About the top 100 list

Before we get started I figure I should let everyone know where this list of 100 books came from. 

After reviewing several different top 100 lists a lady by the name of Leisa Watkins had a brilliant idea to create the perfect top 100 list.  She took the lists created by Random House Readers, The Random House Board, the Radcliffe List, Time Magazine, Guardian Unlimited and the BBC and combined them.  Using these lists she created a list that takes into account the majority of the English speaking world, the readers of these books, and those at a higher level.

You can read all about her system HERE.

Many of the books are the same, but there are some differences between lists.  We could have used any of the lists on this journey but I figured we might as well get the best of the best.

So without further adieu.  Here is our list.

1.    THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2.    ULYSSES by James Joyce
3.    1984 by George Orwell
4.    THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
5.    ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
6.    THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
7.    CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8.    LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
9.    BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
10.  BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
11.  THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
12.  TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
13.  THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
14.  A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
15.  ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
16.  TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
17.  INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
18.  A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
19.  GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
20.  AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
21.  A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
22.  A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
23.  LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
24.  THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
25.  DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens
26.  EMMA by Jane Austen
27.  TESS Of The D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy
28.  THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne
29.  WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte
30.  THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
31.  SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
32.  JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
33.  BELOVED by Toni Morrison
34.  ANNA KAREINA by Leo Tolstoy
35.  THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
36.  NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
37.  ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
38.  NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
39.  HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
40.  UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
41.  THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
42.  HERZOG by Saul Bellow
43.  THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame
44.  U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
45.  FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
46.  AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
47.  WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
48.  THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
49.  THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
50.  THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe
51.  TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
52.  MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
53.  LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
54.  THE MAGUS by John Fowles
55.  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
56.  DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
57.  TOM JONES by Henry Fielding
58.  WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy
59.  MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville
60.  MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert
61.  WINNIE THE POOH by A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
62.  GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens
63.  THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Feodor Dostoevsky
64.  TRISTAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne
65.  LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa M. Alcott
66.  VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray
67.  PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen
68.  IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust
69.  THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
70.  THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
71.  GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
72.  THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin
73.  DUNE by Frank Herbert
74.  A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
75.  ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll
76.  CLARISSA by Samuel Richardson
77.  THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
78.  A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
79.  THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas
80.  THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James
81.  OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck
82.  ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
83.  GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
84.  CHARLOTE’S WEB by E. B. White
85.  ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe
86.  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Feodor Dostoevsky
87.  THE STAND by Stephen King
88.  REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier
89.  I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
90.  HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
91.  TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92.  THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
93.  BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens
94.  ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
95.  ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
96.  THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
97.  AUSTERLITZ by W. G. Sebald
98.  THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka
99.  WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor
100. FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley