Introduction

I thought I’d have a little fun today and compile a list of my 50 favorite novels.

First off, the rules.

I didn’t include any short stories, short story collections, poetry collections, screenplays, plays, nonfiction (creative or otherwise), or graphic novels. Every book on this list is a novel (well, there is one novella).

Also, this is a list of my 50 favorite novels, not a list of the 50 best novels in terms of literary merit. Nostalgia, my own personal taste, and the fact that I’ve only read a smidgen of the novels that have been written limit this to a very arbitrary list.

Without further ado, the list!

My 50 Favorite Novels

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
6. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
7. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
8. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
9. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
10. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
11. Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale by Chuck Kinder
12. Skagboys by Irvine Welsh
13. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
14. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
15. Native Son by Richard Wright
16. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
17. Women by Charles Bukowski
18. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
19. 1984 by George Orwell
20. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
21. The Plague by Albert Camus
22. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
23. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
24. The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson
25. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
26. The Group by Mary McCarthy
27. Drop City by T.C. Boyle
28. The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight
29. The Chosen by Chaim Potok
30. Junky by William S. Burroughs
31. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
32. Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley
33. Animal Farm by George Orwell
34. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36. NW by Zadie Smith
37. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
38. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
39. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
40. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
41. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
42. The Fall by Albert Camus
43. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
44. The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
45. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
46. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
47. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
48. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
49. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
50. Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Feedback

Now, here’s where I turn it back to you with a few questions:

How many of these novels have you read?

Do you hate any of the books on this list? Why?

What’s on your list of 50 favorite books?

Comments and feedback are always appreciated!

Fighting the good fight with you,
Alfonso