother sifting through the King novels on the horror shelf. I just sighed and wished him luck on the verbose slow burn.

Oh did I mention Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, and Siodmak's Donovan's Brain. Superior sci-fi horror that buries anything ever written by King. Most rare quality perfectly matched to the most scrupulous lit reader.

[Aunty-lion]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is my new favorite title

Right on.

[kenikki]

1984
Catcher in the Rye
On The Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Bell Jar
American Psycho...

the list could go on as the 20th century did produce most of the best literature ever.

[Panflute]

I am not a big fan of Stephen King either, the other day at Borders there was a young kid like 10-12 years old with his mother sifting through the King novels on the horror shelf. I just sighed and wished him luck on the verbose slow burn.

Actually, I rather enjoy King. His works aren't high-standing masterpieces of literature, but it's nonetheless enjoyable to read one of his short stories after finishing a long and difficult book by a more 'intellectually acclaimed' author, so to speak.

[Lyn]

I quite like Stephen King too. I fully accept that most of it is just for entertainment, but what's wrong with that once in a while? He does come up with the odd good idea too. My vote goes for The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown, followed by Lanark by Alasdair Gray.

[Stieg]

There's nothing wrong with King, he is a world class personality. He loves literature and is always consummately pitching his fellow writers works unabashedly. King is a great in that regard.

However, his books don't do much for me, I feel there are scarier and more original writers out there. To each their own.

[Idril]

but if anyone else was as taken with Infinite Jest as i am please let me know.

I loved that book even though the ending left me a little...disappointed and confused. I'd like to read more of his work but just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

I read more 19th century than 20th and most of that is fantasy based, Tolkien, Gaiman, Pratchett and Adams. This past year or so I've been reading a lot of Soviet Lit, Bulgakov, Sholokhov, Pasternak and Fedin which I've really enjoyed. I'm a big fan of John Irving, at least his earlier works like Hotel New Hampshire, World According to Garp and A Prayer For Owen Meany. I just recently finished The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass and I loved that and plan on reading more of his novels.

[Stieg]

Add another notch to the list, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Eager to read more Vonnegut.

[Guzmán]

"The steppenwolf" - Hermann Hesse
"Justine" - Lawrence Durrell
"Brave New world" - Aldous Huxley
"The Crying of lot 49" - Thomas Pynchon

im probably forgetting some...

[aabbcc]

M. Bulgakov - Master and Margarita;
M. Yourcenar - Hadrian's Memoirs;
S. Zweig - The World of Yesterday;
M. Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being;
works by H. Hesse, Th. Mann.

[tscherff]

the one everybody missed

"sometimes a great notion" by ken kesey
also anything by faulkner!

[quasimodo1]

"The Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar {special genre called historical fiction, where in some cases an author attempts to write history in a way which she considers very accurate although many fascets of this history are unknown or partially known. In this case, a "fictional biography" of one of the more benevolent emporers of Rome". I think she gets it perfect.

[Circuvico]

My list

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Tomorrow Series by John Marsden
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Lord of The Rings by J R R Tolkien
Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
Breath by Jo Napoli
Portait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Dubliners by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
1984 by George Orwell
Children of Men by P D James
The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
BFG by Roald Dahl
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Gremlins by Roald Dahl
The Little Prince by Anointe Saint De Expury

[NickAdams]

Light in August- William Faulkner
Molloy- Samuel Beckett


Faulkner's novel is an emotional powerhouse.

Beckett's humor and depth has not been rivaled since I've read Molloy. I'm reading Murphy, his first novel, now. I want to complete it, before I recommend it.

[jpatterson]

my list

1984 - george orwell
the Jungle - upton sinclair
Yama - aleksandr kuprin
Interview with the Vampire - anne rice
the Stand - stephen king
A clockwork orange - anthony burgess

[Aiculík]

A part of my own "Top 100 of the 20th century". :)

The Late Mattia Pascal, by Luigi Pirandello, 1904
Great Gatsby , by F. S. Fitzgerald, 1925
America, by Franz Kafka, 1927
The Twelve Chairs, Ilf and Petrov, 1928
All Quiet on the Western Front, E. M. Remarque, 1929
The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, Leo Rosten, 1930
Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos, 1936
1984, George Orwell, 1949
Lord of Flies, Wiliam Golding, 1954
The Lord of Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
A Clockwork Orange, Antony Burgess, 1962
The Joke , Milan Kundera, 1967
Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1973
Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow, 1975
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, G.G. Marquez, 1981
Parfume, Patrick Suskind, 1985
Who Killed Palomino Molero, Mario Vargas Llosa, 1987
Foucalt's Pendulum, Umberto Eco, 1988
The Scaffold, Chingiz Aitmatov, 1988
Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg, 1992
The German Schweinehund, Daniel Katz, 1992
Silk, Alessandro Barrico, 1996
Spiritus, Ismail Kadare, 1996
The God of Small Things, Arudhati Roy, 1997
Sarah, J. T. LeRoy (Laura Albert), 1999

