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(Somebody's) List of Best novels of all time

Posted on 02/17/2006 8:31:22 AM PST by Borges

This one from a 2004 book called 'The Novel 100' A rankling of the 100 best novels of all time...

    1. Don Quixote - Cervantes
    2. War and Peace - Tolstoy
    3. Ulysses - Joyce
    4. In Search of Lost Time - Proust
    5. The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
    6. Moby Dick - Melville
    7. Madame Bovay - Flaubert
    8 Middlemarch - George Eliot
    9. The Magic Mountain - Mann
    10. The Tale of Genji - Lady Murasaki
    11. Emma - Austen
    12. Bleak house - Dickens
    13. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
    14. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
    15. Tom Jones - Fielding
    16. Great Expectations - Dickens
    17. Absolom, Absolom - Faulkner
    18. The Ambassadors - HenryJames
    19. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
    20. The GReat Gatsby- Fitzgerald
    21. To the Lighthouse - Woolf
    22. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
    23. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
    24. Vanity Fair - Thackeray
    25. Invisble Man - Ellison
    26. Finnegan's Wake - Joyce
    27. The Man Without Qulaities - Musil
    28. Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
    29. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
    30. Women in Love - Lawrence
    31. The Red and the Black - Stendahl
    32. Tristram Shandy - Sterne
    33. Dead Souls - Gogol
    34. Tess of the D'Urbevilles - Hardy
    35. Buddenbrooks - Hardy
    36. Le Pere Goirot - Balzac
    37. A Portrait of the Artitst as a Young Man - Joyce
    38. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
    39. The Tin Drum - Grass
    40. Molloy Malone Dies, The Unnameable - Beckett
    41. Pride and Prejudice - Austen
    42. The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
    43. Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
    44. Nostromo - Conrad
    45. Beloved - Morrison
    46. An American TRagedy - Dreiser
    47. Lolita - Nabokov
    48. The Golden Notebook - Lessing
    49. Clarrissa - Richardson
    50. Dream of the Red Chamber - Cao Xueqin
    51. The Trial - Kafka
    52. Jane Erye - Charlotte Bronte
    53. The Red Badge of Courage - Crane
    54. The GRapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
    55. Petersburg - Bely
    56. Things Fall apart - Achebe
    57. The Princess of cleves - Lafayette
    58. The Stranger - Camus
    59. My Antonia - Cather
    60. The coutnerfeiters - Gide
    61. The Age of Innocence - Wharton
    62. The Good Soldier - Ford
    63. The Awakening - Chopin
    64. A Passage to India - Forster
    65. Herzog - Bellow
    66. Germinal - Zola
    67. Call it Sleep - Henry Roth
    68. U.S.A. Trilogy - Dos Passos
    69. Hunger - Hamsun
    70. Berlin Alexanderplatz- Doblin
    71. Cities of Salt - Munif
    72. The Death of Artemio Cruz - Fuentes
    73. A Farwell to Arms - Hemmingway
    74. Brideshead Revisited - Waugh
    75. The LAst chronicle of Barset - Trollope
    76. The Pickwick Papers - Dickens
    77. Robinson Crusoe - Defoe
    78. The sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe
    79. Candide - Voltaire
    80. Native Son - Wright
    81. Under the Volcano - Lowry
    82. Oblomov - Goncharov
    83. Their eyes Were Watching God - Hurston
    84. Waverly - Scott
    85. Snow country - Kawabata
    86. 1984 - Orwell
    87. The Betrothed - Manzoni
    88. The Last of the Mohicans - Cooper
    89. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Stowe
    90. Les Miserables - Hugo
    91. On the Road - Kerouac
    92. Frankenstien - Shelley
    93. The Leopard - Lampedusa
    94. The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
    95. The Woman in the White - Collins
    96. The Good Soldier Svejk - Hasek
    97. Dracula - Stoker
    98. The Three Musketeers - Dumas
    99. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Doyle
    100.Gone with the Wind - Mitchell


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List posted here for perusal and good natured vitriol.
1 posted on 02/17/2006 8:31:23 AM PST by Borges
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: Borges
Ulysses at Number 3? Let's examine the thought process:

"I've never read it. I tried, but it sucked real bad. My professor said it was really important. She didn't actually read it either -- she said it sucked real bad too. But, since it's so important, I guess I should vote for it..."

