I don’t really have a comment on the list so ar. Seems a bit Americentric, though.
Algernon(Swinburnew poem right?): Nice job compiling the list, bt you missed a few: TRACTUS LOGIC-PHILOSOPHICUS
I don’t really have a comment on the list so far. Seems a bit Americentric, though. Also, half are required reading in elementary schools which doesn’t really mean they’re great books, just easy reading.
Algernon(Swinburne poem right?): Nice job compiling the list. Not to be bitchy, but you missed a few: TRACTUS LOGIC-PHILOSOPHICUS (which I and another poster misspelled as TRACTATUS) by Ludwig Wittgenstein had 2 votes. And COURSE IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS by Ferdinand de Saussure had 2 as well.
Definitely more than a little bit Americentric. Must be a reflection on the readership of the SDMB.
Sorry about the screw-up. Chronos, could you please correct my oversight?
Regarding my username… you’ve given me a new reference. It is primarily a reference to the book “Flowers For Algernon” (which disappointingly, no one else has seconded my nomination). The name is used prominently in “The Importance of Being Earnest” also. Now I’ll have to look up Swinburnew.
A few more additions :
Killer Angels, The, Shaara
Future Shock, Toffler
Small is Beautiful, Schumacher
History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart
This Kind of War, Fehrenbach
And as a "thank you Algernon for havong compiled this list,
Flowers for Algernon (Keyes) 
Uh, ooo, arrgh, eeee!!! I don’t know if that was birth or loss of virginity but for my very first post I submit a few books that I think are significant for their genre
Fear of Flying, Erica Jung (Okay, you hated it. It was stupid. It was still influential.)
Any of the “All” books by James Herriott (Pet lovers come out of the closet)
Steal This Book, Abby Hoffman (Historically significant)
The Nature of Man, Desmond Morris (A personal favorite)
**Tretiak, **try The Getaway, which is opressively moralistic (and unlike either of the movies), or Roughneck, Thompson’s autobiography.
Also, I have a couple more titles to add. <groans from the board>
Advise and Consent, Drury
God and Man at Yale, Buckley
Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl
The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, Loftig
Charlotte’s Web, White
Tomorrow the Moon, Disney
Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Rowling
I can’t bring myself to nominate Ayn Rand, so I substituted the first two for the conservatives. The others are children’s literature, which I originally ignored.
wow, so many good books already on the list… heres a bunch of seconds, and a few more
Seconds:
Animal Farm, Orwell
Blind Watchmaker, The, Dawkins
Infinite Jest, Wallace
Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon
Godel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig
Pale Fire, Nabokov
Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut
Maus, Spiegelman
Catch-22, Heller
An Incomplete Education, Jones and Wilson
Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson
Night, Weisel
Where the Sidewalk Ends, Silverstein
The Big Sleep, Chandler
To these I would add some i don’t remember seeing yet:
House of Leaves, Danielewski
The Soccer War, Kapucizinski
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte
The Design of Everyday Things, Norman
Wonderful Life, Gould (The Mismeasure of Man was really good too)
The Ants, Holldobler and Wilson
66 books have now received three or more votes, and so are now on the list:
15 1984 - George Orwell
13 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11 Animal Farm by George Orwell.
9 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
8 Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
8 Lord of the Rings–Tolkien
7 Catch-22, Joseph Heller
7 On the Road, Kerouac
7 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance–Pirsig
6 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6 Diary of Anne Frank – Frank
6 In Cold Blood – Capote
6 Night – Weisel
6 Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)
5 Demon Haunted World (Sagan)
5 Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
5 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5 Invisible Man (Ellison).
