Book Magazine's The Best of Bookish Characters

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Voila, another list to wrangle over. This time it is other people’s choices of the 100 "best" characters in fiction since 1900. Chosen by a panel appointed by Book magazine, the list leaves loads of room for impassioned disagreement—what constitutes "best," anyway? The panelists include authors, editors, academics and actors, Michael York and Rod Steiger among them, and the outcome is eclectic and fun. Read on.

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  1. 51.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

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  2. 52.
    Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  3. 53.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

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  4. 54.
    My Antonia
    by Willa Cather

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  5. 55.
    Grendel
    by John Gardner

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  6. 56.
    The Horse's Mouth (New York Review Books Classics)
    by Joyce Cary

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  7. 57.
    1984 (Signet Classics)
    by George Orwell

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  8. 58.
    The Talented Mr. Ripley
    by Patricia Highsmith

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  9. 59.
    Nine Stories
    by J.D. Salinger

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  10. 60.
    On the Road
    by Jack Kerouac

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  11. 61.
    Charlotte's Web (Trophy Newbery)
    by E. B. White

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  12. 62.
    The World According to Garp
    by John Irving

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  13. 63.
    The Thin Man
    by Dashiell Hammett

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  14. 64.
    Casino Royale (James Bond Novels)
    by Ian Fleming

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  15. 65.
    Mrs. Bridge: A Novel
    by Evan S. Connell

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  16. 66.
    Mr. Bridge : A Novel
    by Evan S. Connell

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  17. 67.
    Under the Volcano: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
    by Malcolm Lowry

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  18. 68.
    The Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner

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  19. 69.
    Pale Fire
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  20. 70.
    We Have Always Lived in the Castle
    by Shirley Jackson

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  21. 72.
    Love in the Time of Cholera
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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  22. 73.
    Babbitt
    by SINCLAIR LEWIS

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  23. 74.
    Parade's End
    by Ford Madox Ford

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  24. 75.
    Member of the Wedding (New Directions Paperbook)
    by Carson McCullers

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  25. 76.
    Blindness (Harvest Book)
    by Jose Saramago

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  26. 77.
    Tarzan of the Apes (Tarzan)
    by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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  27. 78.
    My Life As a Man (Vintage International)
    by Philip Roth

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  28. 79.
    Post Office
    by Charles Bukowski

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  29. 80.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

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  30. 81.
    ?
    DR. ZHIVAGO
    by BORIS PASTERNAK

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  31. 82.
    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
    by J.K. Rowling

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  32. 83.
    The English Patient
    by Michael Ondaatje

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  33. 84.
    Howards End (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics,)
    by E. M. Forster

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  34. 85.
    Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics)
    by Kingsley Amis

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  35. 87.
    Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by John Steinbeck

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  36. 88.
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  37. 89.
    The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    by Graham Greene

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  38. 90.
    Kim (Penguin Classics)
    by Rudyard Kipling

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  39. 91.
    The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  40. 92.
    An American Tragedy
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  41. 93.
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker

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  42. 94.
    Adventures of Augie March, The (50th Anniv. Edition)
    by Saul Bellow

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Created by starlagurl on Mar 26, 2006.
 

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