I discovered Entertainment Weekly’s New Classics book list a few days ago on a blog. It’s there list of the 100 best books since 1983. I’ve seen it pop up a couple more times since, and if it isn’t already it looks like it will soon be a meme. So here’s my take. I’ll be bolding the titles I’ve read and underlining those I would like to. I’ve been looking for a list like this…
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)
Wow, I’ve only read thirteen of these books! I’ve underlined more than that, but even adding the two doesn’t equal a very high number. Guess my reading interests don’t line up well with EW, not all that surprising really.
A Variety Of Words 
I’ve read 14 on that list and I’m counting two that I read most of but skipped maybe the last 30 pages and read the ending.
By: Carrie K on June 30, 2008
at 1:18 pm
I’m surprised to count I’ve read 28 from the list (also been looking for a list like this – thanks!) but there are almost thirty more I would like to read…I’d better get cracking.
By: verbivore on July 1, 2008
at 9:44 am
Carrie K – Looks like you’ve got about the same number under your belt as I do…
verbivore – I didn’t count up how many I wanted to read, but I know it’s more than I have read. I own some of them already so I’ll be starting with those.
By: Matt on July 1, 2008
at 6:42 pm
This is a more plausible list compared to the others that popped up recently. I’m not sure about Bel Canto since I didn’t like the ending, but nonetheless it’s a very popular book.
Big hands for Blindness, The remains of the Day, Handmaid’s Tale, and Love in the Time of Cholera.
I’ll have to put this up on the fridge! 🙂
By: Matthew on July 13, 2008
at 7:58 pm
Занимаюсь дизайном и хочу попросить автора varietyofwords.wordpress.com отправить шаьлончик на мой мыил) Готов заплатить…
By: viense on October 14, 2008
at 9:08 am
I’m happy to report that I’ve read twelve of these books–this isn’t a very good list. Reads like a rundown of number-one bestsellers for the last twenty-five years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, but it seems like EW based these “classics” on sales rather than quality. Come on–“On Writing”? Even for King, that was a pretty forgettable book. And don’t even get me started on “The Da Vinci Code”–read “Foucault’s Pendulum” instead.
By: Brandon on October 18, 2008
at 11:37 am
Hey Matt, I highly recommend Love in the Time of Cholera. It should be one of your underlined books! Have you read any Marquez? He is brilliant, and he is a big one in the world of Magical Realism, a literary idea/movement which boomed, I think in like the 1960s?, in Latin America.
Those are my two cents… or I guess pence while I am still in the UK.
By: Rachel Eskesen on August 5, 2009
at 3:27 am