5 Little Red Book, the, Mao Zedong
5 Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck
5 Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer
5 Silent Spring - Rachel Carson:
5 Stranger in a Strange Land, fiction, Robert A. Heinlein
5 Sun Also Rises, the – Ernest Hemingway
5 Ulysses - James Joyce
5 Waste Land, The - T.S. Eliot
4 Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
4 Brief History of Time, a – Stephen Hawking
4 Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)
4 Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4 Hobbit–Tolkien
4 Lolita - Nabokov
4 Lord of the Flies–Golding
4 Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
4 Mein Kampf - Hitler
3 An Incomplete Education (Jones, Wilson)
3 As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
3 Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X/Alex Haley
3 Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson)
3 Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut
3 Devil’s Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce
3 Dr Spock’s Baby and Child Care by Dr. Spock
3 Dune - Frank Herbert
3 Farenheit 451 – Bradbury
3 Foundation Series–Isaac Asmiov
3 Gone with the Wind - Mitchell
3 Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon:
3 Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond)
3 Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood
3 Heart of Darkenss, Joseph Conrad
3 Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
3 Naked and the dead - Norman Mailer
3 Name of the Rose (Eco).
3 Native Son – Wright
3 Portnoy’s Complaint - Roth
3 Power and the Glory, the – Graham Greene
3 Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
3 Second Sex (de Beauvoir)
3 Stand, by Stephen King
3 Tree Grows In Brooklyn, a, by Betty Smith
3 Trial, the (Kafka)
3 USA - John Dos Passos
3 Watership Down - Richard Adams
3 Winesburg Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
3 Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
3 World According to Garp, the, by John Irving.
49 more have received two votes, and are not yet on the list:
2 All Quiet on the Western Front – Remarque
2 And The Band Played On (Randy Shilts)
2 Big Sleep-Raymond Chandler
2 Blind Watchmaker, The, Dawkins
2 Bonfire of Vanities - Tom Wolfe
2 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl
2 Chronicles of Narnia-C.S. Lewis
2 Civil War, A Narrative (in three volumes) - Shelby Foote
2 Civilization & Its Discontents Freud
2 Color Purple – Walker
2 Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy O’Toole
2 Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure
2 Elements of Style - William Strunk and E. B. White
2 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey:
2 Executioner’s Song Norman Mailer:
2 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
2 Feminine Mystique (Freidan)
2 First Three Minutes Steven Weissberg:
2 Flowers for Algernon (Keyes)
2 Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
2 Goodnight Moon – Brown
2 Guns of August- Barbara Tuchman
2 How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Seuss
2 If On A Winter’s Night… Calvino
2 Illuminatus - Wilson & Shea
2 IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME–Proust
2 Infinite Jest-David Foster Wallace
2 Journey To the End Of the Night (Celine)
2 Killer Inside Me, the – Jim Thompson
2 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - James Agee and Walker Evans:
2 Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the, C. S. Lewis
2 Little Prince (Saint-Exupery)
2 Love in the times of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2 Maus by Art Spiegelman
2 Moviegoer (Percy)
2 Pale Fire, Nabokov
2 Poisonwood Bible–Kingslover
2 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce:
2 ROAD TO SERFDOM*David Chilton’s Frederich Von Hayek’s
2 Second World War - Winston Churchill:
2 Selfish Gene by Dawkins
2 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
2 Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman
2 Things Fall Apart – Achebe
2 Tractus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein
2 Tropic of Cancer (Miller)
2 What to Expect When You’re Expecting–I don’t remember
2 Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
2 White Noise - Don DeLillo:
265 more books have received only one nomination, and are not listed here.
Perspective is a funny thing.
As is true of most centuries, the last one had ten decades. Theoretically, there should be roughly ten books per decade which make the list. Yet, I see remarkably few books being nominated which were published between 1991 and 2000. Does this mean no important books were published in that decade? Or do we just not realize they were important because they have not yet become assigned reading in literature classes?
I’m going to lobby for a couple of books in that category (which I nominated previously.
The first is Cold Mountain. For my money, this is the best piece of literature published in the past twenty years, let alone the past ten. The richness of the language, the vivid imagery, a compelling story-- really a terrific book. Surely it is one of the two or three best books of the last decade of the century, and as such, belongs on this list.
The second is Generation X, a book which defined its generation every bit as much as the Great Gatsby defined the 20’s. It’s hard to see how this book could be denied a spot as one of the most important of the century.
On another note, I’m surprised no one has seconded Tarzan of the Apes or The Hound of the Baskervilles. Neither book may be regarded as great literature, but it’s hard to deny their influence on popular culture. Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes are two of the most enduring characters ever created.
I’m also disappointed (but not as surprised) that no one has seconded For Whom the Bell Tolls. For my money, this was Hemingway’s best novel. (Though others obviously disagree.) Aside from its literary merit, the book is historically important for its subject matter, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe.
Can I get a witness?
I’ll add Hound of the Baskervilles. (I guess I didn’t realize it was 20th century).
I can’t list a book I haven’t personally read, even if I’m aware of it as a significant work. It just doesn’t seem right to me.
I have the same feelings as photopat about voting for a book I’ve never read, and since I’ve never read For Whom The Bell Tolls I don’t feel like I could give it another vote.
However, I concur with spoke-'s thoughts about…
Cold Mountain (Frazier) and
Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle)
… so I’ll add my vote for them here.
PS - And a public thanks to detop for making me feel better with the sympathy vote for Flowers For Algernon. ~grin~
Let me add to my list Maus by Art Spiegelman.
I’ve one more bit of lobbying to do, on behalf of Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel - C. Vann Woodward.
I realize it’s probably a lost cause, since I’m sure few here have read it. However, among historians, the book is considered a watershed for biographies. Prior to this book, biographies tended to be dull recitations of dates and facts. Woodward, perhaps for the first time, presented a biography as a compelling story, examining the complex psychology of a once-prominent American politician (Tom Watson, erstwhile Presidential nominee of the Populist Party). Because of this book Woodward is regarded by many as the father of the modern biography.
So, while this book may not be widely read, it is “Important.”
While I’m posting, I’ll add another vote for:
Tropic of Cancer - Miller
The latest additions have been tabulated. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Maus, and Tropic of Cancer are now on the List (bringing us up to 69), and Cold Mountain now has two votes.
spoke-, can you get Eve to vouch for Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel? It seems to me that if this book is so important as a biography, then she of all people would know of it.
And a point of order: I note that we have nominations for both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I guess I was asking for books, not series, although my inclusion of Lord of the Rings in the OP might have been a source of confusion. What should I do with the Chronicles of Narnia nominations? Count them as nominations for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or count them as six nominations each, one for each of the books? And are there any other series on the list, that I’m not recognizing?
And meanwhile, where the heck are our illustrious moderators, here? Surely, Eutychus and Ukulele Ike find some books influential?
This is definitevely an american list, that is what one can expect considering that the majority in here are americans. Still they are great books listed here. Let me add my votes to the following
1984 - George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Lord of the Rings–Tolkien
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Stranger in a Strange Land, fiction, Robert A. Heinlein
Hobbit–Tolkien
Lord of the Flies–Golding
Devil’s Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce
Dune - Frank Herbert
Farenheit 451 – Bradbury
Foundation Series–Isaac Asmiov
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon:
Trial, the (Kafka)
Guns of August- Barbara Tuchman
Little Prince (Saint-Exupery)
Love in the times of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Also
Ficciones (Borges)
20 poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (Neruda)
La invención de Morel (Bioy Casares)
Los pasos perdidos (Carpentier)
Collected plays by George Bernard Shaw.
Cien años de soledad (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Color Purple – Walker
Elements of Style - William Strunk and E. B. White
Flowers for Algernon
I third these three.
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck.
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, by Heinlein.
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Richard Dawkins.
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan.
A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.
We’re up to 76 on The List, now… Almost there! Two dozen more, and we’ll have our even 100.
By the way, is Ficciones, by Borges, the same as Fictions? If so, it’s on the list, too.
::Algernon dances a jig::
I made the list!! I made the list!!
(Thanks Jurhael)
I’ll add a vote for:
One Hundred Years of Solitude, a/k/a Cien años de soledad (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
I think that one has at least three votes now.