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MomsMyJob's "Madison Public Library 100 Best Novels"

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.

Pages: Pages: 1

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
 
2. The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
 
3. Nineteen Eighty-four (Penguin Modern Classics)
by George Orwell
 
4. The Color Purple: Tenth Anniversary Editon
by Alice Walker
 
5. The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics)
by F.Scott Fitzgerald
 
6. On the Road (Penguin Classics)
by Jack Kerouac
 
7. Beloved
by Toni Morrison
 
8. The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin Classics)
by John Steinbeck
 
9. Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
 
10. Brave New World (P.S.)
by Aldous Huxley
 
11. Animal Farm
by George Orwell
 
12. Charlotte's Web (Trophy Newbery)
by E. B. White
 
13. Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
 
14. Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
by Joseph Heller
 
15. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Penguin Classics)
by Ken Kesey
 
16. Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics)
by James Joyce
 
17. East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
 
18. Slaughterhouse 5
by Kurt Vonnegut
 
19. Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
 
20. Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
 
21. Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
 
22. The Hobbit: or There and Back Again
by J.R.R. Tolkien
 
23. MY ANTONIA (VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS)
by A.S. BYATT (INTRODUCTION) WILLA CATHER
 
24. A Prayer for Owen Meany (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by John Irving
 
25. The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
 
26. A Clockwork Orange (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Anthony Burgess
 
27. The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
 
28. The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
 
29. Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
 
30. The Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
 
31. Tropic of Capricorn (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
by Henry Miller
 
32. Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Vladimir Nabokov
 
33. All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren
 
34. To the Lighthouse (Vintage Classics)
by Virginia Woolf
 
35. The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
by Margaret Atwood
 
36. Deliverance
by James Dickey
 
37. Howards End (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics,)
by E. M. Forster
 
38. The Forsyte Saga (Penguin Modern Classics)
by John Galsworthy
 
39. Dune
by Frank Herbert
 
40. The World According to Garp (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by John Irving
 
41. A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
 
42. The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand
 
43. Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition)
by Ayn Rand
 
44. Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
 
45. Of Mice and Men (Penguin Red Classics)
by John Steinbeck
 
46. The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
by J.R.R. Tolkien
 
47. Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
 
48. The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
by Edith Wharton
 
49. Native Son (Perennial Classics)
by Richard A. Wright
 
50. Things Fall Apart (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Chinua Achebe
 
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.