Modern Library's 100 best novels, the top 15

the board's ranked list from 1998, not the reader poll (that one's a different mess entirely, mostly Ayn Rand). extract of the top 15 of 100

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1. Ulysses - James Joyce (1922)

the board's actual #1. most people who own it haven't finished it, myself included for years

2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce (1916)

Joyce twice in the top three (deserved), before Ulysses got harder to read

4. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

5. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1932)

6. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (1929)

hardest read on this whole extract, and it's not close

7. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (1961)

8. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler (1940)

most people haven't heard of this one, and it might be the best of the top ten

9. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence (1913)

10. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)

11. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry (1947)

(deserved) but also the book that ended more book clubs than any other on this list

12. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler (1903)

13. 1984 - George Orwell (1949)

at 13 on a list from 1998, which already feels dated given how often it gets cited now

14. I, Claudius - Robert Graves (1934)

15. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927)

(the shortlist was better than the board sometimes admits, and this is the proof)

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