3 posted on 02/17/2006 8:44:00 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (E)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Influence has to come in somewhere. For the record I read and enjoyed Ulysses. No plans for Finegann's Wake though. Life's too short.


4 posted on 02/17/2006 8:45:18 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges

100.Gone with the Wind - Mitchell

Well, this picture paints a thousand words...


5 posted on 02/17/2006 8:48:29 AM PST by Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin
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To: Borges

List must be from a teacher or literature major out to impress. Only books on the list are books one was forced to read in school.

My top 5-
Lonesome Dove
Lonesome Dove
Lonesome Dove
Shogun
and
Lonesome Dove


6 posted on 02/17/2006 9:07:02 AM PST by gate2wire
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To: gate2wire
He's an English Professor who consulted with others.
7 posted on 02/17/2006 9:08:38 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges

Figures.

I tried to read Moby Dick when in my late 20's.
Couldn't get more than a couple chapters.

Not on the list but tried A Tale of Two Cities as an adult also. Same result.

Guess I'm just not that 'sophisticated'.


8 posted on 02/17/2006 9:13:30 AM PST by gate2wire
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To: Borges
I read 21 of the books on the list.
9 posted on 02/17/2006 9:13:41 AM PST by mware (The keeper of the I's once again.)
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To: Borges

FRESHMAN YEAR

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
HERODOTUS: Histories
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
EUCLID: Elements
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust
top

SOPHOMORE YEAR

THE BIBLE
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
DES PREZ: Mass
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
SCHUBERT: Songs
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms
top

JUNIOR YEAR

CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers"

top

SENIOR YEAR

Declaration of Independence
The Constitution of the United States
Supreme Court opinions
HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
MILLIKAN: The Electron
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy


10 posted on 02/17/2006 9:16:15 AM PST by mware (The keeper of the I's once again.)
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To: gate2wire

ATOTC is one of Dickens' worst but Moby Dick is hilarious. Especially the beginning.


11 posted on 02/17/2006 9:16:15 AM PST by Borges
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To: mware

St John's reading list.


12 posted on 02/17/2006 9:16:59 AM PST by mware (The keeper of the I's once again.)
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To: mware

High school or college? :-)


13 posted on 02/17/2006 9:17:12 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges
4. In Search of Lost Time - Proust

Wretched, miserable, execrable, abysmal book. To be fair I only read Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, but it was by far the dumbest thing I have ever read. Pretentious, plodding, pointless. How many pages can you read about a church steeple? To get through this book, you'll have to conquer 12. In a row. How little can happen in the 1000 pages of the 2 volumes (of 7 total) that I read? How about having tea with Madame Swann, and then going to the beach. That's it. Maybe there's something I'm not getting. Maybe I'll try it again some day. Much of the prose is beautiful, but the plot is so uncompelling that it hardly matters.
14 posted on 02/17/2006 9:17:19 AM PST by Cyclopean Squid (History is a work in progress)
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To: mware

That's pretty good. How many did you actually like?

Had to read Les Miserables in FRENCH when in high school. Talk about boring.


15 posted on 02/17/2006 9:17:20 AM PST by gate2wire
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To: Borges
# 9 Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

I remember being caught up in this book. And then, near the end, Mann switches to the French language for several pages for no apparent reason.

I don't speak French and I was a little annoyed.

16 posted on 02/17/2006 9:17:21 AM PST by GSWarrior
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To: Cyclopean Squid
It's been called the literary equivalent of Einstein's physics.
17 posted on 02/17/2006 9:18:21 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges

St. John's of Annapolis, Great Reading Series.


18 posted on 02/17/2006 9:19:10 AM PST by mware (The keeper of the I's once again.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

LOL, I had the same experience. Only my prof said that the way he read it was drinking many Gin and tonics on the beach! Great, eh?


19 posted on 02/17/2006 9:19:20 AM PST by A Citizen Reporter
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To: Borges

Good: Only 1 Hemingway
Bad: No Atlas Shrugged, which I just finished a few weeks back and is easily in my top 5.


20 posted on 02/17/2006 9:19:39 AM PST by RabidBartender
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