The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: The Readers' List

Given by Modern Library

100 Works 1,640,648 Books 27,497 Reviews 4.0

The goal of the "100 Best" project was to get people talking about great books. We succeeded beyond our wildest imaginings — more than 400,000 avid readers rushed online to cast votes for their

show more favorite books.

The readers' poll for the best novels published in the English language since 1900 opened on July 20, 1998 and closed on October 20, 1998, with 217,520 votes cast.

This is The Readers' List. See also The Board's List. show less

Year Awarded:
1998
WorkOrder Label
Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
1
The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand
2
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (1982) by L. Ron Hubbard
3
The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J. R. R. Tolkien
4
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
5
1984 (1949) by George Orwell
6
Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand
7
We the Living (1936) by Ayn Rand
8
The Invaders Plan (1985) by L. Ron Hubbard
9
Fear (1940) by L. Ron Hubbard
10
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
11
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
12
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
13
Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert
14
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert A. Heinlein
15
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein
16
A Town Like Alice (1950) by Nevil Shute
17
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
18
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger
19
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
20
Gravity's Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
21
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
22
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
23
Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
24
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
25
Shane (1949) by Jack Schaefer
26
Trustee from the Toolroom (1960) by Nevil Shute
27
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving
28
The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition (1990) by Stephen King
29
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles
30
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
31
The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by E. R. Eddison
32
The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
33
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
34
Moonheart (1984) by Charles de Lint
35
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
36
Of Human Bondage (1915) by W. Somerset Maugham
37
Wise Blood (1952) by Flannery O'Connor
38
Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
39
Fifth Business (1970) by Robertson Davies
40
Someplace to be Flying (1998) by Charles de Lint
41
On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
42
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
43
Yarrow (1986) by Charles de Lint
44
At the Mountains of Madness [novella] (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft
45
One Lonely Night (1951) by Mickey Spillane
46
Memory and Dream (1994) by Charles de Lint
47
To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
48
The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy
49
Trader (1997) by Charles de Lint
50
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
51
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
52
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
53
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
54
A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
55
On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute
56
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce
57
Greenmantle (1988) by Charles de Lint
58
Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card
59
The Little Country (1991) by Charles de Lint
60
The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis
61
Starship Troopers (1959) by Robert A. Heinlein
62
The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
63
The World According to Garp (1978) by John Irving
64
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury
65
The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson
66
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner
67
Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
68
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
69
The Wood Wife (1996) by Terri Windling
70
The Magus (1965) by John Fowles
71
The Door into Summer (1956) by Robert A. Heinlein
72
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig
73
I, Claudius (1934) by Robert Graves
74
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
75
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) by Flann O'Brien
76
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
77
Arrowsmith (1925) by Sinclair Lewis
78
Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams
79
Naked Lunch (1962) by William S. Burroughs
80
The Hunt for Red October (1984) by Tom Clancy
81
Guilty Pleasures (1993) by Laurell K. Hamilton
82
The Puppet Masters (1951) by Robert A. Heinlein
83
It (1986) by Stephen King
84
V. (1963) by Thomas Pynchon
85
Double Star (1956) by Robert A. Heinlein
86
Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) by Robert A. Heinlein
87
Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh
88
Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
89
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
90
A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway
91
The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
92
Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) by Ken Kesey
93
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
94
Mulengro (1985) by Charles de Lint
95
Suttree (1979) by Cormac McCarthy
96
Mythago Wood (1984) by Robert Holdstock
97
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977) by Richard Bach
98
The Cunning Man (1994) by Robertson Davies
99
The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie
100

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