[Jozanny]

Some of mine would include:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Wild Palms by William Faulkner
Grendel by John Gardner
The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass
The Joke by Milan Kundra
Hourglass by Danilo Kis

To The Lighthouse was mentioned. So far that stands out as Woolf at the height of her powers, but I am still going through Orlando

[amalia1985]

There are so many I love, I don't know how to choose. However,if I had to pick one, I would say Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

[bibliophile190]

Sorry if these have already been said.

Brave New World-Aldous Huxley
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee
The Screwtape Letters-C.S. Lewis

[mcvv09]

What about Proust's novel?

[mayneverhave]

speaking of which,

I'd say my three favorites are:

In Search of Lost Time - at least the first volume (Swann's Way) by Proust

The Sound and the Fury - faulkner

The Stranger - Camus

and I'm the only one that I know, personally, that likes Ulysses

[glenn71]

one flew over the cuckoos nest ken kesey
and i also enjoyed a kestrel for a knave by barry hines

[lisahead]

I thought Infinite Jest was a great book about addiction- I read it during one of the worst years (they were all bad) of my cocaine/ecstasy addiction- He really knows his stuff! Parts of it haunt me to this day

[jlb4tlb]

The following list only includes novels written in English.

I pasted the list from a thread that was active a few months ago.

Jeff

The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels.

Rank Novel Author
1 ULYSSES James Joyce
2 THE GREAT GATSBY F. Scott Fitzgerald
3 A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN James Joyce
4 LOLITA Vladimir Nabokov
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
11 UNDER THE VOLCANO Malcolm Lowry
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
19 INVISIBLE MAN Ralph Ellison
20 NATIVE SON Richard Wright
21 HENDERSON THE RAIN KING Saul Bellow
22 APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA John O'Hara
23 U.S.A. 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 FOR 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 Durell
71 A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA Richard Hughes
72 A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS V.S. Naipaul
73 THE DAY OF THE LOCUST Nathanael 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 MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS Booth Tarkington

[Mojo_08]

Top Ten 20th Century Novels:

Light in August, William Faulkner
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, Denis Johnson
The Dispossessed, Ursula Leguin
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Book of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Flag for Sunrise, Robert Stone
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Rage and Reason, Michael Tobias

[Kafka's Crow]

My top 10 (in the order of preference):

1 The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) by Samuel Beckett
2 Ulysses by Joyce
3 Watt by Samuel Beckett
4 Murphy by Samuel Beckett
5 Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
6 Agony and Ecstasy by Irving Stone
7 Shame by Salman Rushdie
8 The White Hotel by D M Thomas
9 The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
10 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Obviously Proust stands towering above them ALL!

[stlukesguild]

Off the top of my head... and in no particular order:

1. Proust- In Search of Lost Time
2. Faulkner- As I Lay Dying
3. Thomas Mann- Doctor Faustus
4. Hermann Hesse- Glass Bead Game
5. Italo Calvino- Invisble Cities
6. Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian
7. Gunter Grass- The Tin Drum
8. James Joyce- Ulysses
9. Thomas Pynchon- Mason and Dixon
10. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

[Sir Bartholomew]

The following list only includes novels written in English.

I pasted the list from a thread that was active a few months ago.

Jeff

The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels.



:lol: i'm trying to do this list. had fun with it, though I gave it a temporary break, having difficulties in finding cheaper books. only 34 titles left to read.

[Virgil]

Portrait of a Lady - Henry James


Anti, that's not a 20th century novel. ;)

[Mockingbird_z]

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
John Steinbeck the Grapes of Wrath
J. D. Salinger The catcher in the rye
Vladimir Nabokov Invitation to a beheading
George Orwell 1984
to be continued =)

[johann cruyff]

My favourite 20th century novels?Hmm,that's a tough one,since there were SO many great novelists,but I'll give it a shot:

The Death and the Dervish - Selimović
The Damned Yard - Andrić
Steppenwolf,The Glass Bead Game,Demian,Siddhartha - Hesse
The Trial,The Metamorphosis(not a novel but it had to be there:) ) - Kafka
1984 - Orwell
Remembrance of Thing Past - Proust
The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Nausea - Sartre
Petersburg - Bely


How much great literature!

