Radcliffe's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

At the request of the Modern Library editorial board, the students in Radcliffe's Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century’s top 100 novels to counter the Modern Library’s Top 100 novels list. Like the Modern Library judges, the Radcliffe students chose from among 400 pre-selected titles.

There is a lot of overlap between the two lists, but this one seems weighted a little more towards American authors, works by women, and books assigned in high school.

I have 14 books to go (actually 15, because I have two volumes of The Lord of the Rings left to complete). Those I have read are in red; those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

3. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker


6. Ulysses by James Joyce


7. Beloved by Toni Morrison


8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding


9. 1984 by George Orwell
 10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here)


11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov


12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck


13. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White


14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reivewed here)
 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller


16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley


17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
 18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
 19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
 20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
 21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad


22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne


23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston


24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison


25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison


26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
 27. Native Son by Richard Wright


28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey


29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
 30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway


31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac


32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway


33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London


34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

35. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
 37. The World According to Garp by John Irving


38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren


39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien


41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton


43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
 44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (discussed here)
 45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
 46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf


47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum


48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
 49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess


50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
 51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
 52. Howards End by E.M. Forster
 53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote


54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (reviewed here)

55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56.Jazz by Toni Morrison


57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (reviewed here)

58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster


60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton


61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
 62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
 65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe


66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
 67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
 68. Light in August by William Faulkner


69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James


70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (reviewed here)

73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
 75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (reviewed here)

78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
 80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (reviewed here)


81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
 84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (reviewed here)

86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
 89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather


90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (reviewed here)


91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles


94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
 95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling


96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster (reviewed here)

99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis


100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here)

NOTE
Last updated on March 4, 2010

OTHER PEOPLE READING THESE BOOKS
(If you are reading the books on this list and would like to be included here, please leave a comment with a list to your progress report and I will post it.)