Koen Book Distributors, Inc. – Top 100 Books of the Last Century
Intended as a companion to the infamous Modern Library ranking of the top 100 books of the past century, this list represents a different viewpoint–that of the booksellers themselves. Compiled from the responses of over 150 Koen Book Distributors customers, the following titles represent the very best in modern literature.
1. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
2. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
3. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
5. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
6. 1984 – George Orwell
7. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
8. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
9. Beloved – Toni Morrison
10. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
11. Their Eyes/Watching God – Zora. N. Hurston
12. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
13. Animal Farm – George Orwell
14. Stranger in/Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
15. A Confederacy of Dunces -John K. O’Toole
16. The Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
17. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
18. Ulysses – James Joyce
19. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
20. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
21. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
22. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
23. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
24. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
25. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
26. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
27. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
28. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
29. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
30. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
31. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
32. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
33. Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
34. My Antonia – Willa Cather
35. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
36. The Killer Angels – Michael Shaara
37. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
38. The World Accord/Garp – John Irving
39. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
40. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
41. Portrait/artist/Young Man – James Joyce
42. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
43. Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
44. Watership Down – Richard Adams
45. Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
46. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
47. House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
48. Dune – Frank Herbert
49. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
50. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
51. Color of Water – James McBride
52. The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver
53. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
54. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
55. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
56. Native Son – Richard Wright
57. Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
58. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
59. Kane and Abel – Jeffrey Archer
60. A Tree Grows/brooklyn – Betty Smith
61. A Room with a View – E.M. Forster
62. 2001 A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
63. White Noise – Don DeLillo
64. Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
65. The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
66. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
67. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
68. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
69. Ellen Foster – Kaye Gibbons
70. Cold Sassy Tree Olive – Ann Burns
71. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
72. War and Remembrance – Herman Wouk
73. Where/Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
74. Centennial – James A. Michener
75. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
76. Fear & Loathing/Las Vegas – Hunter Thompson
77. The Road From Coorain – Jill K. Conway
78. Sula – Toni Morrison
79. The Stand – Stephen King
80. Time and Again – Jack Finney
81. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
82. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
83. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
84. Howards End – E.M. Forster
85. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
86. The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough
87. The Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
88. The Alienist – Caleb Carr
89. Talk Before Sleep – Elizabeth Berg
90. Shell Seekers – Rosamonde Pilcher
91. Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown
92. Rabbit Run – John Updike
93. Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
94. Possession – A.S. Byatt
95. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
96. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
97. I, Claudius – Robert Graves
98. Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
99. Hawaii – James Michner
100.Education of Little Tree – Forrest Carter