I HAD to do this.

Julie commented on this on her blog, and you know I had to do this.

Remember, I was trained as an English teacher (mumbledy) decades ago. So I had to go through Times list of the 100 Best Novels (primarily of the last century). Those titles in RED I have read completely, those is green I have started but not finished, and those in purple I've not read but I've seen the movies. OK.. add a couple Masterpiece Theater productions...

My results are pretty low considering. But my own list of great novels would different dramatically from this one. I haven't read the Margaret Atwood novel they named, but The HandMaid's Tale is engrained my soul and would probably be my MA choice. And, like the selectors noted: No Amy Tan? No Stephen King (though I don't read him)... No Asimov?


The Complete List of TIME'S
100 Best Novels, 1923 to Present

The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral Philip Roth
An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Judy Blume
The Assistant Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O'Brien
Atonement Ian McEwan
Beloved Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh Well, the Masterpiece Theatre production.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
Call It Sleep Henry Roth
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
A Death in the Family James Agee
The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance James Dickey
Dog Soldiers Robert Stone
Falconer John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
Herzog Saul Bellow
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius Robert Graves. Again, Masterpiece Theater.
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
Light in August William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis.This book is, ironically, next on my list.
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies William Golding
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
Loving Henry Green
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
Money Martin Amis
The Moviegoer Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch William Burroughs
Native Son Richard Wright
Neuromancer William Gibson
Never Let Me GoKazuo Ishiguro
1984 George Orwell
On the Road Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth
Possession A.S. Byatt
The Power and the Glory Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run John Updike
Ragtime E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions William Gaddis
Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
The Sportswriter Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carre
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
Ubik Philip K. Dick
Under the Net Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise Don DeLillo
White Teeth Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys