You want to make your own version of the list below…

We will copy the list title and type for you. Do you want to copy all of the items on the list as well, or start from scratch?

Yes, copy the items
No, start with an empty list

MomsMyJob's "Madison Public Library 100 Best Novels"

Add to my lists | Print this list

Readers’ Choice

When the Modern Library Board published its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the century in 1998, there was much debate in the media about the titles on the list and who selected them. Madison Public Library took that debate to heart and set up its own vote. The novels had to have been English language novels published in the 20th century. Here’s what Madison readers chose.

  1. 1.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

    Drag me to re-order


  2. 2.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

    Drag me to re-order


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

    Drag me to re-order


  4. 4.
    The Color Purple: Tenth Anniversary Editon
    by Alice Walker

    Drag me to re-order


  5. 5.
    The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by F.Scott Fitzgerald

    Drag me to re-order


  6. 6.
    On the Road (Penguin Classics)
    by Jack Kerouac

    Drag me to re-order


  7. 7.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

    Drag me to re-order


  8. 8.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin Classics)
    by John Steinbeck

    Drag me to re-order


  9. 9.
    Gone with the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

    Drag me to re-order


  10. 10.
    Brave New World (P.S.)
    by Aldous Huxley

    Drag me to re-order


  11. 11.
    Animal Farm
    by George Orwell

    Drag me to re-order


  12. 12.
    Charlotte's Web (Trophy Newbery)
    by E. B. White

    Drag me to re-order


  13. 13.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

    Drag me to re-order


  14. 14.
    Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
    by Joseph Heller

    Drag me to re-order


  15. 15.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Penguin Classics)
    by Ken Kesey

    Drag me to re-order


  16. 16.
    Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by James Joyce

    Drag me to re-order


  17. 17.
    East of Eden
    by John Steinbeck

    Drag me to re-order


  18. 18.
    Slaughterhouse 5
    by Kurt Vonnegut

    Drag me to re-order


  19. 19.
    Song of Solomon
    by Toni Morrison

    Drag me to re-order


  20. 20.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

    Drag me to re-order


  21. 21.
    Gravity's Rainbow
    by Thomas Pynchon

    Drag me to re-order


  22. 22.
    The Hobbit: or There and Back Again
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

    Drag me to re-order


  23. 23.
    MY ANTONIA (VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS)
    by A.S. BYATT (INTRODUCTION) WILLA CATHER

    Drag me to re-order


  24. 24.
    A Prayer for Owen Meany (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
    by John Irving

    Drag me to re-order


  25. 25.
    The Joy Luck Club
    by Amy Tan

    Drag me to re-order


  26. 26.
    A Clockwork Orange (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Anthony Burgess

    Drag me to re-order


  27. 27.
    The Old Man and the Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

    Drag me to re-order


  28. 28.
    The Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway

    Drag me to re-order


  29. 29.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

    Drag me to re-order


  30. 30.
    The Bean Trees
    by Barbara Kingsolver

    Drag me to re-order


  31. 31.
    Tropic of Capricorn (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
    by Henry Miller

    Drag me to re-order


  32. 32.
    Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Vladimir Nabokov

    Drag me to re-order


  33. 33.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

    Drag me to re-order


  34. 34.
    To the Lighthouse (Vintage Classics)
    by Virginia Woolf

    Drag me to re-order


  35. 35.
    The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
    by Margaret Atwood

    Drag me to re-order


  36. 36.
    Deliverance
    by James Dickey

    Drag me to re-order


  37. 37.
    Howards End (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics,)
    by E. M. Forster

    Drag me to re-order


  38. 38.
    The Forsyte Saga (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by John Galsworthy

    Drag me to re-order


  39. 39.
    Dune
    by Frank Herbert

    Drag me to re-order


  40. 40.

  41. 41.
    A Separate Peace
    by John Knowles

    Drag me to re-order


  42. 42.
    The Fountainhead
    by Ayn Rand

    Drag me to re-order


  43. 43.
    Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition)
    by Ayn Rand

    Drag me to re-order


  44. 44.
    Midnight's Children
    by Salman Rushdie

    Drag me to re-order


  45. 45.
    Of Mice and Men (Penguin Red Classics)
    by John Steinbeck

    Drag me to re-order


  46. 46.
    The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

    Drag me to re-order


  47. 47.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

    Drag me to re-order


  48. 48.
    The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

    Drag me to re-order


  49. 49.
    Native Son (Perennial Classics)
    by Richard A. Wright

    Drag me to re-order


  50. 50.
    Things Fall Apart (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Chinua Achebe

    Drag me to re-order


  51. 51.
    The Sheltering Sky
    by Paul Bowles

    Drag me to re-order


  52. 52.
    The Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner

    Drag me to re-order


  53. 53.
    The Book of Ruth
    by Jane Hamilton

    Drag me to re-order


  54. 54.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

    Drag me to re-order


  55. 55.
    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    by Ernest Hemingway

    Drag me to re-order


  56. 56.
    From Here to Eternity
    by James Jones

    Drag me to re-order


  57. 57.

