I have read The Lord of the Rings and would agree it does not belong on that list. It’s a great work, but come on.
I’ve read one more from the Time list than the Modern Library list, although there is a fair amount of overlap between the two. I must say, there are a lot more books on the Time list that I can say I absolutely loved. It’s going to be a lot harder to pick up the spare on this one, though; post-1923 means they’re not on Project Gutenberg!
Every single one of the books I read with the exception of one (Catch-22), and there’s only about 6 or 7 of them, I had to read for school. Never would have picked them up otherwise. Didn’t really enjoy any of them except Catch-22
I’m really annoyed that literary critics don’t respect any novel except these types. Where’s the Sci-Fi and Fantasy? The Lord of the Rings should be on any list of all time best novels
You have got to admit, though, Watership Down belongs on any list of best 20th century novels about rabbits. 
That’s funny, I asked this question…12 years ago!
If you’d read the whole thread, you would have seen a newer list that includes LOTR.
The only one on the older list that I read in school was The Great Gatsby–which I enjoyed but need to read again. The other books were too controversial–let’s do more Dickens! Well, a college English Novels class did include The Magus (along with damn Great Expectations once again!) I liked it because I was into that Jungian mythic stuff–but we had a hard time explicating The Meaning to the Professor–who wasn’t much help. (Fowles produced a second edition in 1977–explaining that he’d included a lot of stuff that he thought was neat, but didn’t really mean much.)
Best SF? NPR has one of the many lists…
Along with… John Updike?
I’ll have to file that under “jokes I wish I’d made.” 
I’ve read 14:
Read by many, mnay others as well
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
CATCH 22 by Joeph Heller
1984 by George Orwell
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
Read by not so many others
USA TRILOGY by John Dos Passos
ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
THE MAGUS by John Fowles
Of these, I’d say **1984 **and **The Magus **were my favorites.
I keep meaning to read some Faulkner and Hemmingway. Quite a few others I’ve always wanted to read but just keep not getting around to it.
I’ve read 32 on the Time list linked to above. As a list it suits my tastes better than the *Modern Library * list. Inclusions I like from the Time list are Atwood, Pynchon, Stephenson and Tolkien. And the Time list has *The French Lieutenant’s Woman which I much preferred over The Magus *for John Fowles.
But there are some pretty dodgy additions as well - how anyone can justfiy including Zadie Smith’s White Teethin such a list is quite beyond me for example.
Sadly I have you beat.
Two… I’ve read TWO books on this list.
A Clockwork Orange
Call of the Wild
What’s surprising to me about that is that I would consider myself a voracious reader. Just not the classics, I guess.
I guess I’ve just never really looked at the modern classics. I got turned off of them in school, where we had to spend so much time to understand them that the story lost all vitality.
Anyone have or care to make a list of which ones of these have a good story, even if you don’t pay attention to the symbolism? That’s one of my guidelines on whether I’ll like a book. So far, only Pilgrim’s Progress has worked for me without having a decent story.
(I’m also not the biggest fan of downer endings, but I can accept them if the work is otherwise amazing. Even bittersweet requires the story to be rather good.)
I’m in the middle of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter right ow, and it’s a good story.
I’ve recently read A FAREWELL TO ARMS and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, so I’m up to nine.
I’ve been struggling my way through LOLITA. Brilliant writing, but Humbert Humbert is so despicable that it’s painful to read…
By my count, 45. A healthy number of those sucked donkey balls.
Just read The Great Gatsby again, curious to have another go at it after three decades and after having just seen the recent movie. I liked the book more than I did in college, but can’t say it blew me away.
So… still fourteen.
3 1/3.
Grapes of Wrath
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies
All required reading in high school.
I got a third of the way through A Clockwork Orange and then said, “Screw it I’ve already seen the movie.” I barely have time to read good books let alone books just because some snob will think less of me if I haven’t.
I shall ever be known as the guy who read The Old Wives’ Tale.
Only 17. Other than one chapter in Call of the Wild, none required in school, to the best of my recollection (which makes me wonder about my schooling). Ah well, engineering and all.
I’ll be adding a couple more, since I just got all of Conrad’s works for $2.50 on my Nook. Gotta love e-readers! I’ve already read Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim and a number of short stories. If anyone writes seafaring tales as well as Conrad, I want to know about them.
There are only two I started but did not finish. I got Ulysses because it’s covered in Nabokov’s “Lectures on Literature”. I still have it and intend to try again.
I picked up Gravity’s Rainbow when it was new; it was marketed like a sci-fi best seller. I was a high-school softmore or junior and got it at the airport to read on a long flight. Even though I was a captive audience, and a very patient reader for my age (having read a number of Russian novels as proof), I just couldn’t stick it. Later it came up in conversation with my sister, who’d covered it in a college lit class, and she pointed out a few things that piqued my interest, so I tried again – making it the only book I’ve started twice and never finished, out of probably 5 or so books I’ve started but not finished.
I do plan to try that one again, too. Definitely a lot going on there. Perhaps 35 years of experience will help.