I normally commit to an assortment of resolutions each year, giving up on about 75% of them by April, or May if I’m feeling extra motivated.
This year, however, I’ve decided to just make one resolution: to read the 100 best novels of all time.
Of course, the list is likely subjective –after avid reader probably has a completely different list– so I’ve decided to use Time magazine’s list as my basis. Here are the top 100 compiled novels as of their 2005 census:
-
A – B
- The Adventures of Augie March
- All the King’s Men
- American Pastoral
- An American Tragedy *** (read this based on a teacher’s recommendation)
- Animal Farm ***
- Appointment in Samarra
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
- The Assistant
- At Swim-Two-Birds
- Atonement
- Beloved
- The Berlin Stories
- The Big Sleep
- The Blind Assassin
- Blood Meridian
- Brideshead Revisited
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
-
C – D
-
F – G
-
H – I
-
L – N
-
O – R
- On the Road *** (this book changed my life)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (started it three times, but never finished)
- The Painted Bird
- Pale Fire
- A Passage to India
- Play It As It Lays
- Portnoy’s Complaint
- Possession
- The Power and the Glory
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- Rabbit, Run
- Ragtime
- The Recognitions
- Red Harvest
- Revolutionary Road
-
S – T
- The Sheltering Sky
- Slaughterhouse Five
- Snow Crash
- The Sot-Weed Factor
- The Sound and the Fury
- The Sportswriter
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- The Sun Also Rises
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Things Fall Apart *** (just reread this a few weeks ago, but it wouldn’t hurt to save it for the end of 2015!)
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- To the Lighthouse
- Tropic of Cancer
-
U – W
Books with an asterisk by the name I’ve technically read before, but I’m committing to reread them as part of my resolution for 2015. There is no harm in revisiting a book, especially since it has been a few years since I’ve read any of these works.
I’ve always considered myself well-read, so seeing that I’ve only read a couple of these titles is concerning to me. Then again, I can’t help but notice that a lot of the classics aren’t on here, but that’s likely because of the date constraints set forth by the magazine editors.
Wish me luck! I’m planning to tackle the list alphabetically, and I’ll post updates on here as I finish them.
~ Victoria Elizabeth
Victoria Elizabeth Ann 
About two-thirds of these books need not be read, at all. The movies will do. The others…
For instance, Gone With The Wind. Scarlett has a girlish crush on Ashley. It stains credulity to believe a woman with her experience and success will pine at the end for someone who is very much unlike her. Mitchell attempted to rely on Southern Culture and its metes and bounds, but does so incompletely or not at all.
The issues becomes Scarlett is not a typical southern woman, yet she must act like the little southern girl.
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What books would you suggest I add / remove? I’m open to revise my list. In all honesty, I just want to verse myself to branch out of my normal genres (Kerouac, Thompson, Marquez, Hemingway, etc) and explore a wider breath of writers.
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I would take a serious look at movies, not for entertainment but for stories and dialogue. Good movies are excellent short stories, less so today than 20 years ago.
I would look at anyone who has been put on a postage stamp except Fitzgerald. I would read East/West by Somset Maugham, I would read everything by George Orwell.If you want to know how Orwell came up with 1984, other than working at the BBC, he wrote fantastic essays. Willa Cather can put more emotion into a story efficiently than any writing.
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I will make one more recommendation to read. Raymond Chandler, Library of America edition, has a group of essays which are hilariously ridiculous about mystery story writing and about Hollywood writing. I came across them today. I recommend them.
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