100 Best Novels Comments
Wot, no Swallows and Amazons? No Watership Down? No Comet in Moominland? Etc etc.
Posted by Rob on May 11, 2005 11:22 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I'm actually pretty surprised by how much of it I agree with: Catch-22 should be a lot higher, there's maybe room for more Evelyn Waugh etc... but I can't really think of any serious omissions. Bleak House, of course. And wot, no Wodehouse, Mr McCrum?
Posted by artegall on May 11, 2005 12:32 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I thought 'Bohemian Rhapsody' always came top of these sorts of things.
Posted by JonnyB on May 11, 2005 01:37 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Well Kundera is famous, but The Engineer of Human Souls (Josef Skverecky) beats the pants off The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Then there is practically anything by Hrabal: I would plump for Too Loud a Solitude as it has the most beautiful prose ever written.
Posted by mark on May 12, 2005 06:55 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Where's Pale Fire by Nabokov? It is perhaps the finest novel (if it can be considered a novel) of the 20th Century. You can't possibly convince me that anything Roald Dahl did was better than Pale Fire.
Posted by James on May 12, 2005 08:51 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Quite a good list. W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" was a surprise omission though.
Posted by Adam on May 12, 2005 11:51 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I wonder how many of these would fall into Twain's "books one would have liked to have read, without actually having had to have read them" category?
Posted by David on May 12, 2005 04:56 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I think Victor Hugos novels should be included also: Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Beautifully written, these contain intricate plot lines, detailed character sketches, and amazing moral analyses.
Posted by Laura on May 12, 2005 07:33 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Apparently, it helps to be dead. Toni Morrison? Cormac McCarthy? Chinua Achebe but no Ayi Kwei Armah or Ngugi wa Thiongo? In reality, the list should be 1000 novels long.
Posted by Steve Rothfuchs on May 12, 2005 08:03 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
For me, David, about 99 of them I think. Except for the wishing I'd read them. Not too bothered about that.
Posted by Rob on May 13, 2005 08:55 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I am really stumped that Watership Down didn't make this. In addition how about other notables like: Animal Farm, The Old Man And The Sea, or amazingly, the exclusion of Dracula when Frankenstein and Hyde both made the list. Also, the are sooooo many better books by Dickens that baffles me as well
Posted by Jason on May 16, 2005 06:10 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
For those who were concerned with position on the list, or there not being more books by Orwell etc: As I recall the books are placed in the order they were published (hence Don Quixote at the top of the list), and each author was only allowed one book on the list.
Posted by Paul on May 16, 2005 10:48 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
No top 100 list is complete without Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Posted by UCBerkeleyGirl on May 16, 2005 09:01 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
No top 100 list is complete without Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Posted by UCBerkeleyGirl on May 16, 2005 09:02 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Ok so if the order is unimportant and there can only be one book per author that answers a lot of questions, but still men without women was the best Hemingway book you could come up with, and I think that Native Son by Richard Wright sholuld have made the list as well.
Posted by sean on May 18, 2005 03:15 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I'd add Howard's End by Forster; Keep The Aspidistra Flying by Orwell; A Death in the Family by James Agee; Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton; Waiting by Ha Jin;; The Wall by John Hersey; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. Real readers are obsessed with telling others about fine books recently read. Now I'm checking out all the blogs in case I missed a good read!
Posted by Ruth from Long Island, New York on May 20, 2005 02:58 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I'd add Howard's End by Forster; Keep The Aspidistra Flying by Orwell; A Death in the Family by James Agee; Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton; Waiting by Ha Jin;; The Wall by John Hersey; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. Real readers are obsessed with telling others about fine books recently read. Now I'm checking out all the blogs in case I missed a good read!
Posted by Ruth from Long Island, New York on May 20, 2005 02:58 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
please, dont tell me you could not find a place for Atlas shrugged and Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, in teh top 100 list
Posted by Madhu Burugupalli on May 20, 2005 05:21 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
J M Coetzee and Ian McEwan? Surely they've been muddled up with the list of top 100 worst books ever.. but why no Murakami? No James Baldwin? Molloy by Beckett should definitely be included in the list, as should Jacob's Room by Woolf and Nausea by Sartre. What about The Twits? And The End of the Story by Lydia Davis is fantastic...Kundera should be way higher up the list. And what happened to Mervyn Peake and the Gormenghast Trilogy? And The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Vargas LLosa?
Posted by Rona on May 21, 2005 06:00 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
A novel everyone must read is The Cacher in the Rye by J.D Salinger.
