Top 100 classic novels I should read?

[Rainet]

I am really interested in reading and rereading some of the classic novels. Even though I did enjoy a lot of them from way back in high school and college. Too often, I felt it was a chore to read because it was for class and not for my leisure. I would like to find a top 100 or so list of books I should read (or more). Hemmingway, Salinger, Twain, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald etc and of course many many more.

[GatorDeb]

Googled "Top 100 classic novels." Bunch of results. Here's one:http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

[djmont]

Three that leap to mind:

Twain -- Huck Finn
Hemingway -- Sun Also Rises
Fitzgerald -- Great Gatsby

If you're interested in broadening the concept of classic novel, I'd add:

Hammett -- Maltese Falcon
Chandler -- The Long Goodbye

[Palaver]

I'll add two:

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Grapes of Wrath.

Should be required reading for everyone.

[Lateralus]

Oil! and The Jungle -- By Upton Sinclair -- These two books made me change the way I think about the world.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckeberry Finn -- By Mark Twain -- It was a absolute joy to read them both.

For Whom The Bell Tolls -- Ernest Hemingway -- Very sad but powerful book.

Uncle Tom's Cabin -- Harriet Beecher Stowe -- The world would be a much better place if there were more people like Uncle Tom.

Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck -- Another good book that will make you think about the world... still very relevant even today.

Anything by Dickens is pretty good as well.


I wish I could give you more but my classics reading is lacking.


I have a bunch of classics ready to read and stacked by my bed, they include:

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1984 by George Orwell

I will get to them all someday!


The authors I would stay away from are Ayn Rand and James Joyce; I think both are overrated.

[Lateralus]

Googled "Top 100 classic novels." Bunch of results. Here's one:http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

I use this list to pick out my next "classic" read, I have to say the "Reader's list" is full of shit as there is no way in hell that 4 Ayn Rand novels should be in the top 10!

[Ron G]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Howards End - E.M. Forster
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Engineer of Human Souls - Josef Skvorecky
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Stranger - Albert Camus (more a novella, really)
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (though frankly, his short stories are better)
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
McTeague - Frank Norris
Ask the Dust - John Fante
House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
White Noise - Don DeLillo


Those are just a few, in my opinion.