# The Dope List of 100 books of the 20th Century **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 19, 2002, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639 "2002-08-19T20:21:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/41 "2002-08-20T11:48:27Z")
I’ll chime in 2nds and 3rds and 4ths for some Catcher in the rye 1984 Animal Farm Of mice and Men Grapes of Wrath Catch 22 Stranger in a Strange Land Maybe someone mentioned these before, if not, I’m surprised: The Perfume - Patrik Susskind Good Soldier Svejk - Jaroslav Hasek The Naked and the dead - Norman Mailer Harlot’s Ghost - Norman Mailer The world according to Garp - John Irving Love in the times of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 years of solitude - GG Marques House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende Brighton Rock - Graham Greene Our Man in Havanna - Graham Greene American Tabloid - James Ellroy Birdy - William Wharton Bonfire of Vanities - Tom Wolfe Satan in Goray - Isaac Bashevis Singer Conspiracy of Dunces - John Kennedy O’Toole The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I’ll prolly think of more… ---
**Author:** ![grendel72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/91b2a8/32.png) [@grendel72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grendel72)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/42 "2002-08-20T11:53:21Z")
I just need to throw in a quick second for **The World According to Garp** by John Irving. ---
**Author:** ![Dragon\_Phoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bcef8e/32.png) [@Dragon\_Phoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragon_Phoenix)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/43 "2002-08-20T12:23:01Z")
Dune - Frank Herbert Surprised no-one has mentioned this one yet… ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/44 "2002-08-20T12:34:54Z")
And I’ll pop in for a moment to second _In Cold Blood_ (Capote). IIRC it was the first non-fiction work to be written in novel form. (or perhaps it was the first attempt that was successful?) **Chronos** , are you keeping track? ---
**Author:** ![GWF\_Hefel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@GWF\_Hefel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GWF_Hefel)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/45 "2002-08-20T12:35:00Z")
**Winesburg, Ohio** Anderson **Anthropic Cosmological Principle** Barrow **Patterns of Culture** Benedict **Collected Fictions** Borges **If On A Winter’s Night…** Calvino **Auto-da-Fe** Canetti **In Cold Blood** Capote **Journey To the End of the Night** Celine **Man Who was Thursday** Chesterton **Short History of Decay** Cioran **Selfish Gene** Dawkins **U.S.A.** Dos Passos **Waste Land** Eliot **Invisible Man** Ellison **Character of Physical Law** Feynman **Where Angels Fear to Tread** Forster **Civilization & Its Discontents** Freud **Winter’s Tale** Helprin **Riddley Walker** Hoban **Godel, Escher, Bach** Hofstadter **Berlin Stories** Isherwood **Logic of Life** Jacob **Death & Life of Great American Cities** Jacobs **Portrait of the Artist** Joyce **To Kill A Mockingbird** Lee **Autumn of the Patriarch** Marquez **Chance and Necessity** Monod **Long Day’s Journey into Night** O’Neill **Revolt of the Masses** Ortega y Gasset **Keep the Aspidistra Flying** Orwell **Nineteen Eighty-Four** Orwell **Six Characters in Search of an Author** Pirandello **Duino Elegies** Rilke **The Little Prince** Saint-Exupery **Nausea** Sartre **What is Life?** Schrodinger **Intelligent Life in the Universe** Shklovskii **Decent Interval** Snepp **One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich** Solzhenitsyn **Probability and Scientific Inference** Spencer-Brown **Death Ship** Traven **First Three Minutes** Weinberg **Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus** Wittgenstein **Hadrian’s Memoirs** Yourcenar (And just to make my position perfectly clear, although I can’t imagine why you would care, I’d like to say that I consider Tolkein as influential to 20th century literature as J. Susann–although I think she could write better) ---
**Author:** ![Coilean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Coilean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coilean)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/46 "2002-08-20T13:28:53Z")
Brave New World, Huxley The Interpreation of Dreams, Freud The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway Walden two, B.F. Skinner (one never said it had to be a good influnece) Hitchhikers Guide, D.N.A. On the Road, Kerouac Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut 1984, Orwell And for the language people: Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure (_I_ think it counts) The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker ---
**Author:** ![LolaCocaCola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7cd45c/32.png) [@LolaCocaCola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LolaCocaCola)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/47 "2002-08-20T13:42:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Gaspode \* > \*\*Conspiracy of Dunces - John Kennedy O’Toole > \*\* _Confederacy_ of Dunces I’ll add: **The God of Small Things** - Arundhati Roy ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/48 "2002-08-20T13:44:20Z")
Ooh, ooh!! I second **The Little Prince** (Saint-Exupery)and **Invisible Man** (Ellison). How could I have forgotten these? Shame on me. ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/49 "2002-08-20T14:11:34Z")
I’ve got a bunch of candidates, but I’d like to put Randy Shilts’ “And The Band Played On” out there right away. ---
