A Century of Reading

This is one of the 759 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 over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
2336 There There Tommy Orange 2018 American English
1765 A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara 2015 American English
1861 Citizen Claudia Rankine 2014 American English
1898 Tenth of December George Saunders 2013 American English
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
4686 The Tiger's Wife Téa Obreht 2011 Serbian English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
922 The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 American English
770 The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead 2016 American English
898 My Struggle Karl Ove Knausgård 2009 Norwegian Norwegian
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
1563 Runaway Alice Munro 2004 Canadian English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
1201 Kafka On The Shore Haruki Murakami 2002 Japanese Japanese
1842 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling 2000 British English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
1775 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 American English
641 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding 1996 British English
2084 Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk 1996 American English
1643 Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt 1996 American English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
1972 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 American English
968 Jesus' Son Denis Johnson 1992 American English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
7650 Angels In America Tony Kushner 1991 American English
648 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
1122 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
623 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry 1985 American English
893 Neuromancer William Gibson 1984 American, Canadian English
1634 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros 1984 American English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
1473 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
3147 All the President's Men Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein 1974 American English
634 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
14959 Helter Skelter Vincent Bugliosi 1974 American English
14232 The Joy of Sex Alex Comfort 1972 British English
573 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Judy Blume 1970 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
2656 Ariel Sylvia Plath 1965 American English
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
1020 Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 1968 American English
709 The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan 1963 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
1329 Exodus Leon Uris 1958 American English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
3154 Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 1955 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
150 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
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1073 The Lottery and Other Stories Shirley Jackson 1948 American English
945 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Alfred C. Kinsey 1948 American English
636 Goodnight Moon Margaret Wise Brown 1947 American English
5349 A Street In Bronzeville Gwendolyn Brooks 1945 American English
795 Baby And Child Care Benjamin Spock 1946 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
1207 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 1936 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
269 Nightwood Djuna Barnes 1936 American English
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
281 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
675 The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker 1931 American English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
1810 The Weary Blues Langston Hughes 1926 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
854 Cane Jean Toomer 1923 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
801 The Mysterious Affair at Styles Agatha Christie 1920 British English
2751 The Wild Swans at Coole William Butler Yeats 1917 Irish English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
1230 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington 1918 American English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
1733 Tender Buttons Gertrude Stein 1914 American English
1654 O Pioneers! Willa Cather 1913 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
886 Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Grey 1912 American English
2249 Twenty Years at Hull-House Jane Addams 1910 American English
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
2203 The Story of My Life Helen Keller 1903 American English
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
646 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
906 Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington 1901 American English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English