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Best Books of 1926-1935

Description: Asa Don Dickinson, Librarian of Brooklyn College, compiled this list of about 400 books in 1937 from a number of "best books" lists. His book describing these 1000 books is now in the public domain. An image copy is available on HathiTrust.

1 2 3 4 5

Rank Title Author Added

1

by Pearl S. Buck

15,366 members

289 reviews

4

5 Members: pamelad, smcwl, ahef1963, NinieB, Shonamarie

2

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

25,586 members

372 reviews

3.8

4 Members: smcwl, pitjrw, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda

3

by Dorothy L. Sayers

5,995 members

158 reviews

½ 4.3

4 Members: smcwl, pitjrw, merrystar, ahef1963

4

Collected Poems

4,017 members

28 reviews

½ 4.3

4 Members: hipdeep, ahef1963, Shonamarie, ManWithAnAgenda

5

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

25,582 members

280 reviews

½ 3.7

3 Members: pamelad, ahef1963, Shonamarie

6

To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

20,330 members

312 reviews

3.9

3 Members: pamelad, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda

7

Orlando: A Biography

by Virginia Woolf

12,340 members

203 reviews

3.9

3 Members: pamelad, jannon, ManWithAnAgenda

8

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

by Thornton Wilder

5,371 members

129 reviews

3.8

3 Members: pamelad, ahef1963, NinieB

9

Murder in the Cathedral

3,508 members

36 reviews

½ 3.7

3 Members: hipdeep, ahef1963, Shonamarie

10

Testament of Youth

by Vera Brittain

2,412 members

54 reviews

4.1

3 Members: pamelad, ahef1963, Shonamarie

11

by Sinclair Lewis

663 members

16 reviews

3.8

3 Members: pamelad, smcwl, Shonamarie

12

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

21,966 members

441 reviews

4.1

2 Members: pamelad, ahef1963

13

Journey to the End of the Night

by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

6,866 members

86 reviews

4.2

2 Members: pamelad, pitjrw

14

In Search of Lost Time

by Marcel Proust

4,345 members

50 reviews

½ 4.6

2 Members: pamelad, ManWithAnAgenda

15

It Can't Happen Here

by Sinclair Lewis

4,204 members

108 reviews

½ 3.7

2 Members: Shonamarie, ManWithAnAgenda

16

by Nella Larsen

3,539 members

133 reviews

3.8

2 Members: pitjrw, ahef1963

17

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

by James Hilton

2,607 members

63 reviews

3.8

2 Members: pamelad, NinieB

18

Hitty, Her First Hundred Years

by Rachel Field

2,077 members

43 reviews

3.8

2 Members: smcwl, merrystar

19

Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

1,923 members

90 reviews

3.8

2 Members: pitjrw, ManWithAnAgenda

20

by Sinclair Lewis

1,698 members

49 reviews

4

2 Members: pamelad, Shonamarie

21

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s

by Frederick Lewis Allen

1,313 members

32 reviews

4.1

2 Members: pamelad, Shonamarie

22

Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

by Oliver La Farge

821 members

25 reviews

½ 3.7

2 Members: NinieB, Shonamarie

23

Life with Father

by Clarence Day

810 members

12 reviews

½ 3.6

2 Members: hipdeep, smcwl

24

741 members

14 reviews

3.9

2 Members: pamelad, pitjrw

25

Mourning Becomes Electra

by Eugene O'Neill

392 members

2 reviews

½ 3.7

2 Members: hipdeep, ManWithAnAgenda

26

Strange Interlude

by Eugene O'Neill

189 members

7 reviews

3.8

2 Members: hipdeep, NinieB

27

Boston: A Documentary Novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case

by Upton Sinclair

95 members

1 review

4

2 Members: pamelad, Shonamarie

28

Death Comes for the Archbishop

by Willa Cather

6,884 members

174 reviews

4

Member: pamelad

29

by Djuna Barnes

3,560 members

66 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: pitjrw

30

Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

3,432 members

79 reviews

4.2

Member: smcwl

31

Point Counter Point

by Aldous Huxley

2,885 members

30 reviews

3.8

Member: pamelad

32

Bambi: A Life in the Woods

by Felix Salten

2,700 members

48 reviews

4

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

33

And Quiet Flows the Don

by Mikhail Sholokhov

1,801 members

24 reviews

4

Member: Shonamarie

34

Microbe Hunters

by Paul De Kruif

1,196 members

21 reviews

3.9

Member: Shonamarie

35

by John Dos Passos

1,180 members

14 reviews

3.9

Member: pitjrw

36

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

1,116 members

34 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: pitjrw

37

by Ignazio Silone

1,081 members

12 reviews

3.8

Member: pitjrw

38

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

791 members

13 reviews

3.8

Member: pamelad

39

Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

780 members

17 reviews

3.9

Member: pamelad

40

Axel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (FSG Classics)