**Author:** ![Judith\_Prietht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b19c9b/32.png) [@Judith\_Prietht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Judith_Prietht)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/50 "2002-08-20T14:30:11Z")
**Beloved** -Toni Morrison **The Passion** -Jeanette Winterson **Infinite Jest** -David Foster Wallace **The Executioner’s Song** -Norman Mailer **Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring** -Henry Miller **Delta of Venus** -Anais Nin **The Big Sleep** -Raymond Chandler **Psycho** -Robert Bloch **Vox** -Nicholson Baker **House of God** -Samuel Shem Ones that are already nominated: **The Chronicles of Narnia** -C.S. Lewis **In Cold Blood** -Truman Capote **Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas** -Hunter S. Thompson ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/51 "2002-08-20T14:44:16Z")
More… **On the Road** - Jack Kerouac **Confederacy of Dunces** - John Kennedy Tool **Hound of the Baskervilles** - A. Conan Doyle **Tarzan of the Apes** - Edgar Rice Burroughs **Lolita** - Nabokov **Cold Mountain** - Charles Frazier **All the King’s Men** - Robert Penn Warren **The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich** - William Shirer **Generation X** - Douglas Coupland **Autobiography of Malcolm X** - Malcolm X/Alex Haley **Maltese Falcon** - Dashiell Hammett **On the Beach** - Nevil Shute **Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel** - C. Vann Woodward ---
**Author:** ![The\_Wrong\_Girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b782af/32.png) [@The\_Wrong\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Wrong_Girl)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/52 "2002-08-20T15:10:17Z")
This is a GREAT thread. I just hope too many fights don’t break out. 😉 My noms: **Atlas Shrugged** –I realize it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I think that it was pretty darn influential. **Diary of Anne Frank** **Brave New World** **Silent Spring** Man, I just know I’ll think of more later… ---
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/53 "2002-08-20T15:10:46Z")
Just to clarify, _“Interpretation of Dreams”_ was published in November 1899, so (just) doesn’t qualify. This is to be a 20th Century list. (Dickens is out for the same reason) ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/54 "2002-08-20T15:13:48Z")
Okay. Here are my other picks. I’ve read all of them except Kubler-Ross, but I know enough about the book to nominate it. Things Fall Apart – Achebe The Diary of Anne Frank – Frank The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood The Waste Land – Eliot Native Son – Wright Goodnight Moon – Brown There are No Children Here – Kotowicz A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Smith All Quiet on the Western Front – Remarque Atlas Shrugged – Rand The Color Purple – Walker Night – Weisel In Cold Blood – Capote On Death and Dying – Kubler-Ross The Samurai – Endo To Kill a Mockingbird – Lee The Jungle – Sinclair What To Expect While You’re Expecting – by two yahoos, can’t recall their names. Northwest Passage – Roberts (I am aware this will get no votes) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Lewis Born Free – can’t recall author. ---
**Author:** ![Adam\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Adam\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adam_P)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/55 "2002-08-20T15:34:56Z")
I forgot about non-fiction: TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS–Wittgenstein PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS–Wittgenstein MEIN KAMPF–Hitler BEING AND TIME–Heidegger COURSE IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS–Saussure INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS–Freud MYTHOLOGIES–Barthes ON GRAMMATOLOGY–Derrida DISCIPLINE & PUNISH–Foucault MAO’S LITTLE RED BOOK CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA–Deleuze DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENEMENT–Adorno and Horkheimer THE SECOND SEX-deBeauvoir ECRITS–Lacan RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH–William Shirer COMPLETE WORKS–John Maynard Keynes ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/56 "2002-08-20T17:30:15Z")
More votes for those already nominated [ul] The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings Stranger in a Strange Land Gödel Escher Bach The Demon Haunted World 1984 Animal Farm Of Mice and Men Lord of the Flies The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Brave New World The Road to Serfdom Diary of a Young Girl (listed as Diary of Anne Frank above)[/ul]New nominations[ul] **The Guns of August** Barbara Tuchman **The Good Earth** Pearl S. Buck **The Oxford English Dictionary** **Modern English Usage** H. W. Fowler **Poetry of Robert Frost** **The Call of the Wild** Jack London **The Sea Wolf** Jack London **The Feynman Lectures on Physics** Feynman, Leighton, and Sands **A History of the English Speaking Peoples** Winston S. Churchill **The Second World War** Winston S. Churchill **Profiles in Courage** John F. Kennedy **The Once and Future King** T. H. White[/ul] ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/57 "2002-08-20T17:41:58Z")
