Nominate MobileRead's 10 best fiction books of the 20th Century

[ccowie]

Boy, this is really hard. Here's a start

1900-1909 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
1910-1909 Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

1930-1939 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1960-1969 The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence

1990-1999 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Boy, this is really hard. Here's a start

1900-1909 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
1910-1909 Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

1930-1939 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1960-1969 The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence

1990-1999 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

I think Heart of Darkness is a little too early, 1899. I'd have liked to nominate it myself.

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by issybird

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

I blame disco.

I struggled with that era as well.

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think Heart of Darkness is a little too early, 1899. I'd have liked to nominate it myself.

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

Hmmm. Too bad. I'll have to be in thought about that.

So, I loved The Magus by John Fowles, but only the revised version that was published in 77. Can that be used for my best of the 70's? It's a toss up between that and Falconer by John Cheever.

I wonder about the same dilemma regarding Stranger in a Strange Land originally published in 61, but the version released in the late 80s was much better.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Alsicole

These are three that come to mind off the top of my head...

1964 - A Moment In Time by H.E. Bates
1953 - The Charioteer by Mary Renault
1982 - House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

I want to read The Charioteer; glad to see someone thought so highly of it. I'll have to check out your other two nominations as well.

Originally Posted by issybird

I think Heart of Darkness is a little too early, 1899. I'd have liked to nominate it myself.

Me three. That was the first book I looked up for this.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think Heart of Darkness is a little too early, 1899. I'd have liked to nominate it myself.

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

Really? What about Calvino, Eco, Rushdie, Yan?

I think there was a definite shift as with all media which may not mesh with how everyone views the heft of works, but the ground covered in the newer authors is stunning. I think its harder to find those works now given how many books are published, but they are there. I just think we aren't given the benefit of time to do a little bit of sorting for us.

[sun surfer]

1901-1910, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, 1902
1911-1920, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, 1912
1921-1930, Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922
1931-1940, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, 1939
1941-1950, Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945
1951-1960, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 1958
1961-1970, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, 1961
1971-1980, Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, 1979
1981-1990, Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons & John Higgins, 1987
1991-2000, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2000

This was fun but difficult. Almost every decade had at least two if not more that I wanted to pick. Luckily some have already been nominated (Harry Potter, Spring Snow, Lord of the Flies, The Secret Garden, Where the Wild Things Are) so that helped a little. To decide on the rest it often came down to which way the wind was blowing today, so I want to give a shout out to a few that only barely missed - The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927; Sophie’s Choice, 1979; The Remains of the Day, 1989; The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, 1998; The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 1999.

Originally Posted by issybird

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

I found the 70s easy enough. It was after that it got tough to select a book that I had read that belonged on the same list as my choices for previous decades.

00s The Jungle Upton Sinclair
10s The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington
20s The Trial Franz Kafka
30s The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
40s The Makioka Sisters Junchiro Tanizaki
50s The Crucible Arthur Miller
60s The Last Temptation of Christ Nikos Kazantzakis
70s The Complete Stories Flannery O'Conner
80s A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
80s Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcí*a Márquez
90s The Windup Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami

Some decades the making one choice among a number outstanding books was difficult. Others it was just selecting what I considered the best of what I had read from that decade even if I would not have rated it as great.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by issybird

Post-1970 is killing me. The books just don't have the intellectual heft of earlier years.

I think of best more as simply the most enjoyable rather than the most intellectual heft. Of course, intellectual heft can and often does factor into enjoyment for me, but oftentimes it doesn't as well.

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

70s The Complete Stories Flannery O'Conner

I considered the singular short story A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor for the 50s decade but passed since that really isn't a "book", but it is some of the best fiction writing of the 20th century in my opinion (same for the short story Guests of a Nation by Frank O'Connor).

[BelleZora]

Guests of a Nation (1931) by Frank O'Connor was one of the first stories that came to mind as great 20th century writing. Many of his short stories are some of the best and most affecting I've ever read, but I couldn't really figure out how to nominate them. The Stories of Frank O'Connor (1952) and The Collected Stories (1981) are both worthy of nominations if anyone can figure out how to include O'Connor's work in the nomination process.

[Glorfindel]

Originally Posted by cadele

1951-1960 The Lord Of The Rings (1954/1955)

Arg, you beat me to it

[issybird]

1981 - 1990 The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Some decades the making one choice among a number outstanding books was difficult.

Hardest for me was choosing between Gatsby and The Magic Mountain for the 20s. If the 70s stated in 1970, I'd nominate Robertson Davies's Fifth Business. Failing that, Flannery O'Connor is looking very good to me.

[Bilbo1967]

20s - Carry on Jeeves - P G Wodehouse

[mandy314]

40s - Saul Bellow: The Victim
50s - Stanislaw Lem: Star Diaries
60s - Joseph Heller: Catch-22
70s - Hermann Burger: Schilten
80s - Martin Amis: Money
90s - Lawrence Block: Hit Man

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

20s - Carry on Jeeves - P G Wodehouse

Good to see something of this nature mentioned (I've not read this particular one, but am familiar with the series and I pretty much love the cozy genre anyway.)