The Dope List of 100 books of the 20th Century

As inspired/suggested by the recent thread Top 100 books of the C20th- How many have you read?

Let’s put together a list of the 100 most important books of the 20th Century. Rules are as follows: You can nominate any number of books. As soon as a book gets three or more nominations (from different people!), it goes on the list. If this gives us more than 100 books, we up it to four votes, etc. (so feel free to re-nominate something already on the list).

Fiction, non-fiction, and everything in between are allowed. The book must have been first published in the 20th century. We’re looking for important or influential books, not necessarily good ones or ones you liked (but a book may well be influential because it’s good).

To start off the list, I’ll nominate
The Lord of the Rings, fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit, fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien
Stranger in a Strange Land, fiction, Robert A. Heinlein

Hmmm. Influential, huh? Well, I trimmed a lot of books off this list to pare it down to books that I view as generally influential for various reasons, with a couple thrown in as personally influential.

Business and Management
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
Discipline of Market Leaders (Treacy, Wiersema)
Punished By Rewards (Kohn)
Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan, Norton)
Mythical Man Month (Brooks)

Fiction
Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)
The Trial (Kafka)
Flowers for Algernon (Keyes)
Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
Childhood’s End (Clarke)
Ishmael (Quinn)
Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson)
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) *****
The Sparrow (Russell)
Catch 22 (Heller)
Waiting for Godot (Beckett)

Non-fiction
Into Thin Air (Krakhauer)
Metamagical Themas (Hofstadter)
Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)
A Distant Mirror (Tuchman)
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Loewen)
Dancing Wu Li Masters (Zukov)
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)
Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (Sacks)
The Demon Haunted World (Sagan)
Bully For Brontosaurus (Gould)
Sophie’s World (Gaarder)
Incomplete Education (Jones, Wilson)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond)

***** a vote for an already nominated book

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I don’t know the exact title(s?), but the book(s?) written by Dr. Spock that lots of parents used to raise their children by.

Mmmm, influential?

I’ll have to think of some more later…

A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking

Dr Spock’s Baby and Child Care

*Bridget Jones’s Diary * Helen Fielding

1984 George Orwell

The Straight Dope, by Cecil Adams!!!

I’ll be back, once i get throught the other thread and have time to think about it.

Oh yeah, <smacks self on forehead> how could I forget:

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Qwertyasdfg are we in some kind of weird mind-loop thing? :wink:

The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer

puts arm protectively round work to stop Qwerty copying

Feminine Mystique (Freidan)
Silent Spring (Carson)

The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud)
The Second Sex (de Beauvoir)

Seconding the nomination:
Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson) ***
An Incomplete Education (Jones, Wilson) ***
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond) ***
My nominations:
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

1984 - Science-Fiction - George Orwell
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman - Autobiography - Richard Feynman
The Blind Watchmaker & The Selfish Gene - Biological Sciences - Richard Dawkins
No Logo - Politics? - Naomi Klein
How The Mind Works - Neurology/Psychology - Steven Pinker

To Kill a Mockingbird.
Catcher in the Rye.
Of Mice and Men.

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
1984 - George Orwell
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Winesburg Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phillip K. Dick

The Poisonwood Bible–Kingslover
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance–Pirsig
The Hobbit–Tolkien
Lord of the Rings–Tolkien
What to Expect When You’re Expecting–I don’t remember
Lord of the Flies–Golding

I forgot

Mastering the Art of French Cooking–Childs

Lord of the Rings–JRR Tolkein
Night–Elie Wiesel
Tigana–Guy Gaverial Kay
Angela’s Ashes–Frank McCourt
The Foundation Series–Isaac Asmiov
The Sun Also Rises–Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby–F. Scott Fitzgerald

I meant to have this one:
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee ***
This one is getting its third nom, so onto the list it goes!

Also on my list:
The Stand, by Stephen King

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman
The Elements of Style - William Strunk and E. B. White
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Ulysses - James Joyce
ILLUMINATUS! - **Robert Shea ** and Robert Anton Wilson
The Outsider and Others - H. P. Lovecraft
Any chance I can anti-nominate The Stand?

(Jes’ kiddin :smiley: )

Post Office (Bukowski)
Journey To the End Of the Night (Celine)
The Age of Reason (Sarte)
The Apes of God (Wyndham Lewis)
The Moviegoer (Percy)
Tropic of Cancer (Miller)
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills. (Bukowski)

These are all very important books to the literary underground.

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)