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best 200 American novels of all time

Michchamp

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 4, 2011
Messages
33,983
List. goes to 1987 only though, missing out on some more recent good authors like Wallace & Franzen altogether.

you can click the ones you've read and vote to see what the most read are.

Hey, Byco, this one is on there: John Pendleton Kennedy, "Swallow Barn" (1832). Maybe I'll have to pick it up.

I've read 21 of these 200. I think it sucks there's no Vonnegut on the list. And I think they omit some authors' best work.
 
most of the novels I've read on the list are from the 1920's to the early 60's. Almost nothing after that until Blood Meridian and White Noise in the 80's.
 
I read Charlotte's Web.

Later that same year I read Black Beauty, but I guess whomever made this list didn't think it was good enough.
 
I can't support that list as the best 200.

No Slaughterhouse Five, no Of Mice and Men, no IT.
 
I don't like this list.

Red Badge of Courage was awesome though..and agree Of Mice and Men should be on it.
 
Two of my favorite novels are not listed: Old Yeller and Water of Life.
 
Should start with Mark Twain and go from there.

then you miss Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Poe, and a couple others.

I can give Mark Twain credit for having the impact he had on American literature, and do like some of the shorter stuff he has written, but the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn stories are way overrated, in terms of literary value, in my humble opinion.
 
This will have to be revised now that James Patterson has written his books.
 
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is the best book I have every read a bunch of times.. Followed by Paolo Bacigalupi's debut novel The Windup Girl which I know is science Fiction but in September 2010, the novel won the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel category, tying with China Mi?ville's The City & the City In May 2010, the novel won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. In 2010, the novel won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. In 2012 a translated version of the novel by Kazue Tanaka and Hiroshi Kaneko won a Seiun award for "Best Translated Long Fiction" at the 51st Japan Science Fiction Convention.[6] The German translation Biokrieg won the Kurd-La?witz-Preis in 2012. I know science fiction never seems to get a nod ever..
 
saw a lady reading a James Patterson book on the bus today. she was wearing a t-shirt that said, "I have bad taste in everything."
 
The very of few of these that I've read, I didn't quite fancy.

Like the Gatsby and the Catcher.

Twain was usually decent although never read the English versions.
 
The very of few of these that I've read, I didn't quite fancy.

Like the Gatsby and the Catcher.

Twain was usually decent although never read the English versions.

Me neither.

Which versions did you read?

And did they have the actual word "nigger" when referring to Jim?

Because the English versions - I think Twain actually composed them in English - they don't use the word nigger anymore.

They're all nigger free.

EDIT: For several years, my primary job was to book audiences for television show tapings out front of the Hollywood Chinese theater; most primarily The Tonight Show, but also other shows too.

Anyways, without witnessing it firsthand, it's unimaginable how little concern parents have for the safety of their toddler children, Especially foreign tourists and most especially The Euro trash. I cannot tell you how many lives of little kids I saved from being crushed underneath One of those double Dekker Hollywood tour buses who had gone running ahead of their oblivious moron euro trash parents.

I was paid to send people to be the live studio audience for a television show tapings, but I viewed my actual job as being The Catcher in the Rye.
 
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The Catcher in the Tourist Trap

The Catcher in the Hollywood Area
 
The Catcher in the Tourist Trap

The Catcher in the Hollywood Area

Make all the jokes you want.

I saved the lives of a bunch of trashy little euro Caucasian brats who are now able to grow up and be anti-immigration in their own countries.
 
Most the Twain stories I read were in Polish and was long ago.

I find it a shame that Twain is being censored. Moreover, don't find offence in words like nigger or negro, especially, in the context authors like Twain and Conrad use them. Perhaps it is because in Polish the tone if often more important than the words used.

Quite the contrary, I find modern terms like African American offensive.
 
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