Mingus suggested this in teh currently reading/ just finished reading thread, we started arguing about graphic novels. 
So anyhow, after some thought I realize that this is really a list of what I like best that I've gotten around to reading. So take it with a grain of salt. The only caveat is that I tried to avoid kidlit.
Anyhow, here they are, sorted by author's last name then title.
ARIGATO'S BEST 100 NOVELS OF ALL TIME IN ALL LANGUAGES FRIGGIN' EVER
Beowulf (Anon.) (yes, I realize that's stretching what might count as a "novel" but shut up)
Flatland - Edward A. Abbott Hitch-Hiker's guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood City of Glass - Paul Auster Timbuktu - Paul Auster
Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard Empire of the Sun - J.G. Ballard Malone Dies - Samuel Beckett The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Boll Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess Naked Lunch - W.S. Burroughs
More Joy in Heaven - Morley Callaghan The Outsider - Albert Camus The Plague - Albert Camus The Favourite Game - Leonard Cohen Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Death on the Installment Plan - Louis-Ferdinand Céline Journey to the End of Night - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Fifth Business - Robertson Davies A Scanner, Darkly - Philip K. Dick Dr. Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco The Big Nowhere - James Ellroy The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
Not Wanted on the Voyage - Timothy Findley The Wars - Timothy Findley
The Miracle of the Rose - Jean Genet Idoru - William Gibson Neuromancer - William Gibson Faust - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Darkness Visible - William Golding Lord of the Flies - William Golding Dog Years - Gunter Grass The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Catch-22 - Joseph Heller A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) - Herman Hesse The Iliad - Homer The Odyssey - Homer Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Trial - Franz Kafka One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski Badlands - Robert Kroetsch
Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin Solaris - Stanislaw Lem Briefing For a Descent Into Hell - Doris Lessing Memoirs of a Survivor - Doris Lessing Survival in Auschwitz - Primo Levi The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Blood Meridien - Cormac McCarthy The Road - Cormac McCarthy Tropic of Cancer - Henry Mller Tropic of Capricorn - Henry Miller A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M. Miller The Sailor Who fell from Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor The Famished Road - Ben Okri In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje 1984 - George Orwell Animal Farm - George Orwell
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque St. Urbain's Horseman - Mordecai Richler The Tin Flute - Gabrielle Roy The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre Frankenstein - Mary Shelley On the Beach - Nevil Shute Cannery Row - John Steinbeck Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson Dracula - Bram Stoker Gulliver's travels - Jonathan Swift
The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson The Hobbit - J.R. R. Tolkien
20,000 Leagues under the Sea - Jules Verne Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Loved Ones - Evelyn Waugh Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathaniel West The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf The Chrysalids - John Wyndham Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
OK, your turn.
show off.
prints.. heads to library
Fucking bookworm.
GET HIM!
*runs away, weeping
I like this list because I've actually read a few of the mentions
Also, Ari, I think you're the only other person I've ever met who's read The Sheep Look Up, I picked it up on a fishing boat when I was 12 and loved it, though I can't remember much about it except for the stylish steel-wool merkins—and the doomsday planet-is-dying vibe.
For a while I was so evangelically fond of that book I'd buy copies to give to people that hadn't read it. It actually bears re-reading quite well, should you be so inclined.
a hundred is way past my ability to maintain focus.
If I was going to pick one Phil Dick, it would be A Scanner Darkly.
I wouldn't have any Miller in there. Too much fluff, not enough substance.
I wouldn't pick any Orwell's either, cause he was a government stooge.
I would put few Dickens in there as well, he is one of my favorites.
At least one Stienbeck would be East of Eden.
Do porn mags count?
I'm not sure I've read 100 novels, so I'll just say that every novel I've ever read is in my top 100.
I have no idea how many novels I've read - thousands, probably. I'd be hard pressed to put together a list of my top 100, though.
p.s. I have read The Sheep Look Up
I'm sure I could spend days agonizing over my choices. Just pick 100 you would be happy to recommend to somebody looking for something good to read, assuming they had exactly your tastes.
I won't try to make a list of my top 100 but here's the top 10% of that list.
- South of the Border, West of the Sun
- Ender's Game
- Confederacy of Dunces
- Hard-Boiled Wonderland, And The End of the World
- Batman: Killing Joke
- Heart of Darkness
- Hocus Pocus
- The Things They Carried
- Mahabharata
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
I'm not 100% confident on this order past the top 3.
Good picks regardless. Though I'm pretty sure Batman isn't a novel.
Originally posted by: mclarkson I have no idea how many novels I've read - thousands, probably. I'd be hard pressed to put together a list of my top 100, though.
p.s. I have read The Sheep Look Up Same here, but I'll add a few of my own. Many on Ari's list rate in my top 100, including the Sheep Look Up. but mostly I'd list my favorite authors, usually most of their books.
JR by William Gaddis The Recognitions by William Gaddis Lot 49, V and Against the Day by Pynchon Every Cormac McCarthy I've read Ditto for Murakami Ditto for Stephenson, but especially the Baroque Trilogy Most of Dickens and Hardy. Vanity Fair - Thackeray Wuthering Heights The Bone People - Keri Hulme
Many more to follow after a scan of the shelves, a beer and a cigar.
Brilliant idea:
top100novels.com is taken, but not used. top100novels.net is available tophundrednovels.com is available.
Fairly simple scripting:
Start with ari's 100. each visitor can votefor or add books up to 100. each visitor can comment on any book. Running tally of top 100.
advertising from amazon, abe books, etc
profit.
should we?
Originally posted by: FlamingoJeff Brilliant idea:
top100novels.com is taken, but not used. top100novels.net is available tophundrednovels.com is available.
Fairly simple scripting:
Start with ari's 100. each visitor can votefor or add books up to 100. each visitor can comment on any book. Running tally of top 100.
advertising from amazon, abe books, etc
profit.
should we?
I'd invest in that.
I bought it, just in case.
Step 1: idea Step 3: profit
I'll help out, sounds like a fine project no matter what comes of it. I can do ui/ux/graphics & logos. Any backend volunteers?
I can contribute what limited funds I have, help on the design side, moderate it, spread word of its existence via the social networks
Amazon pays 4% on 1-7 sales/month up to 6.5% for 100 sales.
ideas for requirements: generation of amazon link for each specific title login and control of 100 vote limit display by highest current number of votes. expandable comments ( i.e.See Comments)
I'll help on the back end.
I'll have to put together a list, maybe I'll just do 10 at a time. I don't think I've seen John Irving mentioned, I'd have a couple of his on there.
Our Buy New link could go to Amazon; our Buy Used could go exclusively to Ian's Used Books.
You may want some sort of soft filtering. In open polls of books ratings atlas shrugged almost always floats to the top.
Probably want the list to be sortable, ficition, non fiction, history, sci fi, etc.
I'm a view guy.
Should be aware of the competition and what they do right and what they do wrong:http://beta.booklamp.org/http://www.goodreads.com/http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/
and the big one:http://www.shelfari.com/
I think Shelfari is the biggest competition but they fail in marketing and spreading word of its existence. I bet most people even on this site didn't know about it and it took me a long time just to relocate it on Google trying to find a site for book recommendations or pandora for books or anything of that nature.