I have a little reading challenge I’ve been working on that I thought I’d share. No real goals, except to eventually work my way through this New York Time’s list of best English-language novels from 1923-present.
Some of these I’ve read in high school, but I’m not counting that. I want to re-read them and really appreciate them, unless I’ve read them in the past year or so. I’m also not exclusively reading these novels, but interspersing them with what I’m reading every now and then when the mood strikes.
A – B
The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul BellowAll the King’s Men (1946), by Robert Penn WarrenAmerican Pastoral (1997), by Philip RothAn American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore DreiserAnimal Farm (1946), by George OrwellAppointment in Samarra (1934), by John O’Hara- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
- The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
- At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O’Brien
Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan- Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
- The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
- The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
- The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
- Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
- Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder
C – D
- Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
- Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess- The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
- The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon- A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
- The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
- Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee- The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
- Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
- Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone
F – G
- Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
- The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), by John Fowles
- The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
- Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
- Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
- The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
- Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
- The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald
H – I
A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh- The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
- The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
- Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson- A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
- I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
- Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
- Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison
L – N
- Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis- Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies (1955), by William GoldingThe Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien- Loving (1945), by Henry Green
- Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
- The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
- Midnight’s Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
- Money (1984), by Martin Amis
- The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf- Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
- Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
- Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
- Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
- 1984 (1948), by George Orwell
O – R
- On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey- The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
- Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
- A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
- Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
- Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
- Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
- The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark- Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
- Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
- The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell HammettRevolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates
S – T
- The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
- Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
- Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
- The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
- The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
- The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre- The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston- Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee
- To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
- Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller
U – W
- Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
- Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
- Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
- Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo- White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
- Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys
Have you read any of these? Any favorites?
6 comments
Chinyaray
August 11, 2011 at 12:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes! I have read a few but like you, I would love to re-read them and really appreciate them. I am going to copy this list and start ASAP. Just to pass along a couple books (you may have already read) : The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Snowflower and the Secret Fan, How to Be Good, and Linden Hills.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Lauren Zietsman
August 11, 2011 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I haven’t read ANY of those books! Thanks for the tips!
holly troy
March 25, 2012 at 2:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You will love
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Happy Reading!!!
Holly
Lauren Zietsman
March 26, 2012 at 10:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have To Kill A Mocking Bird out from the library right now, you mind reader, you!
Kate Henschel
April 28, 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I just randomly wandered onto your site through a recipe and now onto your book list. I’m reading through the same top 100 (as well as a few others). My favorites on here are Midnight’s Children, Brideshead Revisited, Never Let Me Go, and The Blind Assassin. Absolutely HATED The Crying of Lot 49. Enjoy the rest of the books!
Lauren Zietsman
May 3, 2012 at 10:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks–I love to hear from fellow readers!