20th Century Books
Goal: To read the best literary and non-fiction output of 20th century in chronological publishing order, aiming to read at least one book per year.
Legend: √ = completed
1900: Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie √
1901: Rudyard Kipling – Kim √
1902: Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness √
1903: Henry James – The Ambassadors √
Jack London – The Call of the Wild √
Samuel Butler – The Way of All Flesh √
W.E.B. DuBois – The Souls of Black Folk √
1904: Anton Chekhov – The Cherry Orchard √
(plus, Chekhov short stories: “The Kiss” and “A Visit to Friends”) √
1905: Edith Wharton – The House of Mirth √
George Bernard Shaw – “Major Barbara” √
1906: Natsume Soseki – I am a Cat (Ch.1-3 Edition) √
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle √
George Bernard Shaw – “The Doctor’s Dilemma” √
1907: G. K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday √
1909ish: Guillaume Apollinaire – Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire √
E.M. Forster – Howards End √
1911: Mori Ogai – Wild Geese √
Max Beerbohm – Zuleika Dobson √
Edith Wharton – Ethan Frome √
1912: Thomas Mann – Death in Venice √
1913: George Bernard Shaw – “Pygmalion” √
Willa Cather – O Pioneers! √
D.H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers √
André Gide – The Vatican Cellars √
1914: Natsume Soseki – Kokoro √
1915: Ford Madox Ford – The Good Soldier √
T.S. Eliot – “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” √
W. Somerset Maugham – Of Human Bondage √
1916: James Joyce – Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man √
1918: Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams √
Booth Tarkington – The Magnificent Ambersons √
1919: George Bernard Shaw – “Heartbreak House” √
Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio √
Ernst Jünger – Storm of Steel √
Sinclair Lewis – Main Street √
John Reed – Ten Days that Shook the World √
1922: Herman Hesse – Siddhartha √
T.S. Eliot – “The Wasteland” √
F. T. Marinetti – The Untameables √
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned √
1923: Jean Toomer – Cane √
1924: Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain √
1925: André Gide – The Counterfeiters √
Franz Kafka – The Trial √
Ernest Hemingway – The Short Stories √
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby √
Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf √
1926: Isaac Babel – Red Cavalry √
1927: Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse √
Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey √
Willa Cather – Death Comes for the Archbishop √
1928: Aldous Huxley – Point Counter Point √
(Bertolt Brecht – “The Threepenny Opera”)
1929: Richard Hughes – A High Wind in Jamaica √
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front √
Nella Larsen – Passing √
Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms √
Thomas Wolfe – Look Homeward, Angel √
William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury √
Henry Green – Living √
1930: William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying √
John dos Passos – The 42nd Parallel √
P.G. Wodehouse – “Jeeves and the Impending Doom” √
Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon √
1931: Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth √
1932: Erskine Caldwell – Tobacco Road √
James T. Farrell – Young Lonigan √
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World √
Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Journey to the End of the Night √
1933: Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas √
1934: Robert Graves – I, Claudius √
John O’Hara – Appointment in Samarra √
James T. Farrell – The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan √
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer √
F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender is the Night √
James M. Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice √
Henry Roth – Call It Sleep √
1937: Zola Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God √
1938: Evelyn Waugh – Scoop √
Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea √
Elizabeth Bowen – The Death of the Heart √
1939: Nathanael West – The Day of the Locust √
Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep √
Eugene O’Neill – The Iceman Cometh √
Flann O’Brian – At Swim-Two-Birds √
John Steinbeck – The Grape of Wrath √
Henry Green – Party Going √
1940: William Saroyan – My Name is Aram √
Arthur Koestler – Darkness at Noon √
Carson McCullers – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter √
Richard Wright – Native Son √
1941: F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Love of the Last Tycoon √
1942: Albert Camus – The Outsider √
1943: William Saroyan – The Human Comedy √
1944: Wm. Somerset Maughm – The Razor’s Edge √
Dorothy Parker – The Collected Dorothy Parker √
1945: Henry Green – Loving √
1946: Nikos Kazantzakis – Zorba the Greek √
Christopher Isherwood – The Berlin Stories √
1947: Tennessee Williams – A Streetcar Named Desire √
Malcolm Lowry – Under the Volcano (abandoned)
The Diary of Anne Frank √
1948: Graham Greene – The Heart of the Matter √
Thor Heyerdahl – The Kon-Tiki Expedition √
Junichiro Tanizaki – The Makioka Sisters √
Alan Paton – Cry, the Beloved Country √
Norman Mailer – The Naked and the Dead (abandoned)
1949: Paul Bowles – The Sheltering Sky √
Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman √
1951: J.D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye √
Herman Wouk – The Caine Mutiny √
1952: Samuel Beckett – “Waiting for Godot” √
James Jones – From Here to Eternity
1953: James Baldwin – Go Tell It On the Mountain √
Saul Bellow – The Adventures of Augie March √
1954: Iris Murdoch – Under the Net √
Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim √
Yasunari Kawabata – The Sound of the Mountain √
1955: Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
William Gaddis – The Recognitions √
J.P. Donleavy – The Ginger Man √
Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley √
1956: Albert Camus – The Fall √
Iris Murdoch – The Flight from the Enchanter √
Yukio Mishima – Temple of the Golden Pavilion √
1957: Jack Keroauc – On the Road √
Bernard Malamud – The Assistant √
John Cheever – The Wapshot Chronicle √
Lawrence Durrell – Justine √
1958: Truman Capote – “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” √
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart √
James Agee – A Death in the Family √
1959: William Burroughs – Naked Lunch √
Eugene Ionesco – “Rhinoceros” √
Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King √
Gunter Grass – The Tin Drum √
1960: John Barth – The Sot-Weed Factor
1961: Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth √
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie √
Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
V.S. Naipaul – A House for Mr. Biswas
Joseph Heller – Catch-22 √
1962: Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange √
Barbara Tuchman – The Guns of August √
Kobo Abe – The Woman in the Dunes
Edward Albee – “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions √
1963: Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
Hannah Arendt – Eichmann in Jerusalem
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
Ken Kesey – Sometimes a Great Notion
Thomas Pynchon – V. √
1965: John Fowles – The Magus
Jerzy Kosinski – The Painted Bird
John Williams – Stoner
1966: Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea
Thomas Pynchon – Crying of Lot 49 √
Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
1967: Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
William Styron – The Confession of Nat Turner
1968: James D. Watson – The Double Helix
Norman Mailer – Armies of the Night
1969: Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five √
Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
1980: John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
[…to be continued…]
1902: André Gide – The Immoralist
1904: Henry James – The Golden Bowl
Jack London – The Sea Wolf
1907: Joseph Conrad – The Secret Agent
1908: Arnold Bennett – The Old Wives’ Tale
E.M. Forster – Room with a View
1914: Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way
1919: Wm. Sommerset Maughm – Moon and Sixpence
H.L. Mencken – The American Language (too long)
1920: Edith Wharton – The Age of Innocence
Frederick Jackson Turner – The Frontier in American History
1922: James Joyce – Ulysses
1925: Theodore Dreiser – An American Tragedy
Ezra Pound – The Cantos
1934: Evelyn Waugh – A Handful of Dust
1935: George Santayana – The Last Puritan
1945: Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited