The 10 Best Books of the 20th Century

From Everything Shii Knows, the only reliable source

This website is an archive. It ran from 2006-2010. Virtually everything on here is outdated or inaccurate.

I'm pretty sure Middlemarch was one of the 10 best books when it first came out but I can only judge books based on my own understanding as a reader of the early 21st century. So, I'll judge the literature that seemed to me the most perfectly constructed and the best fit of the 20th century.

  1. Anne Frank's diary
  2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  3. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
    This is not a very MANLY thing to say, but these top three books made me cry so much I have not yet reread them. One day I will read them again.
    - Entries below this line are subject to change -
  4. Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
  5. Freedom From the Known by Krishnamurti
  6. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  7. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  8. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  9. Dubliners by James Joyce
  10. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

My 10 favorite books of the 20th century

I have a very different list of favorite books-- the books I have read multiple times and would recommend to anyone, whether or not they were interested in good writing...

  1. Momo
  2. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction by Smith and Novak
    - Entries below this line are subject to change -
  3. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
  4. Buddha by Osamu Tezuka
  5. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano
  6. The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan
  7. Matilda by Roald Dahl
  8. The Great Explosion by E.F. Russell
  9. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
  10. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Appendices

Top 3 books neither I nor you will ever finish:

  1. Gravity's Rainbow
  2. In Search of Lost Time
  3. Finnegans Wake

Worst book ever: Atlas Shrugged

Really good books I still need to read: Steppenwolf, A Portrait of the Artist, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Slaughterhouse Five (sorry about that)

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