Tuesday, March 27, 2007

TIME Magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to Present

I came across this Top 100 All-Time Novels list when updating my bookmarks. The novels were picked by TIME critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo in 2005. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

"The Great Gatsby" is there, too. Interestingly enough, "The Great Gatsby" made it to the Reader's Choice Top 5 Novels list.

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,ratethis,00.html

Students, if you were to put together a list of your Top 5 novels, would you include "The Great Gatsby"? How would your list look like?

16 comments:

Sunrise said...

Sveta: Anna Vladimirovna, my list of top 5 American books would look smething like that:
1.John Grisham 'Runaway Jury'
2.F. Scott Fitzgerald 'The Great Gatsby'
3.Dan Brown 'The point of Deception'
4.Nathaniel Hawthorne 'Scarlett letter'
5.Wsjington Irving 'Rip Van Winkle'
Sorry to put 2 books not mentioned in the course. They are just fiendishly challenging for me.

Sunrise said...

P.s. What should we do start contacting our friends from this explode-thing?

Anna V. Filatova said...

Thanks, Sveta!
There's nothing to be sorry about. On the contrary, I am glad you are an avid reader.

Have you looked through the long list? How many books from the list have you read so far?

Sunrise said...

Lilya: As I understood, we can include not only American writers...if it's so, then my list of top 5 English-language novels would look like that:
1. Edgar Allan POe any novel that I've read
2. MIchael Marshall Smith 'Not waving'(actually, he's not American, but he lived in the USA for some time)
3-4. F. Scott Fitzgerald 'The Great Gatsby' and Nathaniel HAwthorne 'Scarlett Letter'
5. Nathaniel HAwthorne 'Dr. Heidegger's Experiment'
I wanted to add Mark Twain's 'The Prince and the Pauper' but it's not a novel, but a historical romance, I think.

Anonymous said...

Elya: Well, my list would be like this:
1.Kurt Vonnegut "Slaughterhouse-Five"
2.Arthur Golden "Memoirs of a Geisha" (By the way, the screen version of this novel is absolutely amazing. I recommend everybody watching it)
3.Kurt Vonnegut "Cat's cradle"
4. J.R.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the rings”
5. F. Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”
I think that’s all.

Sunrise said...

Sveta: P.s Anna Vladimirovna, have a look at teh comments on March, 21

Sunrise said...

Sveta: Shame on me - I've read none (except for 'One flew...') of the books on the list. I read a lot of foreign literature: Scottish, Italian, Spanish, English, Japanese, Romanian, etc. But unfortunately, I can't boast reading much of American 'literary experience'.

Anna V. Filatova said...

Sveta,
again there is nothing to be ashamed of. I also thought that I was well-read. I have counted how many books I have read from the list and I am embarrassed to confess that it's miserable 22%. So there is a lot of room for development here. We can take this list as a reading recommendation, I guess.

so-summer said...

Anna Vladimirovna!
It was a bit difficult to make up a list of obnly 5 novels. I'd have added 5 more... But these are the books I would like to re-read right now:
"The Catcher in the Rye" J.D.Salinger
"The sun also rises" Ernest Hemingway
"The Great Gatsby" F.S.Fitzgerald
"To Kill a Mockingbird" Harper Lee
"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kesey.

But actually, I would like to cover all the top-100 list.

dedi-KATE-d said...

Anna Vladimirovna,
I'm ashamed to confess that my close attention to the American literature started only the last year and that is why I think the best I can do is choose the ones that really liked from what we have discussed during our classes. Here they are:
F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" (undoubtedly, the first place)
W. Faulkner. "Dry September"
T. Dreiser. "The Second Choice"
N. Hawthorne ." Dr. Heidegger's experiment"
E.A.Poe. " The purloined letter"
and also (Dorothy Parker, "The Waltz")
I would also add to the list of the works I really appreciated the following ones (but these are the ones I've read in Russian)
Arthur Golden "Memoirs of a Geisha"
J.R.R. Tolkien "The Lord of the rings"( I only doubt, whether it is a novel or not...) , "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again".

dedi-KATE-d said...

Anna Vladimirovna,
I'm ashamed to confess that my close attention to the American literature started only the last year and that is why I think the best I can do is choose the ones that really liked from what we have discussed during our classes. Here they are:
F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" (undoubtedly, the first place)
W. Faulkner. "Dry September"
T. Dreiser. "The Second Choice"
N. Hawthorne ." Dr. Heidegger's experiment"
E.A.Poe. " The purloined letter"
and also (Dorothy Parker, "The Waltz")
I would also add to the list of the works I really appreciated the following ones (but these are the ones I've read in Russian)
Arthur Golden "Memoirs of a Geisha"
J.R.R. Tolkien "The Lord of the rings"( I only doubt, whether it is a novel or not...) , "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again".

Anna V. Filatova said...

Olga,
if you like Salinger, take a look at this collection of electronic texts: http://salinger.narod.ru/Texts.htm
I would advise you to read his Nine stories and his Glass family novels (Seymor:An Introduction, Franny, Zooey; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters).

If you end up reading Nine stories, could you please tell me which ones you liked most. The reason I am asking is that I am planning to take up 2 or 3 stories for class discussion in late May. I would really appreciate your help!

ewe said...

my top-5 list:
1.T. Dreiser. Financier (and two other books of that trilogy)
2.M. Shelley. Frankenstein.
3.(if not only American writers are possible) Ch. Dickens. Great expectations.
4.T.Williams. The Streetcar Named Desire.
5.D.Parker. The Waltz.

Although not all the books listed here I’ve already read (*blush*) but still such is my list.

Anonymous said...

1. J.R.R. Tolkien "Lord of the Rings"

2. Mario Puzo "The Godfather"

3. Harper Lee "To Kill a Mockingbird"

4. J.D. Salinger "Catcher in the Rye"

5. Truman Capote "Other Voices Other Rooms

Anna V. Filatova said...

Dear anonymous reader of my blog,

Thank you so much for sharing your top 5 novels list with us. Hope to see more of your valuable comments here.

All the best,
Anna Filatova

Anonymous said...

Great lists all, being an american reader I would suggest

Read
S.E. Hinton
Kurt Vonnegut
Hunter S. Thompson
Grisham and King

and for the Fantasy reader

Roger Zelazey - The Chronicles of Amber

Tad Williams - The Dragon Bone Chair