A Century of Reading

This is one of the 398 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Lithub, 118 Books

LitHub did a best of each decade for every decade of the 20th century. The lists seem to have been written by Emily Temple, which is an author and critic.

This list was originally published in 2018 and was added to this site 9 months ago.

Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
2426 There There Tommy Orange 2018 American English
1403 A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara 2015 American English
1446 Citizen Claudia Rankine 2014 American English
1128 Tenth of December George Saunders 2013 American English
615 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2011 Italian Italian
3537 The Tiger's Wife Téa Obreht 2011 Serbian English
409 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
755 The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 American English
617 The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead 2016 American English
984 My Struggle Karl Ove Knausgaard 2009 Norwegian Norwegian
289 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
276 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British, Japanese English
295 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
1305 Runaway Alice Munro 2004 Canadian English
369 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
1557 Kafka On The Shore Haruki Murakami 2002 Japanese Japanese
738 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling 2000 British English
171 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
196 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
207 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
876 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 American English
920 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding 1996 British English
2097 Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk 1996 American English
893 Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt 1996 American English
311 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
1454 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 American English
1090 Jesus' Son Denis Johnson 1992 American English
241 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
7466 Angels In America Tony Kushner 1991 American English
346 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
494 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
349 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
47 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
306 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
720 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry 1985 American English
535 Neuromancer William Gibson 1984 American, Canadian English
1135 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros 1984 American English
348 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
107 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
908 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English
226 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
609 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
517 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
1034 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
10170 Helter Skelter Vincent Bugliosi 1974 American English
5203 The Joy of Sex Alex Comfort 1972 British English
238 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Judy Blume 1970 American English
364 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
236 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
60 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
367 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
165 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
1301 Ariel Sylvia Plath 1965 American English
194 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
336 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
11 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
59 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
496 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
363 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
44 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
3150 Exodus Leon Uris 1958 American English
350 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
43 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
6 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
656 Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 1955 American English
16 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 British English
121 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
7 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
732 The Lottery and Other Stories Shirley Jackson 1948 American English
650 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Alfred C. Kinsey 1948 American English
420 Goodnight Moon Margaret Wise Brown 1947 American English
5553 A Street In Bronzeville Gwendolyn Brooks 1945 American English
437 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
229 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
132 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
93 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
20 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
50 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
773 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936 American English
68 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
372 Nightwood Djuna Barnes 1936 American English
312 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
52 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
428 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
403 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
119 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
18 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
45 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
1549 The Weary Blues Langston Hughes 1926 American English
35 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
1125 Cane Jean Toomer 1923 American English
175 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
1279 The Mysterious Affair at Styles Agatha Christie 1920 British English
2036 The Wild Swans at Coole William Butler Yeats 1917 Irish English
2 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
280 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
1228 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington 1918 American English
85 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
281 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
2008 Tender Buttons Gertrude Stein 1914 American English
3081 O Pioneers! Willa Cather 1913 American English
3 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
794 Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Grey 1912 American English
2009 Twenty Years at Hull-House Jane Addams 1910 American English
200 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
181 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
265 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
338 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
1993 The Story of My Life Helen Keller 1903 American English
111 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
436 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
1877 Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington 1901 American English
429 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
142 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
24 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English