Top Ten

[Tim Strzechowski]

I missed what the criteria are for our respective lists, so let me focus
mine on 20th Century fiction.  These are my favorites at the moment (in no
particular order):

  1.  Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
  2.  Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
  3.  Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  4.  William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
  5.  Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
  6.  James Joyce, Ulysses
  7.  Yann Martel, Life of Pi
  8.  Toni Morrison, Beloved
  9.  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
10.  Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Of course, if we're supposed to include imaginative works from any century
or region, I would also have to include:

John Milton, Paradise Lost
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
God (with various ghostwriters), The Holy Bible
Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Emily Dickinson's poetry
The Monster at the End of the Book (meta-narrative for the Seseme Street
set)