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)
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
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
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
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?
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.