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The Atlantic released its newest list of the Great American Novels on March 14, 2024. The article is great: read it here. You can toggle it and read a short description of each book on the list. They narrowed it to books published after 1923 and books published (or intended to be published and read) in the United States. They contend that there are 136 novels in the running.
I have always wanted to tackle a project like this, where I track how many books on a list I’ve read like this. Below are the books I’ve read so far.
The Books
All books are listed chronologically. If I’ve read them, I indicate how many stars I’ve given them. For some I have a short review and for a few I link to a long form review.
As of March 18, 2024, I have read 14 of the 136 books. Here are the books I’ve read ranked by the number of stars I gave them:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, The Dispossessed
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Ask the Dust, A Wrinkle in Time, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Fifth Season
⭐⭐⭐ - The Big Sleep, The Grapes of Wrath, Charlotte’s Web, The Corrections, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
⭐⭐ - The Catcher in the Rye
⭐ - The Stand
The Full List
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I have always loved this book. The first time it took me half the book to figure out what was going on but I was in high school. It makes me sad that it has fallen out of fashion lately but it is really a perfect novel.An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser
The Making of Americans (1925) by Gertrude Stein
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway
Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen
The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes
East Goes West (1937) by Younghill Kang
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
U.S.A. (1937) by John Dos Passos
The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler ⭐⭐⭐
Ask the Dust (1939) by John Fante ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review here: Relatable Flaws | Review of Ask the Dust by John FanteThe Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck ⭐⭐⭐
The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West
Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
A Time to Be Born (1942) by Dawn Powell
All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
The Street (1946) by Ann Petry
In a Lonely Place (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes
The Mountain Lion (1947) by Jean Stafford
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger ⭐⭐
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
Charlotte’s Web (1952) by E. B. White ⭐⭐⭐
Maud Martha (1953) by Gwendolyn Brooks
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Adventures of Augie March (1953) by Saul Bellow
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
Giovanni’s Room (1956) by James Baldwin
Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious
Deep Water (1957) by Patricia Highsmith
No-No Boy (1957) by John Okada
On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Another Country (1962) by James Baldwin
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov
The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962) by Ross Macdonald
The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath
The Group (1963) by Mary McCarthy
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
A Sport and a Pastime (1967) by James Salter
Couples (1968) by John Updike
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Divorcing (1969) by Susan Taubes
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume
Desperate Characters (1970) by Paula Fox
Play It as It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine (1972) by Stanley Crawford
Mumbo Jumbo (1972) by Ishmael Reed
Sula (1973) by Toni Morrison
The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973) by Oscar Zeta Acosta
The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Great book, should have read it earlier.Oreo (1974) by Fran Ross
Winter in the Blood (1974) by James Welch
Corregidora (1975) by Gayl Jones
Speedboat (1976) by Renata Adler
Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko
Song of Solomon (1977) by Toni Morrison
The Stand (1978) by Stephen King ⭐
I really loved it in the first third. Found it decent but meandering in the second third. The last third was confusing. Did not enjoy this novel.A Contract With God (1978) by Will Eisner
Dancer From the Dance (1978) by Andrew Holleran
Kindred (1979) by Octavia E. Butler
The Dog of the South (1979) by Charles Portis
Housekeeping (1980) by Marilynne Robinson
The Salt Eaters (1980) by Toni Cade Bambara
Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament (1981) by John Crowley
Oxherding Tale (1982) by Charles Johnson
Machine Dreams (1984) by Jayne Anne Phillips
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
A Summons to Memphis (1986) by Peter Taylor
Watchmen (1986) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
Dawn (1987) by Octavia E. Butler
Geek Love (1989) by Katherine Dunn
Tripmaster Monkey (1989) by Maxine Hong Kingston
Dogeaters (1990) by Jessica Hagedorn
American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Julia Alvarez
Mating (1991) by Norman Rush
Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) by Dorothy Allison
The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
So Far From God (1993) by Ana Castillo
Stone Butch Blues (1993) by Leslie Feinberg
The Shipping News (1993) by Annie Proulx
Native Speaker (1995) by Chang-rae Lee
Sabbath’s Theater (1995) by Philip Roth
Under the Feet of Jesus (1995) by Helena María Viramontes
Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
I Love Dick (1997) by Chris Kraus
Underworld (1997) by Don DeLillo
The Intuitionist (1999) by Colson Whitehead
Blonde (2000) by Joyce Carol Oates
House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon
The Last Samurai (2000) by Helen DeWitt
The Quick and the Dead (2000) by Joy Williams
The Corrections (2001) by Jonathan Franzen ⭐⭐⭐
Erasure (2001) by Percival Everett
I, the Divine (2001) by Rabih Alameddine
Caramelo (2002) by Sandra Cisneros
Perma Red (2002) by Debra Magpie Earling
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002) by Gary Shteyngart
The Namesake (2003) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Veronica (2005) by Mary Gaitskill
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz ⭐⭐⭐
A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan
I Hotel (2010) by Karen Tei Yamashita
Open City (2011) by Teju Cole
Salvage the Bones (2011) by Jesmyn Ward
The Round House (2012) by Louise Erdrich
Americanah (2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nevada (2013) by Imogen Binnie
A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) by Marlon James
Family Life (2014) by Akhil Sharma
The Fifth Season (2015) by N. K. Jemisin ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Wow, just wow. Totally different kind of sci-fi fantasyFates and Furies (2015) by Lauren Groff
The Sellout (2015) by Paul Beatty
The Sympathizer (2015) by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Amiable With Big Teeth (2017) by Claude McKay
Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George Saunders
Sabrina (2018) by Nick Drnaso
Severance (2018) by Ling Ma
There There (2018) by Tommy Orange
Lost Children Archive (2019) by Valeria Luiselli
Nothing to See Here (2019) by Kevin Wilson
The Old Drift (2019) by Namwali Serpell
No One Is Talking About This (2021) by Patricia Lockwood
The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (2021) by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Biography of X (2023) by Catherine Lacey
How many have you read? Which should I read next?
Comment or message your recommendations.