The OF Blog: One forum's list of 100 Top Books

Monday, January 03, 2011

One forum's list of 100 Top Books

Found this while browsing The Literature Network's Forums.  As usual, I'll bold what I've read, italicize what I own but haven't read, while the plain text will mark what I do not own/read.

1. Crime and Punishment
2. 1984
3. Brothers Karamazov
4. Hamlet
5. Les Miserables
6. To Kill A Mockingbird
7. The Great Gatsby
8. Pride and Prejudice
9. War and Peace
10. The Bible
11. Lolita
12. Don Quixote

13. The Stranger
14. A Tale of Two Cities
15. Catch-22
16. Anna Karinina
17. Master and Margarita
18. The Picture of Dorian Gray
19. The Grapes of Wrath
20. On the Road
21. The Sound and the Fury

22. King Lear
23. The Divine Comedy
24. The Catcher in the Rye
25. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
26. The Idiot

27. In Search of Lost Time/ Remembrance of Things Past
28. Lord of the Flies
29. The Lord of the Rings
30. The Odyssey
31. Siddhartha
32. 100 Years of Solitude
33. As I Lay Dying
34. Frankenstein
35. Wuthering Heights
36. Beowulf

37. Dead Souls
38. Madam Bovary
39. The Old Man and the Sea
40. Slaughterhouse 5
41. The Sun Also Rises
42. Ulysses
43. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
44. Jane Eyre
45. Dracula

46. Fathers and Sons
47. Heart of Darkness
48. Metemorphosis
49. Notes From Underground
50. Of Mice and Men
51. The Republic
52. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
53. The Trial
54. Animal Farm
55. Brave New World

56. Cat's Cradle
57. The Count of Monte-Cristo
58. Faust
59. Fictions - Borges
60. The Fountianhead
61. Gargantua and Pantangruel
62. The Good Earth
63. Jude the Obscure
64. Paradise Lost
65. The Mayor of Casterbridge

66. Macbeth
67. Oedipus Rex
68. Moby Dick
69. North and South
70. Oliver Twist
71. Night

72. Oblomov
73. One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
74. Perfume
75. The Kite Runner
76. Tristam Shandy
77. Watership Down
78. Women in Love
79.. The House of Mirth

80. L'Assomoir
81. Bleak House
82. Middlesex
83. The Magus
84. Canterberry Tales
85. Brideshead Revisisted
86. Candide
87. In Cold Blood

88. No Exit
89. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
90. For Whom The Bell Tolls
91. The Little Prince

92. Montaigne ~ Essays
93. Iliad
94. Sometimes A Great Notion
95. A Clockwork Orange
96. Amerika
97. Julius Caesar
98. Invitation of a Beheading
99. Le Bete Humaine

100. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

86 out 100.  Not too bad.  Not the most challenging of lists, but the "usual suspects" most often are highly regarded for a reason.  How many have you read from their group poll winners for the top 100 books?

7 comments:

Joe said...

49/100

It's a fairly standard list, but representative of the classics with some contemporary stuff that has potential.

Larry Nolen said...

Yep, it certainly is that (or I probably wouldn't have read almost 90% of their list), but sometimes being reminded of what many consider to be "classics" is a good thing, no? :D

Jexral said...

Hmm... 14. Perhaps I need to check out a few more of the classics; that said, there are many other top 100 book lists where I've read probably 75%, at least.

Mimouille said...

Only 19 :(
But I seriously recommend you read the Perfume, its really great.

Larry Nolen said...

It's one of those books I've been meaning to read for years, so maybe soon?

Helene said...

47. None of the Russian authors as I'm unable to remember the 3 names generally used for one character and mix them all. I used to drop them after 50 pages.
I need to check the american classic ones though.

Gabriele Campbell said...

Pretty much the same as Larry. The list shows that I studied Literature at some point in my life. :D

Actually, I read a lot of those books because I wanted to, not because they were on some canon. And I always miss Scandinavian authors on those lists (not to mention the German ones are sadly underrepresetend as well ;) ).

 
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