When I first got my Kindle, I couldn't wait to fill it up with the best novels. Searching around on the internet I found this great list. The goal when they made the list was not to have a competition about what the best book was, but to get people talking about great books. To narrow down the list they had a couple requirements for the novels. 1. Published between 1900 and 1998 (when the list was made), and 2. published in English. There are other lists that cover nonfiction and world literature but let’s focus for now on the 100 best novels written in English in the 20th century.
All these novels were voted for by hundreds of thousands of readers. The final list was compiled by the board at Modern Library and arranged from 1 to 100. They are not in order per se, and I would not recommend reading it in order, but organized from the most loved and critically acclaimed.
Any book on the list would be a great read and guaranteed by thousands of readers to entertain and enlighten. Many of the books are available for free in ebook, which is the purpose of this article, others range anywhere from $1.99 to $11.99. I won’t post the prices because they fluctuate so much at Amazon, but I will highlight in Bold the ones that are Free.
Let me know what you think in the links below, and let’s get talking about great books!
The List
by James Joyce
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
by James Joyce
by Vladimir Nabokov
by Aldous Huxley
by William Faulkner
by Joseph Heller
by Arthur Koestler
by D.H. Lawrence
by John Steinbeck
by Malcolm Lowry
by Samuel Butler
by George Orwell
by Robert Graves
by Virginia Woolf
by Theodore Dreiser
by Carson McCullers
by Kurt Vonnegut
by Ralph Ellison
by Richard Wright
by Saul Bellow
by John O’Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy)
THE 42ND PARALLEL
1919 (Volume Two of the U.S.A. Trilogy)
THE BIG MONEY (Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy)
THE 42ND PARALLEL
1919 (Volume Two of the U.S.A. Trilogy)
THE BIG MONEY (Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy)
by John Dos Passos
by Sherwood Anderson
by E.M. Forster
by Henry James
by Henry James
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
by James T. Farrell
by Ford Madox Ford
by George Orwell
by Henry James
by Theodore Dreiser
by Evelyn Waugh
by William Faulkner
by Robert Penn Warren
by Thornton Wilder
by E.M. Forster
by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER
by Graham Greene
by William Golding
by James Dickey
Link to book 1 of 12
by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT
by Aldous Huxley
by Ernest Hemingway
by Joseph Conrad
by Joseph Conrad
by D.H. Lawrence
by D.H. Lawrence
by Henry Miller
by Norman Mailer
by Philip Roth
by Vladimir Nabokov
by William Faulkner
by Jack Kerouac
by Dashiell Hammett
by Ford Madox Ford
by Edith Wharton
by Max Beerbohm
by Walker Percy
by Willa Cather
by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES
by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
by J.D. Salinger
by Anthony Burgess
by W. Somerset Maugham
by Joseph Conrad
by Sinclair Lewis
by Edith Wharton
by Lawrence Durell
by Richard Hughes
by V.S. Naipaul
by Nathanael West
by Ernest Hemingway
by Evelyn Waugh
by Muriel Spark
by James Joyce
by Rudyard Kipling
by E.M. Forster
by Evelyn Waugh
by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE
by Wallace Stegner
by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART
by Elizabeth Bowen
by Joseph Conrad
by E.L. Doctorow
by Arnold Bennett
by Jack London
by Henry Green
by Salman Rushdie
by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED
by William Kennedy
by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA
by Jean Rhys
by Iris Murdoch
by William Styron
by Paul Bowles
by James M. Cain
by J.P. Donleavy
by Booth Tarkington
Please check the price before buying it for your Kindle, as books change in price and availability regularly. The books without links are currently unavailable in the Kindle Store.
So what do you people think about the books? Which would you recommend? Which ones have you read?