Posted by Robert on May 23, 2005 12:13 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
What about Salman Rushdie? A Moor's Last Sigh was great. or Jose Saramago's Blindness.
Posted by Rachel on May 23, 2005 03:48 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
the reason Siddarhtha is on this list is because you know he won't get mad
Posted by tony on May 23, 2005 11:31 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
i meant the reason he's NOT on this list
Posted by on May 23, 2005 11:32 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
"Bless Me, Ultima" is a beautiful novel that deserves to be known (although, mabey not as one of the top 100, because i haven't read them all.) Still, the book should be recommended to all!
Posted by Willow on May 26, 2005 12:24 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
WHERE IS 1984!!!!!!!!
I can't take any top book list seriously if this book is not posted.
Read this book, it'll change your life!!
Posted by Chris on May 30, 2005 06:09 AM. I can't take any top book list seriously if this book is not posted.
Read this book, it'll change your life!!
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
59 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
It is in there!
Posted by Jack on June 1, 2005 12:36 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
What about "Where the Red Fern Grows"? It may be aimed toward younger readers, but it's so filling. Loved it then, loving it now!
Posted by Veronica on June 1, 2005 06:05 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
No Kurt Vonnegut, what a shame. What would the literary world be without the greatest satirist of the 20th century. I don't know what book I'd choose, they're all so great, but probabley Cat's Cradle.
Posted by Christian Kenney on June 1, 2005 07:22 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Wow. "Howard's End" was a big miss, along with "A Prayer For Owen Meany" by John Irving.
What about "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce.
Crazy list for sure. Missed a lot of good Canadian writers. tsk tsk.
Posted by D on June 2, 2005 12:13 AM. What about "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce.
Crazy list for sure. Missed a lot of good Canadian writers. tsk tsk.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Where is 'The Once and Future King'???
Posted by Jon Doucet on June 2, 2005 03:51 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I can't believe there isn't a single Stephen King book on this list. The Stand is one of the greatest and creative books I have ever read! The Stand should definately have made this list!
Posted by Erik on June 2, 2005 07:17 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I believe the list does not contain Wodehouse because it is dificult to choose one great book from a collection of gems. Personally I would have added a Blanding novel.
Posted by Vaibhav on June 3, 2005 06:53 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Hold on a second, no Edgar Allen Poe, no Arthur Conen Doyle, no Stephen King and no Terry Pratchett! 100 greatest books did you say?
Posted by Abhiram Srivastava on June 3, 2005 07:06 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Heyy so I'm 15 and am working on the list (11 done only 89 more to go!) but i reaaally think that Dracula should be on it(actually i think Harry Potter, The Giver and the Phantom of the Opera should be on it too but they're for younger people; even though the BFG is aswell). Despite the lack of J.K. Rowling I still luurve the list!
Posted by kait on June 3, 2005 09:42 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Jane Eyre was one of the worst books I'v ever attempted to read. It deserves to be thrown into a furnace so nobody ever has to endure that kind of fatal boredom agian.Sure it was a revolutionary women's rights book, but that doesn't make it any good. Replace it with a Vonnegut book, and I'll be able to sleep tonight. No doubt there are countless individual tastes, but Jane Eyre is nauseating. Even during the movie it would have been more mentally stimulating to place my head in a microwave and set it for defrost.
Sorry for ranting, thanks.
Posted by C Kenney on June 4, 2005 12:03 AM. Sorry for ranting, thanks.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Where's the Austen lot? I'd like to possibly see some Daphne Du Maurier in there. Then what about The Bell Jar?
Thankfully no Harry Potter. :)
Posted by Katie on June 4, 2005 10:22 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Esta lista debió llamarse, las cien mejores novelas segun un inglés. Yo digo: menos victorianos, mas rusos, por el amor de Dios. ¿Dónde estan Oblomov o Padres e Hijos?
Posted by Daniel Espartaco on June 4, 2005 07:50 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The most enjoyable book I have ever read (I am 81) is Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
Posted by Stanley Kasper on June 5, 2005 10:35 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
As I Lay Dying instead of THE SOUND AND THE FURY or ABSOLAM,ABSOLAM!--come on. The Sound and the Fury is the greatest novel ever written. It should be TO THE LIGHTHOUSE instead of Dalloway. Yes please include Charlotte's Web and The Lord of the Rings instead of a Walker Percy or Willa Cather--good thinking. Charlotte's web is much more important than the MOVIEGOER or DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP. Put an HG Wells on instead of The Lord of the Rings. Nostromo instead of Heart of Darkness? Oh, and since Toni Morrison is the definitive novelist of the African-American experience you can exclude Wright, Baldwin, and Hurston??? McCullers, Mann, McCarthy, Gordimer, Wharton...TRY AGAIN
Posted by Justin on June 6, 2005 06:04 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
What about Zola, Sienkiewicz, Poe, Goethe, Hesse, Schiller, Gogolj, Hugo, Sartre, Mann, Doyle, Voltaire........???
