Read the 'Observer' newspapers 100 greatest novels

Not really a list I have been working on aggressively, but it overlaps heavy with some others. There are definitely some great books I look forward to reading. So far I have read the following(32):

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
14. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
16. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
17. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
18. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
20. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
21. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
24. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
27. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
29. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
31. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
33. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
36. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
38. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
39. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
47. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
48. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. The Trial by Franz Kafka
52. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
53. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59. 1984 by George Orwell
61. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
63. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
66. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
68. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
69. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
71. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
73. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
74. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have marked in bold those books I have already read.

1. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

2. Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

6. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

7. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

8. Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

9. Emma by Jane Austen

10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

11. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock

12. The Black Sheep by Honore De Balzac

13. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

14. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

15. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli

16. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

17. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

18. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

19. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

20. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

21. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

22. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

23. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

24. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

25. Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott

26. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

27. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

28. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

29. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

30. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

31. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

33. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

35. The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

36. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

37. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

38. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

39. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

40. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

41. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

42. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

43. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

44. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

45. Ulysses by James Joyce

46. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

47. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

48. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

49. The Trial by Franz Kafka

50. Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway

51. Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

52. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

53. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

54. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

55. USA by John Dos Passos

56. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

57. The Pursuit Of Love by Nancy Mitford

58. The Plague by Albert Camus

59. 1984 by George Orwell

60. Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett

61. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

62. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

63. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

64. The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

65. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

66. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

67. The Quiet American by Graham Greene

68. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

69. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

70. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

71. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

73. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

74. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

75. Herzog by Saul Bellow

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre

79. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

80. The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge

81. The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

82. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

83. A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

84. Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

85. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

86. Lanark by Alasdair Gray

87. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

88. The BFG by Roald Dahl

89. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

90. Money by Martin Amis

91. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

92. Oscar And Lucinda by Peter Carey

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories by Salman Rushdie

95. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

96. Wise Children by Angela Carter

97. Atonement by Ian McEwan

98. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

99. American Pastoral by Philip Roth

100. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

Hmmm… only read 20 of them. Some of the choices do seem a little random..

I have decided to read whatever catches my fancy!

Just finished reading this one also.
I really enjoyed it, most of the time.
We discussed it in American Lit,
and the discussions didn’t really do it justice.
Definitely worth reading.
It’s a really good portrayal of American and the direction
that we were heading back in the day.

I just finished, and I absolutely loved it.
It’s funny how many times references from the book
will come up at school, or in culture.
Although I ended up skimming parts of it,
I definitely recommend it.
He’s got lines of absolute madness,
and lines of pure genius.
I guess they’re usually one in the same, though.
For sure an enjoyable read.

...have read 28 books of this list.

Catch-22 makes me think, this is what you would get if Monty Python re-wrote All Quiet on the Western Front. The book has a great rhythm and a wonderful sense of humor. The early part of the story spends a lot of time defining the multitude of characters, normally I am not a big fan of this style; however; Heller’s humor makes this work. By the mid point of the book, the humor started to feel a little repetitive and a bit hollow. The last quarter of the novel gets some depth and it finishes strong.

I enjoyed this book, but I have to admit it seems a bit high on the list at #14. I found Dantes annoying and that took away from the book for me. The book reads like a superhero comic. Dantes powers associated with his immense wealth that enable him to unleash his wrath upon his enemies. The powers seem to go to his head and he seems to become an egomaniac. He forgets that his powers are really a result of dumb luck, not some great doing of his own. Well worth the read, but I recommend the abridged version if you are impatient with the lead character.

This is the 18th Book that I have read on this list. The book tells a beautiful story and is brilliantly written. I am a big Conrad fan, I expected alot from this novel and it delivered. The story line contained a lot more twists and turns then I expect from Conrad. The story is exciting to the very end. Highly reccomend to read this and Lord Jim together, it is an interesting comparison of characters.

Love love it. Finally finished it today on the plane.

I lost count of how many books I finished while reading this one. The faster reads/short stories are so enticing in the way instant gratification is enticing sometimes.

I have copied over many excerpts into my reading journal.

Michael said I should stay away from Wilde if I want to soften up my cynical self.