Literary Truth

In an attempt to live my life as an educated and well-read human being, I will endeavor to read each and every novel that made the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list. The list is broken out into two categories – The Board’s List and The Reader’s List.

To make matters more difficult for anyone hoping to put a check mark next to every book on the list, the Modern Library also asked the Radcliffe Publishing Course to compile and release its own list of the century’s top 100 novels.

And not to be left out, Time Magazine offered up 100 great novels as well.

Below is the consolidated list of 245 novels. Books I have read are in bold.

And now I am I’m off to the library. I have a lot of reading to do.

1984 by George Orwell
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell
All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Ambassadors by Henry James
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
The Bostonians by Henry James
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Cat’s Dradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
A Death in the Family by James Agee
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance by James Dickey
The Dinger Man by J.P. Donleavy
Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein
Double Star by Robert Heinlein
Dune by Frank Herbert
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Falconer by John Cheever
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Greenmantel by Charles de Lint
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Haunting of House Hill by Shirley Jackson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Herzog by Saul Bellow
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Howards End by E.M. Forster
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Illusions by Richard Bach
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Ironweed by William Kennedy
It by Stephen King
Jazz by Toni Morrison
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
The Little Country by Charles de Lint
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Loving by Henry Green
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
The Magus by John Fowles
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
Money by Martin Amis
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Moonheart by Charles de Lint
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mulengro by Charles de Lint
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Native Son by Richard Wright
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Rebbeca by Daphne du Maurier
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Shane by Jack Schaefer
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Someplace to Be Flying by Charles de Lint
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
The Stand by Stephen King
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
A Town Like Alic by Nevil Shute
Trader by Charles de Lint
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Ulysses by James Joyce
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
V. by Thomas Pynchon
The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
We the Living by Ayn Rand
Where Angles Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
White Noise by Don DeLillo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
Yarrow by Charles de Lint
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm