Actually, I don’t think anyone’s seriously nominated HP, but I have nominated The Lorax, so I’m not about to argue either of these books. 
I’ll throw in for Catch-22, Brave New World, and The Catcher in the Rye. Of course, most of the books we’ve mentioned can be considered great in their own rights, but those three stand out as three of the greatest of the great.
I’ll pitch a couple of my own favorites as well:
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. While frequently taught as “teen lit,” I find it to be engaging and brilliantly written. O’Brien doesn’t just use language, he commands it. Reading certain parts of this book out loud gives me the chills.
Paradise by Toni Morrison. Morrison may be the best writer of African-American lit, period. I’ve tried reading Ellison and Thurston, and neither of them can pull this white subarbanite into black culture like Morrison. Paradise is, IMO, her best work. When the first line of a book raises that many questions (I’m not going to spoil it), something has gone right.
I’ve loved so many books and series written in the 20th century but if I need to pick just a couple I’ll try:The book that stayed with me the longest after reading it was, The Pigman by Paul Zindel. Responsibility for ones’ actions - very deep to a 9th grader. Thinking about the story is still moves me and I’m 48 now.
I’ve re-read **Amarinta Station ** a few times and I’m always moved by Jack Vance’s descriptions of the mores of a different society, the clothing, and Vance sticks with his rules.
Time to go home.
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder should be mentioned.
Ooooooh, what about Gone with the Wind? More sensational and popular than deep and though provoking?
Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
Okay, I just know folks are going to want to flame me for this suggestion (and I almost want to myself) but - Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Suzanne. Yes this book is lurid trashy pulp fiction, but what type of “literature” really exemplifies the zeitgeist of mid-20th century America better than lurid, trashy pulp fiction?
The funny thing about these lists is that they always seem to focus on books that came out in the first half of the century, and later works get short shrift.
I’ll add Cold Mountain to the list of nominations. Like Lolita, this book is love letter to the English language. Beautifully wrought. And I really like the subtle references to the vanishing wilderness and the removed Cherokee. These bits were mostly excised from the movie.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is my choice as the best representative of Hemingway’s work. A heartfelt call to arms against fascism. What’s also interesting about the book is that it reads like it was written in Spanish and then translated into English.
I see no mention yet of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919, I think). A generation of authors was taking notes. A bittersweet, fading memory of small-town life, with all of its heart-wrenching frustrations.
I also don’t see any Vonnegut yet, so I’ll nominate Breakfast of Champions.
To the science fiction category I might add The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wydham.
I’ll agree that To Kill a Mockingbird is the most perfect novel of the century, and I would also agree that these books (already nominated by others) should be on any list of the best English novels of the century:
Lolita
1984
The Grapes of Wrath (I might also add Of Mice and Men from Steinbeck’s catalog)
Babbitt
The Catcher in the Rye
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Glaxy
Are we limited to novels originally published in English? If not I’d add The Name of the Rose by Humberto Eco.
What year was that printed?
spoke: I know I listed Slaughterhouse 5 back in post 15. But Breakfast is a great choice also.
Jim
I, Claudius and Claudius the God
The Good Earth- about as different as you can get from the two above- it’s about the poor and simple (well, initially) and not researched or grounded in historical events and very sparsely written, but great nonetheless. (I would like to read its sequels but have never gotten around to them.)
The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus would be my (obvious) choice.
Well, I think that in the case of something like Labyrinths, it really transcends the idea of “short story collection” and becomes something more; we’re not talking about a bunch of random stories that appeared in Playboy and Harper’s, but a bunch of stories that are all essentially pointing to the same thing, meant to be read as a unified work.
I didn’t want to be mr. “List every book, ever”, but I really have to put Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow out there. It’s a gorgeous doomed romance, “Romeo and Juliet” amid the early 20th century crumbling Japanese aristocracy, a love letter to the fading glory of Golden Age Japan by a hardcore Nationalist, and just a hell of an amazing read. The whole “Sea of Tranquility” series that Spring Snow kicks off is phenomenal, but this particular book sums it all up so deftly.
