The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels - The Reader's List (1998)
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| Rank | Title | Author | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | 1957 |
| 2 | The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | 1943 |
| 3 | Battlefield Earth | L. Ron Hubbard | 1982 |
| 4 | The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien | 1955 |
| 5 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1960 |
| 6 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | 1949 |
| 7 | Anthem | Ayn Rand | 1938 |
| 8 | We the Living | Ayn Rand | 1936 |
| 9 | Mission Earth | ||
| The Invaders Plan | L. Ron Hubbard | 1985 | |
| Black Genesis | L. Ron Hubbard | 1986 | |
| The Enemy Within | L. Ron Hubbard | 1986 | |
| An Alien Affair | L. Ron Hubbard | 1986 | |
| Fortune of Fear | L. Ron Hubbard | 1986 | |
| Death Quest | L. Ron Hubbard | 1987 | |
| Voyage of Vengeance | L. Ron Hubbard | 1987 | |
| Disaster | L. Ron Hubbard | 1987 | |
| Villainy Victorious | L. Ron Hubbard | 1987 | |
| The Doomed Planet | L. Ron Hubbard | 1987 | |
| 10 | Fear | L. Ron Hubbard | 1940 |
| 11 | Ulysses | James Joyce | 1922 |
| 12 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | 1961 |
| 13 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 |
| 14 | Dune | Frank Herbert | 1965 |
| 15 | The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress | Robert A. Heinlein | 1966 |
| 16 | Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert A. Heinlein | 1961 |
| 17 | A Town Like Alice | Nevil Shute | 1950 |
| 18 | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | 1932 |
| 19 | The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 1951 |
| 20 | Animal Farm | George Orwell | 1945 |
| 21 | Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | 1973 |
| 22 | The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | 1939 |
| 23 | Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 1969 |
| 24 | Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | 1936 |
| 25 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding | 1954 |
| 26 | Shane | Jack Schaefer | 1949 |
| 27 | Trustee from the Toolroom | Nevil Shute | 1960 |
| 28 | A Prayer for Owen Meany | John Irving | 1989 |
| 29 | The Stand | Stephen King | 1978 |
| 30 | The French Lieutenant's Woman | John Fowles | 1969 |
| 31 | Beloved | Toni Morrison | 1987 |
| 32 | The Worm Ouroboros | Eric Rucker Eddison | 1922 |
| 33 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | 1929 |
| 34 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 |
| 35 | Moonheart | Charles de Lint | 1984 |
| 36 | Absalom, Absalom! | William Faulkner | 1936 |
| 37 | Of Human Bondage | William Somerset Maugham | 1915 |
| 38 | Wise Blood | Flannery O'Connor | 1952 |
| 39 | Under the Volcano | Malcolm Lowry | 1947 |
| 40 | Fifth Business | Robertson Davies | 1970 |
| 41 | Someplace to Be Flying | Charles de Lint | 1998 |
| 42 | On the Road | Jack Kerouac | 1957 |
| 43 | Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | 1899 |
| 44 | Yarrow | Charles de Lint | 1986 |
| 45 | At the Mountains of Madness | H. P. Lovecraft | 1931 |
| 46 | One Lonely Night | Mickey Spillane | 1951 |
| 47 | Memory and Dream | Charles de Lint | 1994 |
| 48 | To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf | 1927 |
| 49 | The Moviegoer | Walker Percy | 1961 |
| 50 | Trader | Charles de Lint | 1997 |
| 51 | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | 1979 |
| 52 | The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter | Carson McCullers | 1940 |
| 53 | The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood | 1985 |
| 54 | Blood Meridian | Cormac McCarthy | 1985 |
| 55 | A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | 1962 |
| 56 | On the Beach | Nevil Shute | 1957 |
| 57 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce | 1916 |
| 58 | Greenmantle | Charles de Lint | 1988 |
| 59 | Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | 1985 |
| 60 | The Little Country | Charles de Lint | 1991 |
| 61 | The Recognitions | William Gaddis | 1955 |
| 62 | Starship Troopers | Robert A. Heinlein | 1959 |
| 63 | The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | 1926 |
| 64 | The World According to Garp | John Irving | 1978 |
| 65 | Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | 1962 |
| 66 | The Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson | 1959 |
| 67 | As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | 1930 |
| 68 | Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller | 1934 |
| 69 | Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | 1952 |
| 70 | The Wood Wife | Terri Windling | 1996 |
| 71 | The Magus | John Fowles | 1966 |
| 72 | The Door into Summer | Robert A. Heinlein | 1957 |
| 73 | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert M. Pirsig | 1974 |
| 74 | I, Claudius | Robert Graves | 1934 |
| 75 | The Call of the Wild | Jack London | 1903 |
| 76 | At Swim-Two-Birds | Flann O'Brien | 1939 |
| 77 | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | 1953 |
| 78 | Arrowsmith | Sinclair Lewis | 1925 |
| 79 | Watership Down | Richard Adams | 1972 |
| 80 | Naked Lunch | William S. Burroughs | 1959 |
| 81 | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | 1984 |
| 82 | Guilty Pleasures | Laurell K. Hamilton | 1993 |
| 83 | The Puppet Masters | Robert A. Heinlein | 1951 |
| 84 | It | Stephen King | 1986 |
| 85 | V. | Thomas Pynchon | 1963 |
| 86 | Double Star | Robert A. Heinlein | 1956 |
| 87 | Citizen of the Galaxy | Robert A. Heinlein | 1957 |
| 88 | Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh | 1945 |
| 89 | Light in August | William Faulkner | 1932 |
| 90 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | 1962 |
| 91 | A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway | 1929 |
| 92 | The Sheltering Sky | Paul Bowles | 1949 |
| 93 | Sometimes a Great Notion | Ken Kesey | 1964 |
| 94 | My Antonia | Willa Cather | 1918 |
| 95 | Mulengro: A Romany Tale | Charles de Lint | 1985 |
| 96 | Suttree | Cormac McCarthy | 1979 |
| 97 | Mythago Wood | Robert Holdstock | 1984 |
| 98 | Illusions | Richard Bach | 1977 |
| 99 | The Cunning Man | Robertson Davies | 1994 |
| 100 | The Satanic Verses | Salman Rushdie | 1988 |