Posted by on June 7, 2005 12:27 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The Photograph of Dorian Grey is quite possibly the worst book i have ever read. The inclusion of Los Miserables should be a must for any top 100 Novels. Also this is a Novels list i believe that The Old Man and the Sea should be the representer of Hemmingway not a short story.
Posted by Marcus George on June 8, 2005 08:45 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I agree with the person who said that Jane Eyre is torture. I wish there was a book-toture machine, in which hateful and murderous books could be placed for consolation. Till then...
And how on EARTH can that horrible, horrible, pointless, boring, mindless, unbreable, but thankfully short book 'Haroun and the Sea of stories' be ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME? Putting that up there is like spitting in the face of a reader. Don't read that book. I'm also sick of Lord of the Rings being, somehow, a real literary classic, while books like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials are scoffed off as being stupid or whatever (I'm not defending them or anything, but I'm just sick of all the annoying fans and cultists of each). They're both similar fantasies, each involving the classic battle of good vs. evil (more or less in HDM)with the same kind of characters.
You can't just sum up "the greatest of all novels" in a 100-list! It would have been a lot more proper if it were a 200-some list. Come on people that's common sense.
And why is 'Little women' there? I thought this wasn't a beloved book list, as the huge disclaimer by the list-makers announced. Also, Little Women sucked. The plot was insanely sappy, the characters archetypes, and everything else annoying. Don't understand the people who like it.
Posted by Rsq on June 8, 2005 09:08 PM. And how on EARTH can that horrible, horrible, pointless, boring, mindless, unbreable, but thankfully short book 'Haroun and the Sea of stories' be ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME? Putting that up there is like spitting in the face of a reader. Don't read that book. I'm also sick of Lord of the Rings being, somehow, a real literary classic, while books like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials are scoffed off as being stupid or whatever (I'm not defending them or anything, but I'm just sick of all the annoying fans and cultists of each). They're both similar fantasies, each involving the classic battle of good vs. evil (more or less in HDM)with the same kind of characters.
You can't just sum up "the greatest of all novels" in a 100-list! It would have been a lot more proper if it were a 200-some list. Come on people that's common sense.
And why is 'Little women' there? I thought this wasn't a beloved book list, as the huge disclaimer by the list-makers announced. Also, Little Women sucked. The plot was insanely sappy, the characters archetypes, and everything else annoying. Don't understand the people who like it.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I demand a reform to this list!
Posted by Bakuu on June 8, 2005 09:23 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
There's a few I feel are missing. Watership Down comes to mind first. A Tale of Genji, Slaughterhouse Five,The Stand, Animal Farm and the beautiful simplicity of Tuesdays with Morrie, an extremely moving book. I also feel that 1984 should be much higher. It's my personal favorite.
Posted by Zeb Shaffer on June 8, 2005 10:44 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
What about James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Thurston, Toni Morrison?
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
What about James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Thurston, Toni Morrison?
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Frank Herbert - DUNE (6 volumes)
Brian Herbert - Dune: House Atreides, Dune: House Harkonnen, Dune: House Corrino
Clifford Simak - the Thing in the Stone
---
These books are the greatest! no doubts
Posted by Dmitriy on June 13, 2005 12:52 PM. These books are the greatest! no doubts
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
well, as I see, we should have had here at least TOP 1000... We have as many opinions as people in this world))). I would personally add Doyle, Chekhov, Gi de Mopassan, o Henry...
I wonder what are the principles of singling out the authors for the TOP 100?
Posted by Anna on June 13, 2005 12:55 PM. I wonder what are the principles of singling out the authors for the TOP 100?
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I agree! David Copperfield? Good grief! I will take Oliver or A Tale Between Two Cities. No Jane Austin--No Harriet Beecher Stowe...Uncle Tom's Cabin. The novel that pissed off more Americans then any novel in history! What about Brave New World by Huxley. Mr.Behr, tisk tisk tisk. You should know better! P.S. I didn't notice Hemingway. You nailed it right with that drunken cad.
