Firsts Magazine’s Top 15/100 omitted from experts’ list
Firsts, the book collecting magazine solicited reader’s suggestions for books omitted from the 100 best novels of the century. They produced two lists: the top 15 by votes counted and the top 100 by alphabetical order of author. Here they are. Note that thirteen of the top fifteen are American and virtually all of the top 100, barring a few English and Canadian writers. Note also that the Modern Library 100 best novels of the century was novels and several works here are not novels.
Top 15 by votes
Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: The Yearling
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces
Herman Wouk: The Caine Mutiny
Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow
Somerset Maugham: The Razor’s Edge
Michael Shaara: The Killer Angels
Bernard Malamud: The Natural
John LeCarré: The Spy Who Came into the Cold
Mario Puzo: The Godfather
Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain
Top 100 by alphabetical order of author
Edward Abbey: Desert Solitaire
Isaac Asimov: Foundation
John Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Dee Brown: Bury My heart at Wounded Knee
Pearl Buck: The Good Earth
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan of the Apes
Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Orson Scott Card: Ender’s Game
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely
Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye
John Cheever: Collected Stories
Agatha Christie: And Then They Were None
Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Tom Clancy: The Hunt for Red October
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End
James Clavell: Shogun
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness (was on the Modern Library list)
Pat Conroy: The Great Santini
Pat Conroy: The Prince of Tides
James Gould Cozzens: Guard of Honor
Robertson Davies: Fifth Business
Ivan Doig: This House of Sky
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles
T S Eliot: The Waste Land
John Fante: Ask the Dust
William Faulkner: The Hamlet
Jack Finney: Time and Again
Ian Fleming: From Russia with Love
C S Forester: To the Indies
Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain
William Gaddis: J R
William Goldman: The Princess Bride
David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars
Alex Haley: Roots
Jim Harrison: Legends of the Fall
Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
James Hilton: Lost Horizon
Christopher Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin
James Joyce: Dubliners
Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior
W P Kinsella: Shoeless Joe
John LeCarré: The Quest for Karla
John LeCarré: The Spy Who Came into the Cold
T E Lawrence: Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Sinclair Lewis: Elmer Gantry
Jack London: Martin Eden
Jack London: The Sea Wolf
Norman MacLean: A River Runs Through It
Bernard Malamud: The Natural
Michael Malone: Time’s Witness
Somerset Maugham: The Razor’s Edge
Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
Larry McMurtry: Leaving Cheyenne
Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove
James Michener: Hawaii
James Michener: Tales of the South Pacific
Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
Walter Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz
Nordhoff and Hall: Mutiny on the Bounty
Howard Norman: The Northern Lights
Frank Norris: The Octopus
Patrick O’Brian: Master and Commander
Flannery O’Connor: Wise Blood
Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient
Chaim Potok: The Chosen
Bearix Potter: Peter Rabbit
E Annie Proulx: The Shipping News
Mario Puzo: The Godfather
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: The Yearling
Anne Rice: Interview with the Vampire
Kenneth Roberts: Northwest Passage
Henry Roth: Call It Sleep
Maurice Sendak: Where the Wild Things Are
Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat
Michael Shaara: The Killer Angels
Betty Smith: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Mickey Spillane: I, the Jury
Wallace Stegner: Big Rock Candy Mountain
John Steinbeck: East of Eden
Robert Stone: The Dog Soldiers
William Styron: The Confessions of Nat Turner
Booth Tarkington: Penrod
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces
B. Traven: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Dalton Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun
Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August
Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Leon Uris: Trinity
Jessamyn West: The Friendly Persuasion
Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts
T H White: The Once and Future King
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff
Herman Wouk: The Caine Mutiny
Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road