by Edmund Wilson

729 members

7 reviews

4

Member: Shonamarie

41

The Fortnight in September

by R. C. Sherriff

680 members

25 reviews

4

Member: pitjrw

42

The Common Reader: Second Series

by Virginia Woolf

654 members

5 reviews

4.2

Member: smcwl

43

by Willa Cather

641 members

18 reviews

3.9

Member: pamelad

44

Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History

by Lytton Strachey

587 members

6 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: pamelad

45

A Modern Comedy

by John Galsworthy

536 members

2 reviews

4.1

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

46

by Lion Feuchtwanger

535 members

17 reviews

4.2

Member: smcwl

47

527 members

8 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: pamelad

48

A Backward Glance: An Autobiography

by Edith Wharton

458 members

9 reviews

3.9

Member: Shonamarie

49

386 members

17 reviews

4.1

Member: pamelad

50

End of the Chapter

by John Galsworthy

351 members

2 reviews

4.1

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

51

by Charles A. Lindbergh

350 members

7 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: smcwl

52

Henry the Eighth

by Francis Hackett

302 members

4 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: NinieB

53

by Louis Bromfield

289 members

7 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: smcwl

54

Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography

by Frank Lloyd Wright

273 members

4 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: smcwl

55

by Dorothy Parker

269 members

8 reviews

4.2

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

56

The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865-1895

by Lewis Mumford

213 members

½ 4.3

Member: smcwl

57

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866)

163 members

2 reviews

4.1

Member: smcwl

58

Selected essays, 1917-1932

116 members

1 review

½ 4.6

Member: smcwl

59

The Mauve Decade: American Life at the End of the Nineteenth Century

114 members

½ 3.7

Member: smcwl

60

The Deepening Stream

by Dorothy Canfield

102 members

1 review

½ 4.3

Member: Shonamarie

61

Sir Walter Scott

91 members

1 review

4.2

Member: smcwl

62

The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait

by Glenway Wescott

81 members

1 review

½ 3.5

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

63

Collected Poems of Robert Frost

by Robert Frost

80 members

2 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: ManWithAnAgenda

64

The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921

by William Henry Chamberlin

65 members

1 review

3

Member: smcwl

65

They Stooped to Folly

by Ellen Glasgow

55 members

½ 3.7

Member: Shonamarie

66

by Agnes Repplier

55 members

1 review

Member: smcwl

67

I Change Worlds: The Remaking of an American

by Anna Louise Strong

46 members

1 review

4

Member: Shonamarie

68

Germany puts the clock back

by Edgar Ansel Mowrer

46 members

4

Member: smcwl

69

by Mary Ellen Chase

43 members

1 review

½ 3.3

Member: smcwl

70

37 members

4

Member: smcwl

71

by Mary Ellen Chase

37 members

1 review

½ 3.3

Member: smcwl

72

by Phyllis Bentley

34 members

½ 3.7

Member: smcwl

73

Tar: A Midwest Childhood

by Sherwood Anderson

33 members

Member: smcwl

74

by Maurice Hindus

33 members

Member: smcwl

75

Jeremy at Crale

by Hugh Walpole

30 members

3 reviews

3.2

Member: smcwl

76

The Mound-Builders (Classics Southeast Archaeology)

by Henry Clyde Shetrone

22 members

1 review

5

Member: smcwl

77

by Younghill Kang

19 members

1 review

½ 3.3

Member: smcwl

78

The early life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891

by Florence Emily Hardy

17 members

4

Member: smcwl

79

The American Procession: American Life Since 1860 in Photographs

by Agnes Rogers

15 members

Member: smcwl

80

The new world architecture

by Sheldon Cheney

15 members

Member: smcwl

81

The Road Round Ireland

by Padraic Colum

14 members

Member: smcwl

82

The Literary Mind: Its Place in an Age of Science

12 members

Member: smcwl

83

by Julia Mood Peterkin

10 members

Member: smcwl

84

The Happy Mountain

by Maristan Chapman

6 members

Member: smcwl

85

Critical woodcuts

by Stuart Pratt Sherman

5 members

Member: smcwl

86

Preface to a life

4 members

1 review

3

Member: Shonamarie

87

Beaver, Kings And Cabins

by Constance Lindsay Skinner

3 members

Member: smcwl

88

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

by T. E. Lawrence

5,336 members

64 reviews

4

89

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

4,875 members

35 reviews

3.9

90

by William Faulkner

4,181 members

47 reviews

½ 3.6

91

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

by Gertrude Stein

3,060 members

46 reviews

½ 3.6

92

Gardner's Art through the Ages

by Helen Gardner

2,601 members

13 reviews

4.1

93

by Edith Hamilton

2,382 members

22 reviews

3.8

94

Men Without Women

by Ernest Hemingway

1,840 members

30 reviews

½ 3.6

95

Flush: A Biography

by Virginia Woolf

1,666 members

43 reviews

3.8

96

Giants in the Earth

by O. E. Rølvaag

1,596 members

23 reviews

4

97

by Upton Sinclair

1,570 members

29 reviews

½ 3.6

98

All Passion Spent

by Vita Sackville-West

1,339 members

62 reviews

4.1

99

A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

1,264 members

21 reviews

4

100

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman

by Stefan Zweig

1,186 members

33 reviews

4.1

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About This List

Started: NinieB
July 2017
Type: Unnumbered

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