  58. 58.
    Sometimes a Great Notion (Penguin Classics)
    by Ken Kesey

    Drag me to re-order


  59. 59.
    Animal Dreams
    by Barbara Kingsolver

    Drag me to re-order


  60. 60.
    Being There (Black Swan S.)
    by Jerzy Kosinski

    Drag me to re-order


  61. 61.
    The Left Hand of Darkness
    by Ursula K.Le Guin

    Drag me to re-order


  62. 62.
    Martha Quest: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
    by Doris Lessing

    Drag me to re-order


  63. 63.
    The Four-Gated City (The Children of Violence, Book 5)
    by Doris Lessing

    Drag me to re-order


  64. 64.
    The Call of the Wild (Aladdin Classics)
    by Jack London

    Drag me to re-order


  65. 65.
    All the Pretty Horses (UK edition)
    by Cormac Mccarthy

    Drag me to re-order


  66. 66.
    Lonesome Dove : A Novel
    by Larry McMurtry

    Drag me to re-order


  67. 67.
    Hawaii
    by James A. Michener

    Drag me to re-order


  68. 68.
    Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
    by Henry Miller

    Drag me to re-order


  69. 69.
    Interview with the Vampire (Vampire Chronicles)
    by Anne Rice

    Drag me to re-order


  70. 70.
    The Jungle (Modern Library Classics)
    by Upton Sinclair

    Drag me to re-order


  71. 71.
    Angle of Repose (Modern Library)
    by Wallace Stegner

    Drag me to re-order


  72. 72.
    Rabbit, Run
    by John Updike

    Drag me to re-order


  73. 73.
    Trinity
    by Leon Uris

    Drag me to re-order


  74. 74.
    Breakfast of Champions
    by Kurt Vonnegut

    Drag me to re-order


  75. 75.
    The Temple of My Familiar
    by Alice Walker

    Drag me to re-order


  76. 76.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by James Baldwin

    Drag me to re-order


  77. 77.
    Fahrenheit 451
    by Ray Bradbury

    Drag me to re-order


  78. 78.
    The Good Earth (Enriched Classics)
    by Pearl S. Buck

    Drag me to re-order


  79. 79.
    Ender's Game (The Ender Saga)
    by Orson S. Card

    Drag me to re-order


  80. 80.
    2001: A Space Odyssey
    by Arthur C. Clarke

    Drag me to re-order


  81. 81.
    Heart of Darkness (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

    Drag me to re-order


  82. 82.
    Fifth Business
    by Robertson Davies

    Drag me to re-order


  83. 83.
    Ragtime
    by E.L. Doctorow

    Drag me to re-order


  84. 84.
    The Maltese Falcon
    by Dashiell Hammett

    Drag me to re-order


  85. 85.
    Stones from the River
    by Ursula Hegi

    Drag me to re-order


  86. 86.
    Ironweed
    by William Kennedy

    Drag me to re-order


  87. 87.
    The Stand
    by Stephen King

    Drag me to re-order


  88. 88.
    Sons and Lovers (Penguin Classics)
    by D.H. Lawrence

    Drag me to re-order


  89. 89.
    The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

    Drag me to re-order


  90. 90.
    Babbitt (Modern Library Classics)
    by Sinclair Lewis

    Drag me to re-order


  91. 91.
    Of Human Bondage (Modern Library Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

    Drag me to re-order


  92. 92.
    The Enigma of Arrival
    by V.S. Naipaul

    Drag me to re-order


  93. 93.
    The Shell Seekers
    by Rosamunde Pilcher

    Drag me to re-order


  94. 94.
    The Bell Jar
    by Sylvia Plath

    Drag me to re-order


  95. 95.
    Housekeeping
    by Marilynne Robinson

    Drag me to re-order


  96. 96.
    My Life As a Man (Vintage International)
    by Philip Roth

    Drag me to re-order


  97. 97.
    A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Perennial Classics)
    by Betty Smith

    Drag me to re-order


  98. 98.
    Sophie's Choice (Vintage Classics)
    by William Styron

    Drag me to re-order


  99. 99.
    Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
    by Anne Tyler

    Drag me to re-order


  100. 100.
    Bastard out of Carolina (Contemporary Fiction, Plume)
    by Dorothy Allison

    Drag me to re-order


This is MomsMyJob's list. Only MomsMyJob can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by MomsMyJob on Feb 24, 2008.