Posted by monalisa on June 13, 2005 11:09 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Several people have commented on some books being higher or lower than other books...from what I see the list is not in order of best to worst, but from oldest to newest. (At first I thought- What!? Don Quixote is most certainly not the greatest novel of all time! Then I checked someone's post and yes, they are indeed listed chronologically)
Posted by Sarcof on June 15, 2005 07:41 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The list that was composed was very good, but there were some greats that could have made it. "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle most definately should have been there. Perhaps someone should review the book and it's meaning and decide to add it to the list.
Posted by Rachel on June 16, 2005 09:16 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The Catcher in th Rye and Catch-22 have to be in the top 50.
Posted by on June 18, 2005 03:58 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The Catcher in th Rye and Catch-22 have to be in the top 50.
Posted by on June 18, 2005 03:58 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
i think crime and punishment is FAR, FAR better than the brother's Karamazov.... (p.s. good job on choosing Lolita to be on here for Nabakov...that is possibly one of the most poetic books of all time about a forbidden and tortured passion)
Posted by Pam on June 18, 2005 04:12 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I'd definately have to go with Crime and Punishment over The Brothers Karamazov. I think Ayn Rand should be represented with at least one novel. No Tolstoy? No Vonnegut? Tough choices to narrow down to 100...but SO glad to see Tolkien on there.
Posted by Jason on June 20, 2005 03:01 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Wow, so women make what about 15 of the 100 greatest list? No Ayn Rand..No Jane Austin, no Toni Morrison...guess it's a guy thing.
Posted by Sally on June 20, 2005 08:06 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The Confederacy of Dunces is a trillion times funnier than anything else that's ever been produced in any format. Best fiction ever, if you have not read it enlighten yourself to the tragic comedy that is Toole's and Ignatius J. Rieley's world.
Posted by K-Funk on June 21, 2005 06:12 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Steinbeck?????
Posted by Aleks on June 22, 2005 06:02 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Hmm...Steinbeck really isn't there....Wow.
And to Jason: Of course Tolstoy is there. How can you possibly expect a book list to not have Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Posted by Asq on June 23, 2005 03:55 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
The makers of this list must not have read John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," because it is one of the finest satires of all time and a wonderful example of the novel as a literary form. I am also surprised that "The Grapes of Wrath" did not make the list, and there should definitely be an entry from Herman Hesse, probably "Siddhartha" or "Demian."
Posted by Matt on June 24, 2005 07:15 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
Where is the list of the best written and most enteraining books? Many noted titles are here, but which are the books that are fun to read and will change your outlook or appreciation for life? Which ones are the must reads? That's what should make the list.
Posted by Bobby on June 24, 2005 11:36 PM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
I think maybe it should be the 'Top 500' books instead of 100. There are a whole swathe of amazing books by Hesse, Steinbeck, Balzac, Dickens as well as many American and Russian writers. I heard Somerset Maugham referred to as 'the best of the second rate novelists', but i dont think so. I agree with Adam previously - Of Human Bondage, amongst others.
'The Life of Pi' by Yann Martel from India killed me.
There are so many writers that can write beautifully about bleakness and realism - in contrast to Thomas Hardy and Gustave Flaubert and Gunter Grass, who I find gratuously and contrivedly bleak. If you want beautifully written 'bleak' - The Grapes of Wrath, I reckon, and those who do bleak best of all - russian writers.
Also 'Perfume' by Peter Suskind.
I also didnt like 'Emma' but thought Sense and Sensibility much more complex and interesting.
I also thought Middlemarch would be a ring-in. Even though a lot of people dont seem to like it, ts description of personality types is timeless - I see modern psychology in it!
By the way, speaking of modern psychology... the three best character descriptions of the psychopathic Narcissisitic Personality Disorder that i have come across in literature have been the characters ORMOND (A Portrait of a Lady), ROSAMOND (Middlemarch) and GOLDMUND (Narzizz and Goldmund - Hesse) - does anyone know if the similarity of the names has any significance??
Also a little plug for Australian authors for the ''top 500'': 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' (1967) by Joan Lindsay is haunting and timeless; 'On the Beach' by Neville Shute; 'The Merry Go Round in the Sea' by Randolp Stow and 'The Riders' by Tim Winton.
Thanks
Posted by Kelli on June 25, 2005 06:27 AM. Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
posted by Radhika Shivaraman @ Thursday, February 28, 2013
0 Comments
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.