As if You Don't Have Enough to Read, Fiction Edition

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

New York Times, 120 Books

This is the fiction version of the non-fiction list. The description of the non-fiction list is -- Inspired by The Guardian's recent list of the 100 greatest nonfiction books, we here at the magazine decided to create our own list. Dispensing with all pretense to rigor — it's a list, silly! — we simply asked each member of the staff to pick their five favorites.
Note. I did delete one entry where someone just listed one author. These are ranked at the top of the list. I aggregated the duplicates into a rank.

voter count: 32

This list was originally published in 2011 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
378 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
12 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
30 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
415 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
259 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
218 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
1635 The Sportswriter Richard Ford 1986 American English
101 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
712 A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court Mark Twain 1889 American English
2153 A Personal Matter Kenzaburō Ōe 1964 Japanese Japanese
89 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
530 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
717 A Sport and a Pastime James Salter 1967 American English
419 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
357 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
583 Against Nature J. K. Huysmans 1884 French French
227 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
7736 Another Marvelous Thing Laurie Colwin 1986 American English
355 At Swim Two-Birds Flann O'Brien 1939 Irish English
460 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
427 The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino 1957 Italian Italian
1083 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 1993 British English
6177 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Haruki Murakami 2006 Japanese Japanese
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
2411 Bright Lights, Big City Jay McInerney 1984 American English
925 Cat and Mouse Günter Grass 1961 German German
1328 Cathedral Raymond Carver 1983 American English
6843 Chelsea Girls Eileen Myles 1994 American English
6143 CivilWarLand in Bad Decline George Saunders 1996 American English
432 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
9092 Cruddy Lynda Barry 1999 American English
6300 Dance, Dance, Dance Haruki Murakami 1988 Japanese Japanese
103 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
8377 Eventide Kent Haruf 2004 American English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
1039 Franny and Zooey J. D. Salinger 1961 American English
2044 The Ripening Seed Colette 1923 French French
607 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski 2000 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
1483 Independence Day Richard Ford 1995 American English
1444 James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl 1961 British English
28 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
1836 Jaws Peter Benchley 1974 American English
3105 Leviathan Paul Auster 1992 American English
1195 Light Years James Salter 1975 American English
1673 London Fields Martin Amis 1989 British English
1198 Mating Norman Rush 1991 American English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
1941 My Name Is Asher Lev Chaim Potok 1972 American English
3207 Neverwhere Neil Gaiman 1996 British English
71 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
193 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
5333 Plainsong Kent Haruf 1999 American English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
423 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen 1811 British English
792 The Sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut 1959 American English
85 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
1122 Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata 1937 Japanese Japanese
6655 Strange Pilgrims Gabriel García Márquez 1992 Colombian Spanish
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
270 The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899 American English
4739 Blood Oranges John Hawkes 1971 American English
1811 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon 2003 British English
2727 The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer 1979 American English
1210 The Floating Opera John Barth 1956 American English
1506 The Friends Of Eddie Coyle George V. Higgins 1970 American English
358 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
240 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
374 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
117 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
4463 The History of Love Nicole Krauss 2005 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
1787 The Master Colm Toibin 2004 Irish English
4191 The Master Of Go Yasunari Kawabata 1951 Japanese Japanese
2616 The Mezzanine Nicholson Baker 1988 American English
183 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
6445 The Needle's Eye Margaret Drabble 1972 British English
1104 The Passion Jeanette Winterson 1987 British English
187 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene 1940 British English
4563 The Rules Of Attraction Bret Easton Ellis 1987 American English
354 The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño 1998 Chilean Spanish
488 The Shipping News Annie Proulx 1993 Canadian English
659 The Thin Man Dashiell Hammett 1934 American English
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
188 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 American English
3479 The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover 1968 American English
1240 The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis José Saramago 1984 Portuguese Portuguese
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
410 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
454 V Thomas Pynchon 1963 American English
6943 We All Love Glenda So Much And Other Tales Julio Cortazar 1980 Argentinian Spanish
5713 White Mule William Carlos Williams 1937 American English
362 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
402 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English