Books Of The Century

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

About this list

Library Journal, 150 Books

Books Of The Century, as nominated and voted on by the readers of Library Journal.

Library Journal is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice. It also reviews library-related materials and equipment.

How many people voted?
if you look at the internet archive version of the website from 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/19990209152223/http://www.bookwire.com/ljdigital/roundups/hundredbest.htm

it says "hundreds" voted, so I am going to go with 200

This list was originally published in 1999 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
281 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
623 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry 1985 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
169 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961 British, Scottish English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
1329 Exodus Leon Uris 1958 American English
803 Sophie's Choice William Styron 1979 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
693 Little House on the Prairie Laura Ingalls Wilder 1935 American English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
658 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 1971 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
718 Possession A. S. Byatt 1990 British English
1697 The Stone Diaries Carol Shields 1993 Canadian English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
738 The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1989 American English
788 Roots Alex Haley 1976 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
2258 Pale Horse, Pale Rider Katherine Anne Porter 1939 American English
490 Ethan Frome Edith Wharton 1911 American English
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
407 The World According to Garp John Irving 1978 American English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
434 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
938 Burger's Daughter Nadine Gordimer 1979 South African English
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
1395 The Mists of Avalon Marion Zimmer Bradley 1983 American English
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
688 From Here to Eternity James Jones 1951 American English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
265 Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton 1948 South African English
3059 Advise and Consent Allen Drury 1959 American English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
1004 2001 Arthur C. Clarke 1968 British English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
308 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 1970 American English
2098 The Bean Trees Barbara Kingsolver 1988 American English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
3377 Ordinary People Judith Guest 1976 American English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
227 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
6002 Kate Vaiden Reynolds Price 1986 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
286 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
246 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
103 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
291 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
170 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
635 Johnny Got His Gun Dalton Trumbo 1939 American English
2302 Ironweed William Kennedy 1983 American English
685 Them Joyce Carol Oates 1969 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
681 Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 1963 American English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
2388 Breathing Lessons Anne Tyler 1988 American English