The Modern Library 100 Best Novels Challenge discussion

Books on The Board's List

(Italics means I've read it, but need to re-read it as it was too long ago and I don't remember it well!)

1. Ulysses, James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
7. Catch-22 , Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck
11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
13. 1984 , George Orwell
14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
15. To the Lighthouse , Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter , Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse-Five , Kurt Vonnegut
19. Invisible Man , Ralph Ellison
20. Native Son, Richard Wright
21. Henderson the Rain King , Saul Bellow
22. Appointment in Samarra , John O'Hara
23. U. S. A. (trilogy), John Dos Passos
24. Winesburg, Ohio , Sherwood Anderson
25. A Passage to India , E. M. Forester
26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
27. The Ambassadors, Henry James
28. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell
30. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
31. Animal Farm , George Orwell
32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James
33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
36. All the King's Men, Robert Penn
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey , Thornton Wilder
38. Howard's End, E. M. Forester
39. Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin
40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
42. Deliverance , James Dickey
43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony Powell
44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
45. The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
48. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence
49. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
52. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
54. Light in August, William Faulkner
55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
56. The Maltese Falcon , Dashiell Hammett
57. Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford
58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
61. Death Comes for the Archbishop , Willa Cather
62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones
63. The Wapshot Chronicle , John Cheever
64. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
65. A Clockwork Orange , Anthony Burgess
66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
69. The House of Mirth , Edith Wharton
70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durell
71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
72. A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul
73. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
74. A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
77. Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce
78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
79. A Room With a View , E. M. Forster
80. Brideshead Revisited , Evelyn Waugh
81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
82. Angle of Repose , Wallace Stegner
83. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
86. Ragtime , E. L. Doctorow
87. The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett
88. The Call of the Wild , Jack London
89. Loving, Henry Green
90. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
92. Ironweed, William Kennedy
93. The Magus, John Fowles
94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
96. Sophie's Choice, William Styron
97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
99. The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy
100.The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington

Completed 26 of 100

Books on The Reader's List

Covers in italics - read it long ago and need to re-read.
Also some comments are in italics.

1. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
2. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
3. Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard - tried it, no way.
4. The Lord of the Rings - trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkein
5. To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee
6. 1984 , George Orwell
7. Anthem, Ayn Rand
8. We the Living, Ayn Rand
9. Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard - nope!
10. Fear, L. Ron Hubbard - uh uh!
11. Ulysses, James Joyce
12. Catch-22 , Joseph Heller
13. The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Dune , Frank Herbert - read 150 pages and no more, thanks!
15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
16. Stranger in a Strange Land , Robert Heinlein
17. A Town Like Alice , Nevil Shute
18. Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
19. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
20. Animal Farm , George Orwell
21. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
22. The Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck
23. Slaughterhouse-Five , Kurt Vonnegut
24. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
25. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
26. Shane , Jack Schaefer
27. Trustee from the Toolroom, Nevil Shute
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany , John Irving
29. The Stand, Stephen King
30. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
31. Beloved, Toni Morrison
32. The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison
33. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
34. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
35. Moonheart, Charles de Lint
36. Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner
37. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
38. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Conner
39. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
40. Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
41. Someplace to be Flying, Charles de Lint
42. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
43. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
44. Yarrow, Charles de Lint
45. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
46. One Lonely Night, Mickey Spillane
47. Memory and Dream, Charles de Lint
48. To the Lighthouse , Virginia Woolf
49. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
50. Trader, Charles de Lint
51. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
52. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter , Carson McCullers
53. The Handmaid's Tale , Margaret Atwood
54. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
55. A Clockwork Orange , Anthony Burgess
56. On the Beach , Nevil Shute
57. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
58. Greenmantle, Charles de Lint
59. Ender's Game , Orson Scott Card
60. The Little Country, Charles de Lint
61. The Recognitions, William Gaddis
62. Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
63. The Sun Also Rises , Ernest Hemingway
64. The World According to Garp, John Irving
65. Something Wicked This Way Comes , Ray Bradbury
66. The Haunting of Hill House , Shirley Jackson
67. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
68. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
69. Invisible Man , Ralph Ellison
70. The Wood Wife, Terri Windling
71. The Magus, John Fowles
72. The Door into Summer, Robert Heinlein
73. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig - partially read, no interest.
74. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
75. The Call of the Wild , Jack London
76. At Swim-Two Birds, Flann O'Brien
77. Fahrenheit 451 , Ray Bradbury
78. Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
79. Watership Down , Richard Adams
80. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
81. The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
82. Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
83. The Puppet Masters, Robert Heinlein
84. It, Stephen King
85. V., Thomas Pynchon
86. Double Star, Robert Heinlein
87. Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein
88. Brideshead Revisited , Evelyn Waugh
89. Light in August, William Faulkner
90. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Ken Kesey
91. A Farewell to Arms , Ernest Hemingway
92. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
93. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
94. My Antonia , Willa Cather
95. Mulengro: A Romany Tale , Charles de Lint
96. Suttree, Carmac McCarthy
97. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
98. Illusions, Richard Bach
99. The Cunning Man, Robertson Davies
100.The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

