[MLR] Modern Library 100 Best Novels (The Reader’s List)
Modern Library 100 Best Novels (The Reader’s List) [MLR]
Published in 1998
Here’s the list of the people. The Modern Library, beside its own “Board” assembled list, produced this one which was voted on by an Internet poll of readers. The results tell you more about who was on the Internet in 1998 than anything else. Four things summarize this list: Objectivism, Scientology, sci-fi/fantasy, and bestsellers. This is actually great! Here are four subjects sorely underrepresented on the master list, but each one was very much a part of the zeitgeist of 20th century America. If the [MLB] reflects what we ought to be reading, the [MLR] shows what many people were reading. And yet, like all of these lists, there is more to the [MLR] than that. It has many thoughtful, challenging books on it, a number of them absent from the board’s supposedly more pedantic list, among them Gravity’s Rainbow, Absalom, Absalom!, Beloved, At Swim-Two-Birds, and Blood Meridian.
But when it stoops, it stoops mightily. First, Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard make up seven of the top ten books. Please. Secondly, there’s Charles de Lint. De Lint is a Canadian sci-fi hack who makes this list seven times. That’s seven books that make the list over, say, Rabbit Run or Native Son, Mrs. Dalloway, or Pale Fire. I don’t mind coming off as snobbish here; the fact is Charles de Lint does not belong on any list of great books. None of his works gets another nod from the other twenty-three lists.
Click here to see the full Modern Library (Readers) list or scroll below. Works in RED appear on at least one other of the 24 lists I surveyed and so are on the Master List.
- ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
- THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
- BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
- THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
- TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
- 1984 by George Orwell
- ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
- WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
- MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
- FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
- ULYSSES by James Joyce
- CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
- THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- DUNE by Frank Herbert
- THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein
- STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
- A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
- BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
- THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
- ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
- GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
- THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
- SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
- GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
- LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
- SHANE by Jack Schaefer
- TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
- A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
- THE STAND by Stephen King
- THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles
- BELOVED by Toni Morrison
- THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
- THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
- LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
- MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
- ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
- OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
- WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor
- UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
- FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
- SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
- ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
- HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
- YARROW by Charles de Lint
- AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
- ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
- MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
- TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
- THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
- TRADER by Charles de Lint
- THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
- THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
- THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood
- BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
- A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
- ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
- A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
- GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
- ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card
- THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
- THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
- STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
- THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
- THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
- SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
- THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
- AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
- TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
- INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
- THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
- THE MAGUS by John Fowles
- THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
- ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
- I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
- THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
- AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O’Brien
- FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
- ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
- WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
- NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
- THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
- GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
- THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
- IT by Stephen King
- V. by Thomas Pynchon
- DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
- CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
- BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
- LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
- ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST by Ken Kesey
- A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
- THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
- SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
- MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
- MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
- SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
- MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
- ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
- THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
- THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie