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southernbohemian's "Random House Modern Library's "100 Best Books of the 20th Century: Fiction" - Most Read"

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I was interested in seeing in what order people who are trying to complete the Modern Library’s list read the books on it. I surveyed which books people who had read 50% or more had finished and then put them in order of popularity from most to least read. Ties are listed in the order they appeared on the Modern Library’s list. I was kind of surprised by the outcome (I had figured Finnegan’s Wake would be the least popular, but it actually is the Dance to the Music of Time series, which may be easier to read but consists of 12 novels).

  1. 1.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

    Drag me to re-order


  2. 2.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

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  3. 3.
    Nineteen Eighty-four (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by George Orwell

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  4. 4.
    Sun Also Rises (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  5. 5.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

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  6. 6.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  7. 7.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

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  8. 8.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

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  9. 9.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    by Carson McCullers

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  10. 10.
    Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell

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  11. 11.
    Lord of the Flies (50th Anniversary Edition)
    by William Golding

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  12. 12.
    A Clockwork Orange (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Anthony Burgess

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  13. 13.
    Heart of Darkness (Hesperus Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  14. 14.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

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  15. 15.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Sherwood Anderson

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  16. 16.
    Howard's End (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by E.M. Forster

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  17. 17.
    On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by Jack Kerouac

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  18. 18.
    The Call of the Wild (Aladdin Classics)
    by Jack London

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  19. 19.

  20. 20.
    The Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner

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  21. 22.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  22. 23.
    A Room with a View
    by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

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  23. 24.
    Lord Jim
    by Joseph Conrad

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  24. 25.
    Ragtime: A Novel
    by E.L. Doctorow

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  25. 26.
    Sophie's Choice
    by William Styron

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  26. 27.
    Sons and Lovers (Modern Library Classics)
    by D.H. Lawrence

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  27. 28.
    To the Lighthouse
    by Virginia Woolf

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  28. 29.
    A Passage to India (Penguin Classics)
    by E.M. Forster

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  29. 30.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  30. 31.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

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  31. 32.
    Portnoy's Complaint
    by Philip Roth

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  32. 33.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  33. 34.
    Wide Sargasso Sea (Essential.penguin)
    by Jean Rhys

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  34. 35.
    Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  35. 36.
    A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  36. 38.
    Ironweed
    by William Kennedy

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  37. 39.
    Tender Is the Night (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by F.Scott Fitzgerald

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  38. 40.
    Deliverance (Bloomsbury Film Classics)
    by James Dickey

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  39. 41.
    The Day of the Locust (Signet Classic)
    by Nathanael West

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  40. 42.
    Scoop (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  41. 43.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

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  42. 45.
    Sister Carrie (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  43. 46.
    The Heart of the Matter
    by Graham Greene

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  44. 47.
    Women in Love (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by D. H. Lawrence

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  45. 48.
    Pale Fire (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  46. 49.
    The Maltese Falcon
    by Dashiell Hammett

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  47. 50.
    Native Son (Perennial Classics)
    by Richard A. Wright

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  48. 51.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop
    by Willa Cather

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  49. 52.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by James Baldwin

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  50. 54.
    Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
    by Henry Miller

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  51. 55.
    Light in August
    by William Faulkner

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  52. 56.
    The Moviegoer
    by Walker Percy

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  53. 57.
    Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

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  54. 58.
    Main Street (Modern Library)
    by Sinclair Lewis

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  55. 59.
    The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton

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  56. 60.
    ?
    A High Wind in Jamaica
    by Richard Hughes

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  57. 61.
    A House for Mr.Biswas
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  58. 62.
    ?
    Angle of Repose
    by Wallace Stegner

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  59. 63.
    The Sheltering Sky
    by Paul Bowles

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  60. 64.
    Invisible Man: A Novel
    by Ralph Ellison

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  61. 65.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

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  62. 66.
    Kim
    by Rudyard Kipling

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  63. 67.
    A Bend in the River
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  64. 68.
    Under The Net
    by Iris Murdoch

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  65. 69.
    The Postman Always Rings Twice (Crime Masterworks)
    by James M. Cain

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  66. 70.
    Under the Volcano: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
    by Malcolm Lowry

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  67. 71.
    Dreiser American Tragedy (Library of America)
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  68. 72.
    The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
    by Norman Mailer

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  69. 73.
    The Wapshot Chronicle (Perennial Classics)
    by John Cheever

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  70. 74.
    Midnight's Children
    by Salman Rushdie

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  71. 75.
    The Way of All Flesh (Giant Thrifts)
    by Samuel Butler

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  72. 76.
    Appointment in Samarra: A Novel
    by John O'Hara

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  73. 77.
    The Wings of the Dove (Modern Library Classics)
    by Henry James

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  74. 78.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion
    by Ford Madox Ford

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  75. 79.
    The Secret Agent (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  76. 80.
    The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  77. 81.
    The Magus
    by John Fowles

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  78. 82.
    The Ginger Man
    by J. P. Donleavy

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  79. 83.
    ?
    The Ambassadors (Norton Critical Edition Series)
    by Henry; edited by S.P. Rosenbaum James

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  80. 84.
    The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson
    by Max Beerbohm

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  81. 85.
    Loving (A novel by Henry Green)
    by Henry Green

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  82. 86.
    Tobacco Road
    by Erskine Caldwell

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  83. 87.
    The Magnificent Ambersons
    by Booth Tarkington

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  84. 88.
    Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by James Joyce

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  85. 91.
    From Here to Eternity
    by James Jones

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  86. 92.
    The Alexandria Quartet Boxed Set (Alexandria Quartet)
    by Lawrence Durrell

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  87. 93.
    The Death of the Heart
    by Elizabeth Bowen

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  88. 94.
    The Old Wives' Tale
    by Arnold Bennett

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  89. 95.
    James T Farrell: Studs Lonigan a Trilogy (Library of America)
    by James T. Farrell

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  90. 96.
    The Golden Bowl (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Henry James

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  91. 97.
    Point Counter Point
    by Aldous Huxley

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  92. 98.
    Parade's End
    by Ford Madox Ford

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  93. 99.
    ?
    Finnegans Wake
    by James Joyce

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  94. 100.
    ?
    A Dance to the Music of Time (series)
    by Anthony Powell

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Created by southernbohemian on Mar 23, 2007.