Here are a few. GOOD OMENS- Pratchett and Gaiman ON THE ROAD- Kerouac INVISIBLE MAN-Ellison FOUNDATION-Asimov THE DAYBOOKS OF EDWARD WESTON-Weston A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE-Hawking THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA-Hemingway LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN-Agee and Evans THE CATCHER IN THE RYE-Salinger FRANNY AND ZOOIE-Salinger FARENHEIT 451-Bradbury A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND-Heinlein PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT-Roth EMPIRE OF THE SUN-Ballard METAMORPHOSIS-Kafka WINNIE THE POOH-Milne WYRD SISTERS-Pratchett GUARDS! GUARDS!-Pratchett DEATH, THE HIGH COST OF LIVING-Gaiman THE NAME OF THE ROSE-Eco ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/58 "2002-08-20T17:47:42Z")
Here are a few. GOOD OMENS- Pratchett and Gaiman ON THE ROAD- Kerouac INVISIBLE MAN-Ellison FOUNDATION-Asimov THE DAYBOOKS OF EDWARD WESTON-Weston A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE-Hawking THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA-Hemingway LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN-Agee and Evans THE CATCHER IN THE RYE-Salinger FRANNY AND ZOOIE-Salinger FARENHEIT 451-Bradbury A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND-Heinlein PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT-Roth EMPIRE OF THE SUN-Ballard METAMORPHOSIS-Kafka WINNIE THE POOH-Milne WYRD SISTERS-Pratchett GUARDS! GUARDS!-Pratchett DEATH, THE HIGH COST OF LIVING-Gaiman THE NAME OF THE ROSE-Eco ---
**Author:** ![Fish42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4da419/32.png) [@Fish42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish42)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/59 "2002-08-20T21:26:04Z")
Fiction: Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim Isaac Asimov: The Foundation trilogy Margaret Atwood: The Handmaiden’s Tale James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions Ray Bradbury: Farenheit 451 Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange William S Burroughs: Naked Lunch Albert Camus: The Stranger Willa Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness Don DeLillo: White Noise E.L. Doctorow: Ragtime John Dos Passos: USA Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby E.M. Forster: Howard’s End Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude Dahsiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon Robert Graves: I, Claudius Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land Joseph Heller: Catch 22 Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day James Jones: From Here to Eternity James Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Franz Kafka: The Trial Jack Kerouac: On the Road Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano Don Marquis: the lives and times of archy and mehitabel Norma Mailer: The Naked and the Dead Bernard Malmaud: The Fixer Carson McCullers: The Member of the Wedding Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon Vladimir Nabakov: Lolita V.S. Naipul: A House for Mr. Biswas George Orwell: 1984 Dorothy Parker: Enough Rope Wlaker Percy: The Moviegoer Ezra Pound: Cantos Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow Erich Marie Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses J.D. Salinger: The Catcher inthe Rye Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories Alexander Solzenytzen: The Gulag Archipelago John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath William Styron: The Confessions of Nat Turner J.R.R. Tolkein: The Lord of the Rings Kurt Vonegut: Slaughterhouse Five Alice Walker: The Color Purple Elie Weisel: Night Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward Angel Tom Wolfe: Bonfire of the Vanities Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse Richard Wright: Native Son Non-Fiction: James Agee and Walker Evans: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem James Baldwin: Notes of a Native Son Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex Ambrose Beirce: The Devil’s Dictionary Truman Capote: In Cold Blood Rachel Carson: Silent Spring Winston Churchill: The Second World War Richard Feynman: Six Easy Peices Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Betty Feidan: The Feminine Mystique John Kenneth Galbraith: The Affluent Society Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time Joh Hersey: Hiroshima William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience Thomas S Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz Norman Mailer: The Executioner’s Song H.L. Mencken: American Language Jessica Mitford: The American Way of Death Robert Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not A Christian Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World Neil Sheehan: A Bright Shining Lie Randy Shilts: And the Band Played On Dr. Benjamin Spock: The Common Sense Guide to Baby Care Lytton Strachey: Eminent Victorians William Strunk & E.B. White: The Elements of Style Studs Terkel: Working Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August James Watson: The Double Helix Steven Weissberg: The First Three Minutes Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own Malcolm X with Alex Haley: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Believe it or not, this is the editted down version; I felt that nominating more than 100 entries for a ‘Top 100’ was, how should I put it… a little excessive) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2002, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639/60 "2002-08-20T21:32:02Z")
(Hey! Does the double post mean **photopat** ’s votes count twice???) I will second the nomination of **The Name of the Rose** (Eco). Also, how about: **Babbitt** - Sinclair Lewis **Main Street** - Sinclair Lewis **How the Grinch Stole Christmas** - Seuss [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dope-list-of-100-books-of-the-20th-century/124639.md?page=4)