Wednesday, July 22, 1998

Make your own list of century's top 10 novels

Perhaps you read Tuesday's front-page story about the Modern Library editorial board's list of the best novels of the twentieth century. Perhaps, as a serious reader, you were taken aback by some of the selections.

Is a book as dense as James Joyce's Ulysses really the best novel of the century? Does Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby deserve to rank higher than all of Faulkner's novels? Does Lolita even deserve to be mentioned?

To refresh your memory, here is the Modern Library's top 10:

1. Ulysses, James Joyce

2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler

9. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Maybe the Modern Library's list has prompted you to roam through your personal library and your recollections and make your own list of the best ten novels of the century. If so, we'd like to see your choices, and we'll publish a selection of the results at a later date.

Send your list of the "Top Ten Novels of the Twentieth Century" to: Top Ten Novels, c/o Editor, Abilene Reporter-News, P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604.

Our fax number is (915) 670-5242. E-mail lists may be sent to letter@abinews.com.

Please include your name, street address and phone number.