[bounty]

hmm, first thing that comes to mind is watership down, also---to kill a mockingbird, and, the lord of the rings trilogy.

[Virgil]

Some that may not have been mentioned:

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (it has nothing to do with war)

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

[NickAdams]

My top 10 (in the order of preference):

1 The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) by Samuel Beckett
2 Ulysses by Joyce
3 Watt by Samuel Beckett
4 Murphy by Samuel Beckett
5 Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
6 Agony and Ecstasy by Irving Stone
7 Shame by Salman Rushdie
8 The White Hotel by D M Thomas
9 The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
10 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Obviously Proust stands towering above them ALL!

Beckett seems to be an important writer to us both and for you to think Proust exceeds him, conjures a curiousity in me. Which book should I start with?

[NickAdams]

Excuse me for jumping in, but start with Swann's Way, of course. :)

I personally prefer the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation, but Kafka's Crow may have different ideas. :)

Is Swanns' Way the first book that comprises In Search of Lost Time?

What do you think of the three volumes published after his death? Did you read the edition based on the manuscript or the one base don the typescript?

[Etienne]

Petersburg - Bely

:nod:

Also, one I think hasn't been named yet: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

[Sir Bartholomew]

Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky

[George_Berkeley]

Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon

[George_Berkeley]

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway
The Stranger - Albert Camus
A Happy Death - Albert Camus
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
No Exit - Jean Paul Sartre

[kelby_lake]

OMG, I love that era. Okay(in no order):
The Great Gatsby
Giovanni's Room
1984
Brideshead Revisited
Lolita
The Trial
Les Enfants Terribles
Fahrenheit 451
Of Mice and Men

I will add to this later!

Oh, and No Exit (although that's a play not a novel!)

[djy78usa]

In no particular order:

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Catch-22 - Jospeh Heller
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
1984 - George Orwell
A Widow for One Year - John Irving

[Sir Bartholomew]

One of my all time favorites. I also like the movie adaptation, which I own.

Great trip book. I wasn't prepared for the 3rd part.

[Sir Bartholomew]

I'm curious how Bertolucci managed that part of the book. :blush:

[Sir Bartholomew]

No i haven't seen it.

[blazeofglory]

War and peace
The God of small things
All the works of Dostoevsky
Turgenev

So many. The list goes endlessly

The book I like more than others is Ulysses yet I am not matured enough to comprehend it.

Gone with the wind is a fabulous book.

I am a book worm and nothing else.

I feel i live for reading and the very facts saddens me.

[aeroport]

I haven't been reading many recent novels, but those I have read have proven very satisfying.
The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man - JJ
Waterland - Graham Swift

[LadyWentworth]

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (it has nothing to do with war)
You know, I just read this book last year and I absolutely cannot remember how it ends! Pathetic, isn't it?? :rolleyes: There really is no reason for me to NOT remember. It isn't like I disliked it or anything, and basically wanted to block it from my memory. I just can't remember it. :p

My top 3 (of what I enjoyed the most):

Maurice - E.M. Forster
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow

*Honorable mention: The Loved One - Evelyn Waugh

(I put the "Narnia" and "Little House" books in a class by themselves :D )

[Sir Bartholomew]

under the volcano

[NickAdams]

under the volcano

I bought this a few months ago, so you suggest I read it, eh.:thumbs_up

[NickAdams]

I can't speak for Sir Bartholomew, Nick, but I loved that book. Thought it was fabulous. I'm due for a reread soon.

Thanks again Anti.:D

[Sir Bartholomew]

read at your own risk :D

[ben.!]

My favourite 20th Century novels:

Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
IT - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
1984 - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Dubliners - James Joyce
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Bridge to Terabithia - Can't remember author...
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke (RIP mate, you're an awesome sci-fi writer!)

They're all the ones I can think of off the top of my head that I enjoyed.

[WayneHughes]

As far as Russian works:

Lolita

The author was Russian but he originally wrote Lolita in English. So would we consider Lolita a Russian or English work?

[Remarkable]

Joyce is my favourite 20th century novelist.And then comes a list of wonderful books that are very likely to remain as must-reads...

[Remarkable]

[QUOTE=ben.!;558498]
Dubliners - James Joyce
QUOTE]


"Dubliners" is a collection of stories,although you can count it as a novel,seeing that the message is related...

[Sir Bartholomew]

if you can count Dubliners in I would like to add Winesburg Ohio.

[Sir Bartholomew]

i was't expecting much from it. the first thing that came to mind was robin hood (strange). thinking about it months after reading it i remember as if someone punctured me after each story.