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
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)
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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]
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
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
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)
