100 Best Novels

While researching good book challenges for 2017 I stumbled upon the Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels list. The list isn't new, in fact it's from 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the 20th century’s top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board. They had started a discussion on the topic when they had released their own list which was discussed and rivalled by a readers' list soon after. Actually, I like the Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels list, I have already read a few, some are on my to-read-list and others are probably a good challenge or a good way to broaden my literary horizon. I will ignore the fact that there are mostly North American and British authors on the list, also that there are insufficient female authors.

I marked read and reviewed books green and added the month and year. There are more I have read but I want to re-read most of those because I don't remember much.

So here's to another on-going-challenge for the years to come, of course, I hope to read a few!

15.03.2025    37/100

-1900
Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry James [e-book]
The Bostonians (1886) by Henry James [e-book]
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells - Juli 2024
The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin [German e-book]
Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad [audiobook onleihe]
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum - October 2014

1901-1910
Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling [audiobook onleihe]
The Wings of the Dove (1902) by Henry James [e-book]
Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad - July 2009
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London - July 2015
The Jungle (1904) by Upton Sinclair [Stadtbibliothek]
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) by E.M. Forster [e-book]
A Room with a View (1908) by E.M. Forster [Stadtbibliothek, book/Engl. audiobook]
The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame - December 2010
Howards End (1910) by E.M. Forster [e-book]

1911-1920
Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton [e-book]
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather [e-book]
Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence - February 2020
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce [e-book]
My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather - March 2025
The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton
Women in Love (1920) by D.H. Lawrence
This Side of Paradise (1920) by F. Scott Fitzgerald [e-book]
Main Street (1920) by Sinclair Lewis [e-book]

1921-1930
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce [e-book]
Babbitt (1922) by Sinclair Lewis [e-book]
The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald [e-book]
A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster [e-book]
An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald - July 2005
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
In Our Time (1925) by Ernest Hemingway [e-book]
The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway [e-book]
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A.A. Milne - October 2019 
To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf - September 2023
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by D.H. Lawrence

Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf [e-book]

A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway

The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner
The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett [?]

1931-1940

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley - March 2017
Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias (1933) by Gertrude Stein
Tender Is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell - November 2023
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck - July 2016
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier - February 2017
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce

Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway

1941-1950
The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell - April 2020
Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh
All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer
1984 (1949) by George Orwell - October 2017

1951-1960
The Old Man and the Sea (1951) by Ernest Hemingway - December 2016
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger - September 2022
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
Charlotte’s Web (1952) by E.B. White - June 2018
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1953) by Flannery O’Connor
Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin - July 2023
The Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding - June 2017
The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lolita (1955) by Vladmir Nabokov
On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac [Stadtbibliothek]
Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand [?]
Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe
A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles
Naked Lunch (1959) by William S. Burroughs
Rabbit, Run (1960) by John Updike
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee - May 2016

1961-1970
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller [Stadtbibliothek]
Franny and Zooey (1961) by J.D. Salinger [?]
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey - May 2020
A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
Cat’s Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut [?]
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys [?]
In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote - August 2016
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut - March 2017
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles

1971-1980
Song of Solomon (1977) by Toni Morrison [?]
The World According to Garp (1978) by John Irving
Sophie’s Choice (1979) by William Styron
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams - October 2015

1981-
Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie [e-book]
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker - June 2016
Schindler’s List (1982) by Thomas Keneally - July 2021
White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison - August 2019
Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) by Tom Wolfe
The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie [e-book]
Jazz (1992) by Toni Morrison [?]