I can only go by books that I’ve read, and these are pretty much in order:
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
East of Eden, Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
I picked these based on the fact that it was almost impossible to put them down, once I started reading them. There are more, of course, but I’ve already overstepped the OP.
How can one choose? Impossible, really, especially if you really fairly consider literature from all over the world, and not just the USA and Great Britain. I’ll stick with English language novels, I guess (totally unfair, but that’s what I know best.)
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Or maybe that would be rejected as being a cycle of short stories, not truly a novel. A truly awesome cycle of short stories, but yeah, ok.
Or, maybe Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. Joseph Heller’s Catch 22?
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce should be up there. Also Salman Rushie’s Satanic Verses or Midnight’s Children.
Here’s is a good place to go for ideas, except for “The Reader’s List,” whose top 10 is choked with idiot rubbish by L. Ron Hubbard and Ayn Rand. ETA: I don’t agree with Ulysses as top choice.
Heck with it. I’ll just pick the novel I’ve read and enjoyed the most of all of them by far: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
All wonderful books.
For my own contribution, I’ll throw in Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey.
East of Eden, or To Kill a Mockingbird, or All Quiet on the Western Front, or My Antonia, or…
I don’t know if I have an opinion on this question, but I came into the thread to make sure this book was mentioned.
I’ll also throw out “My Antonia” as a sentimental choice.
Some great books that I’ve read and and books that I really should get round to reading; I’ll bookmark this thread.
I’ll chip in with Graham Greene’s The End Of The Affair and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy.
Another vote for To Kill a Mockingbird.
I had to read it in high school, and I knew that, like all the other stuff they forced on us, it was going to suck.
But when, or if, I have to go to a nursing home and can have only a very small shelf of books, this will be one of them. I’ll get it in large print if I have to.
I haven’t read Dickens since I had to choke down Great Expectations. And The Pearl soured me on Steinbeck. We had to read Shakespeare without ever seeing a play performed or on film. thank God I watched Measure for Measure in a BBC production, or I’d still have passed the Bard by.
But TKAM snuck up on me and I love it.
Oh come on, The Knack was an OK band at best.
^ zoid, don’t you make me come up there, young man! It’s way past your bed-time! You put out those lights and Go The Fuck To Sleep!
Rand: The Fountainhead.
One man’s greatest novel is another man’s idiot rubbish.
Two way tie for me, my two favorite books-
Catch-22
and
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
2nd Place: Deliverance
Blood Meridian
It’s hard to imagine something so astonishing could spring from the human mind.
My choices are candidates for Favorite Twenty, rather than Greatest One.
I’ve read only about one-quarter of the “classics,” but found some of them, e.g. Dos Passos’ U.S.A., too tedious.
Call of the Wild, The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men – I like novellas.
Catch-22. And let’s include something by Martin Amis, e.g. Time’s Arrow, Money or London Fields.
Is it silly to mention the influential The Wonderful World of Oz?
I’m glad someone mentioned this lovely novel.
I’ll third (or fourth) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and also fourth To Kill a Mockingbird.
Can I pick two? One for the books I read in English and one for the ones I read in French.
Read in English: Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
Runners-up (in alphabetical order)
Atwood: Surfacing
Dos Passos: Manhattan Transfer
Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Golding: Pincher Martin
Golding: *Free Fall *
Woolf: *To the Lighthouse *
Woolf: *The Waves *
Read in French: Perec: La vie mode d’emploi (Life A User’s Manual)
Runners-up (in alphabetical order)
[SPOILER]Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
Butor: La Modification (Second Thoughts)
Calvino: Invisible Cities
Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)
Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz
Gracq: Le Rivage des Syrtes (The Opposing Shore)
Kafka: The Castle
Tournier: Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (Friday, or, The Other Island)
Yourcenar: L’OEuvre au noir (The Abyss, or Zeno of Bruges)
Not a novel but I must mention Borges’s The Garden of Forking Paths.[/SPOILER]
Pimp by Iceberg Slim. There’s a wonderful column by Josh Alan Friedman comparing and contrasting Iceberg Slim’s oeuvre to his former classmate Ralph (Invisible Man) Ellison’s. Ellison got all the awards, but Slim got the booty and the cash, baby!
[nitpick]
If two books are ahead of it, Deliverance is in third place, not second.
[/nitpick]
IMHO of course: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien was the greatest novel of the 20th century. He also basically made the fantasy genre along with it.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a worthy runner up.
Another vote for Lonesome Dove, at least for American literature.
My reading is weighted heavily on the non-fiction side, so I’ve probably missed some of the greatest novels, but of the ones I’ve read, I’d have to go with The Grapes of Wrath. It is a masterpiece.
Runners-up would be Sometimes a Great Notion (Kesey) and Centennial (Michener).
Honorable mention to Richard Bradford’s remarkable Red Sky at Morning, a fine little book that never seems to get the attention it deserves.
It’s possible that regional snobbery plays a role in my critical judgement, as all my favorites seem to be set in the American West.
SS