read the 100 best books of the 20th century

Sons and Lovers
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Room with a View

onto my iPhone! I would much rather read an actual book but I figure this might not be a bad way to knock a couple of books off the list. Plus I always have my iPhone with me so whenever I get caught somewheres without a book (waiting in line, on the subway, etc), I can read instead of staring off into space!

I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read so far. After counting them up I’m disspointed to know that I’ve only read 9 out of 100. Super lame.

Ulysses, James Joyce (1922)The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1916)
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1932)
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929)
Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961)
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1941)
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence (1913)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939)
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry (1947)
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler (1903)
1984, George Orwell (1949)
I, Claudius, Robert Graves (1934)
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (1927)
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1925)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (1940)
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow (1959)
Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara (1934)
U.S.A. (trilogy), John Dos Passos (1937—trilogy completed)
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson (1919)
A Passage to India, E. M. Forster (1924)
The Wings of the Dove, Henry James (1902)
The Ambassadors, Henry James (1903)
Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell (1935)
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford (1915)
Animal Farm, George Orwell (1946)
The Golden Bowl, Henry James (1904)
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900)
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh (1934)
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1930)
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1946)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder (1927)
Howards End, E. M. Forster (1910)
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin (1953)
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene (1948)
Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954)
Deliverance, James Dickey (1969)
A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony Powell (1975—series completed)
Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley (1928)
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926)
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad (1907)
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad(1904)
The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (1915)
Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence (1921)
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller (1934)
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1948)
Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth (1969)
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
Light in August, William Faulkner (1932)
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (1930)
Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford (1950)
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)
Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm (1911)
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy (1961)
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (1927)
From Here to Eternity, James Jones (1951)
The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever (1957)
The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (1951)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1902)
Main Street, Sinclair Lewis (1920)
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (1960—series completed)
A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (1929)
A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul (1961)
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (1929)
Scoop, Evelyn Waugh (1938)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (1939)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (1901)
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster (1908)
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (1945)
The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (1953)
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner (1971)
A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul (1979)
The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen (1938)
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad (1900)
Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow (1975)
The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett (1908)
The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
Loving, Henry Green (1945)
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)
Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell (1933)
Ironweed, William Kennedy (1983)
The Magus, John Fowles (1966)
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1966)
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch (1954)
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron (1979)
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949)
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain (1934)
The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy (1955)
The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington (1918)

I’m reading LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner again. I read it about eleven years ago, and I don’t remember it, so I’m reading it again. On purpose this time. This goal isn’t about getting through the list, it’s about basking in it…

And another:

15)A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway

Another one down.

14) HOWARDS END by E. M. Forster

Of the 100 best books of the 20th century, I have read the following (numbered so I’ll know how many I’ve read, not according to the book’s position on the list):

1) THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2) A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
3) LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
4) BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
5) CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
6) SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
7) TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8) THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
9) THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemmingway
10) PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
11) LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
12) THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
13) THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger

I think that’s 13. I’ll begin with A FAREWELL TO ARMS, by Ernest Hemingway, tonight (April 27, 2009).