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Archive for June 10, 2009

top 100 novels

On June 10th, 2009 | Filed under Uncategorized | bookmark Share this post

it’s @bhalpin‘s fault.

about a month ago, he wrote about his top 100 novels, a response to someone’s response to NPR’s list. i’ve looked over others’ lists (including the Modern Library’s and the BBC’s from several years ago) and thought, “well, if they’re doing it, and Halpin’s doing it, i ought to do it, too.”

my list, in no particular order, includes books (not just novels) that have had an impact on me over the last 25+ years, whether because of subject matter, writing style, the time at which i read it, or the chemical that is released by the brain associating pleasure with certain things.

  1. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
  2. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
  3. Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
  4. The Stand by Stephen King
  5. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
  6. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  7. An American Tragedy by Ted Dreiser
  8. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
  9. The Inferno by Dante (Ciardi)
  10. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  11. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  12. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  13. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
  14. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  15. The Talisman by Peter Straub & Stephen King
  16. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
  17. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  18. Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling
  19. Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
  20. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  21. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  22. Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
  23. Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
  24. Maus by Art Spiegelman
  25. John Adams by David McCullough
  26. Truman by David McCullough
  27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  28. Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
  29. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  30. angela’s ashes by Frank McCourt
  31. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
  32. A Series of Unfortunate Events by lemony snicket
  33. Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
  34. Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
  35. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  36. The Traveler by john twelve hawks
  37. The Bible
  38. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  39. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Gunderson
  40. Contact by Carl Sagan
  41. What is the What byDave Eggars
  42. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  43. Calvin and Hobbes – Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat by Bill Watterson
  44. A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian Mclaren
  45. Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
  46. night by Elie Wiesel
  47. extremely loud and incredibly close by Jonathan Safran Foer
  48. Candide by Voltaire
  49. The Unabridged Edgar Allen Poe
  50. The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
  51. A Bright Red Scream by Marilee Strong
  52. The Search to Belong by Joseph Meyers
  53. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll
  54. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
  55. Timeline by Michael Crichton
  56. The Big Book of Hell by Matt Groening

fifty-six. it was the best i could do. i wanted to BS a few more classics just to look more cultured and civilized, but then i realized, “hey! this is MY LIST! if someone thinks i’m not all that intelligent because i like dr. seuss, well pbbbbthhhh!”

do you have a list? how about a top three?

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