Best 100 novels ever - as rated by TIME magazine

I think I have only read about 20 of these, three are sitting here unread, and a couple I know I have read, but can't remember anything about them.

The Complete List

uhm, mods - it's actually the best US titles since 1923 - not the best novels ever , that's why I had the title the way it was .

9

I think there's another list out there that Judders provided. Britished-based with slightly different books on it. I've read 18.

double

3 (but if you count LOTR as three then I've read 5) I've watched "The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe " does that count...?

I guess I just don't read a lot of US books (but loads of others)

In the name of my country I just thought I'd point out that Margaret Atwood is Canadian.

I thought the author of White Teeth was English??

Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh and Margret Atwood are on that list and aren't "US books".

I've read 22.

Precisely. It's book sales in the US, not sales of books by US writers.

Only 11 (and most of them are British)

26

Very surprised that The Old Man and The Sea and For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway didn't make the list, and yet The Sun Also Rises did.

aah, that makes more sense.

I've read 6, which is pathetic really. I've read some others by the same authors though.

14

(or 20 if films count!)

Someone needs to tell 3 Lions that Watchmen made the list (Alan Moore's not American either). Pleased to see that it did, but as always you can't discuss any comic without giving a proper nod to Will Eisner. One of the most important American artists of the 20th century.

And, 10. Started and never finished a few others (Catch-22, Slaughterhouse 5).

Are these according to most purchased books, most read books, a poll or what?

Edit: nevermind. just read the post above.

Thomas Pynchon made the list a couple of times - God, I struggled with "Gravity's Rainbow". I so wanted to like it.

Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" would be my favorite from that list. So passionate and brutal.

Edit: oops, forgot to answer the question - I've read 23 from the list.

I am surprised that any of his made it, he is IMHO grossly overrated.
Read 15.

Glad to see that Kurt Vonnegut made the list. He's my favorite.

@UpQuark.. you should try again with those books.. they're really good.

Great Gatsby was my least favorite book of the ones I've read. Terrible making 8th graders read such boring debauchery.

15 or so.

but where is "American Psycho"?

To put an end to all confusion, a quote from the link:
Great hyphenation there.

14 and I don't understand why some of those books got chosen..

that was on TV the other night.

so, did he actually kill all those women or was he just crazy? The part where he meets up with the lawyer at the end confused me because he called himself a different name.

So it has nothing to do with sales? These two guys just pick some books and publish it in Time? Weird. I can think of some cool books.

17. I'm surprised Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret is on there.

American Psycho? man, that book made me so ill I stopped reading it before I finished it, which is something I almost never do. 100 times more disgusting than the movie!

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia gotta be one of top 100 novels. Surprized it is not there.

Just noticed there's a readers top 21 (strange number!) as well and all six of mine are in it!

12 but i didn't see any of popular culture, who defines how great a book is ??

Is John Grisham with his vast readership not a "great" writer ?

@MoiLV

I haven't seen the film in English (only in german, back when my german was worse than my current bad german). so I am not sure how the film portrayed that angle. My guess is that the film stressed that it might have all been a dream to reduce criticism of a very brutally violent (yet extreemly well written) story. If I remember the book ending correctly, never was he caught, never did he have face any consequences, and he didn't go crazy. But the film was different.

was written in Spanish, Roots

No.

Not when compared to the likes of Vladimir Nabokov and Henry Miller.

21

6, Tolkien was South African (at least by birth) and I also think Hemingway is overrated.

ok gg, give me some parameters as to what defines a great writer please ?

Where are Archer and Forsyth?

well if we went by sales/readership, Danielle Steele would have all 100 spots.

@ bluedave
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to sound like a literary snob, but read "Lolita" and you'll see the difference for yourself.

I agree readership isn't necessarily a good indicator but as bluedave mentioned, what in your opinion makes a good writer?

35. Shocking how many of those books are trash. I was surprised to see William Gibson and Neal Stephenson on the list. I thought they appealed to a much smaller geek audience.

Gravity's Rainbow nearly killed me. I got through it only by sheer will.

i've read lolita, Solzhenitzin, tolkien et al

was just trying to play Devil's Advocate gg, not a dig at you but i really do believe that contemporary

popular novelists do tend to get overlooked by the literati exactly because of their popularity

Surely you cannot comment on the validity of the selections if you have only read 14% of them? You need to have read the other 86% first.

I have only read 5 but I don't like novels. Biographies is where it's at for me.

like Steven King? He's a great writer..

Only 10

@ Iceberg Slim
Thanks for the backup on "Gravity's Rainbow". I felt like an idiot, slogging through it the way I did, but I managed to finish it.

@ ER, bluedave
If I listed all my criteria for a "good writer" we might be here all day. The easiest way for me to explain it is that although I've read things like "The Firm" and enjoyed it for the entertainment value, it didn't change my life, make me look at the world differently, teach me something, etc. A good writer has the capability to do all those things.

i was glad to see judy blume on the list. as a teenager, her books were really helpful.

i was amazed to see how many were made into movies. GWTW was a monster book.

@GG

Well then Hi Fidelity should be on the list.

that's cute. I read a lot of her books too..

@ Ulysses
I actually loved that movie, was the book any good?

19 and i agree with sin about the old man and the sea

I guess a good writer is just someone who's books are well written, creative and whose name is droppable at snooty parties.

I think Stephen King actually is a good example. He's a good writer and his books are very well composed. His Dark Tower series is evey bit as imaginative (if smaller in scope) as Tolkien. But his name is not one to drop at an artsy-fartsy party.

On the other hand, this list contains some that are absolute rubbish. On the Road considered a classic, but is just a horrribly written self-serving bunch of junk. The Great Gatsby may be the most overrated book of all time. Pretty much everything by Toni Morrison is boring, but as an African-American woman she gets included on every list as a token - unfairly overshadowing Alice Walker, Sojourner Truth and Zora Neale Hurston, all of whom are better writers.

This is just another list. I wouldn't put too much thought into who deserves or doesn't deserve to be on the list or what the criteria were.