"Our Readable Century", The Best Books of the 20th Century

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

January Magazine, 17 Books

Literary publication January Magazine polled writers for their favorite works of 20th century fiction. These were the most mentioned books. There were 48 authors polled. This particular list is every book that got more than 2 votes.

There is an honorable mention list that has the rest of the books that can be found here: https://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/1045

This list was originally published in 2000 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
1105 The Chill Ross Macdonald 1964 American English