Wow, there’s a lot of great stuff here. I feel somewhat ashamed never to have read Gatsby, so I’ll be off to the library very soon.
Of Vonnegut’s novels, I nominate Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Mother Night. Mother Night is the strongest, but what has Vonnegut written that hasn’t been good?
I second 1984, Brave New World, and Starship Troopers. I also have to endorse Solzhenitsyn’s Day in the Life….
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. This is the best of his novels to date and outshines Fight Club.
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis is a brilliant retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. This is really a flawless novel, and my favorite work by Lewis.
What to do with Asimov? He needs to be in here somewhere, but I can’t pick out one of his Robot/Empire/Foundation series that stands above the rest.
This one may be obscure, but I was enthalled with Winter in the Blood by James Welch.
The Foundation Trilogy won the Hugo as a series. I see no reason why it can not be considered unitary for Best Novels as well.
As long as it’s been translated and published in English it’s fair game.
This next bit is something I thought of, when reading spoke’s list, but is not meant to be directed to any poster.
And I would prefer to avoid making special lists for genre fiction. IMNSHO a great work of literature stands up on it’s own. Or it doesn’t. I know the generic comment is that “X has transcended” whatever genre it started in that the reviewer doesn’t normally read. I hate that when it happens to an SF/Fantasy book, even as I’m glad for the author, because of what it means for them. Equally frustrating is when a ‘mainstream’ author stumbles into territory that’s considered part of a genre - and watching how people argue that it’s not really SF/Western/Romance.
Sorry, didn’t mean to start a rant there.
To re-iterate: NO GENRE LIST. Any novel that meets the requirements set forth in my OP may be considered.
VC03, no worries. I’m really just using it for a precedent for what I wanted to decide anyways.
Kyyrewyyoae - I’m certainly willing to endorse Til We Have Faces, but it’s not my favorite Lewis.
And I agree with E-Sabbath: I see no reason we can’t consider the Foundation Trilogy as a single work for the purposes of this list.
Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. This is working up to be just the sort of list I was hoping that we’d get, here.
Quick observation: I’d wondered if we’d get any nominations for works by either Stanislas Lem and Georgette Heyer.* I’ve tried to read April Lady and haven’t been drawn in, but she’s surely and influential author. Likewise, Lem is another one of those authors I’m a little embarassed to admit I’ve yet to finish a book written by him.
*Okay - that just looks odd. Georgette Heyer and Stanislas Lem, in the same sentence? Almost as much of a mind-bender as the sentence I’d read a few years back about “kindly old Cthulhu.”
How can a series be considered a single work? That’s why that special Hugo category was created in the first place. (Not to mention that Asimov won out over since literary giants as Burroughs’ Barsoom series and E. E. Smith’s Lensmen series.)
And if you allow that, where do you stop? What about Laurence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet? Anthony Powell’s twelve-volume Dance to the Music of Time novel? Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series? John dos Passos’ USA Trilogy? Philip Roth’s Zuckerman novels? Updike’s Rabbit novels? Ursula LeGuin’s now five-novel Wizard trilogy? That guy named Proust?
Series are totally different entities than single novels. They do not belong in the same category.
And I have to say that merely mentioning the Foundation trilogy is a slap in the face to all the literature listed here, and that includes most of the science fiction. In your OP you excluded Harry Potter, but Rowling is a brilliant prose master compared to Asimov. Either you have standards or you don’t. But you can’t allow Asimov on the list and then exclude any other book ever written.
Well since you STOLD mine 
…
The Stranger by Albert Camus moved me very much.
Imo, the list is complete with just Catch-22. No way in hell does The Da Vinci Code belong anywhere near the list. Am I only one who thought it was massively overrated?
Code was given as a bad example I think. Re-read the Op.