Completed 30 of 100

September 2009 books: Finished Winesburg, Ohio, and awaiting Shane from inter-library loan.

September 2009 books: Finished Shane. Liked it.

Restarted The Handmaid's Tale and actually finished it this time. Didn't like it any better this time. It was okay.

October 2009 books: Had previously read Something Wicked This Way Comes and am waiting for The Haunting of Hill House on inter-library loan.

October 2009 books: Read The Haunting of Hill House. Creepy!

November 2009 books: I had already read all three, so I didn't re-read them at this time.

Fahrenheit 451
The Handmaid's Tale
1984

December 2009: I read Ender's Game. The first Sci-Fi that I've ever liked.

December 2009: I finished A Prayer for Owen Meany. I gave it 3 stars as it swung wildly between 1 star and 5 stars all the way through the book.

December 2009: Finished To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. It was both boring and very interesting -- in (obviously) different ways. A novel about relationships.

January 2010: Read Watership Down by Richard Adams. Although I like fantasy like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein, this book didn't interest me anywhere near as much. 2 stars.

February 2010: Read To the Lighthouse in December and had read Slaughterhouse-Five many years ago, so I've been reading other books this month so far. As far as classics go, I plan to start David Copperfield soon, but I don't think that's on this list!

March 2010: Read On the Beach and still hope to get The House of Mirth finished by the end of the month.

April 2010: Read both The Sun Also Rises (a re-read) and Ragtime. Neither were great reads for me, but they were okay.

May 2010: I had already read A Passage to Indiabefore starting this list, but I just finished The Wapshot Chronicle (2 stars).

June 2010: Read The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Enjoyed it, 3 stars.

July 2010: I have made the decision that I will read all the books on the ML 100 Board List, but those on the ML 100 Reader's List are going to be subjected to some serious thinning out....namely all those sci-fi books. Obviously someone, somewhere weighted this list with sci-fi voters!

I decided in June to read all 100 books in 100 weeks!

My mother passed away last May and I found the Modern Library's list while going through her things. To honor her memory, I am attempting to read the list in its entirety.

I post a review weekly on my blog (see below) as I make my way through the list.

Please visit my blog; http://vsudia.wordpress.com

Veronica wrote: "I decided in June to read all 100 books in 100 weeks! My mother passed away last May and I found the Modern Library's list while going through her things. To honor her memory, I am attempting to..."

Wow! That's pretty ambitious! I feel good when I get one done each month. That's sweet to do it in memory of your mother, though. What a wonderful thing to do!

Thanks for the reply.

Happy reading!

I began this group in September 2009. So far, I have read:
25 of 100 on the Board List
30 of 100 on the Reader's List
Not too great, but a much longer list completed than when I started!