A Century of books

Lately I'm into classic books again. When I was about 15 I had the same period of only reading classic Penguin books. And when walking through Waterstones Amsterdam last week, I found out they had made a whole shelf with the best classic books, from 1900 on, one for every year. Oh my, that's a century of books! So much to discover! 100 books. Back home I found the list at Waterstone's Facebook page. For the whole list move over here, here's the first 50 years.

1900 – The Wizard of Oz - Frank L. Baum – Eclipsed by the movie the original novel is even more fantastical

1901 – Kim - Rudyard Kipling – The dying days of the British Empire produced a very modern classic

1902 – Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – Hugely influential, especially on cinema, this nightmare world is perfectly realised

1903 – Call of the Wild - Jack London – The first and best animal novel to deal with the thin veneer that separates civilisation from the natural world

1904 – Complete Plays - Anton Chekhov – Without Chekhov there would be no Beckett.

1905 – House of Mirth - Edith Wharton – This novel about an independent woman found echoes in the early days of the Suffragette movement

1906 – The Railway Children - E. Nesbit – A love song to innocent days soon to be swept away forever…

1907 – The Aran Islands - J.M. Synge – Modern travel literature began here

1908 – Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham – If you want a view of pre-war England here it is in all its rural innocence.

1909 – Ann Veronica - H.G. Wells – A sensation at the time, this novel about the rejection of male chauvinism still has the power to cause debate.

1910 – Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Lereaux – A much neglected horror novel dealing with obsession and what we mean by beauty.

1911 – The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett – Considered by many to be the best Children’s novel of the 20th Century this book continues to captivate.

1912 – Death in Venice - Thomas Mann – Unrequited love and the first gay novel – a milestone in literature

1913 – Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence – Lawrence’s first and finest masterpiece gives a voice to the workers.

1914 – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist - Robert Tressell – Arguably the greatest novel about socialism ever written.

1915 – The 39 Steps - John Buchan – We would have no James Bond without this seminal spy story.

1916 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce – More accessible than Ulysses this is Joyce at his most moving.

1917 – His Last Bow - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The end of Sherlock Holmes ushers in a century of detective fiction

1918 – My Antonia - Willa Cather – This novel of the hard life of American settlers paved the way for Steinbeck

1919 – Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson – The first great modernist work of American fiction and an intimate portrait of smalltown life

1920 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie – Welcome in the world’s most loved crime writer with her finest work

1921 – Flappers and Philosophers - F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Jazz age - fabulous, frivolous and empty – soon to be swept away

1922 – The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot – Modernism truly begins with Eliot. This work is a cornerstone of 20th Century literature

1923 – The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran – The New Age movement and the Counter Culture starts here.

1924 – A Passage to India - E.M. Forster – This novel about the end of British rule in India still has a great deal to say about the rights and wrongs of occupation.

1925 – The Trial - Franz Kafka – This nightmare vision of modern life is even more relevant in today’s world

1926 – Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne – We love it as children, we understand it as adults

1927 – To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf – The English novel will never be the same again. This moving elegy to loss is the first great stream of consciousness work

1928 – Parade’s End - Ford Maddox Ford – One of the most remarkable books about the First World War ever written.

1929 – The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner – This experimental work of art could be the greatest American novel of the 20th Century

1930 – The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett – Sam Spade is the model for all the maverick detectives that followed. Original and best.

1931 – The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck – This prize-winning novel about China began a movement towards greater understanding of Asian cultures

1932 – Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons – Satire, pastiche and possibly the funniest book of all time

1933 – Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein – A novel in disguise this book is considered on of the classic works of feminism.

1934 – I, Claudius - Robert Graves – Many believe this is the best historical novel ever written.

1935 – Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder – A children’s story which appeals to adults in its stark depiction of a harsh world

1936 – Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell – Cinema’s biggest movie began with a book. This book.

1937 – The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien – All of modern fantasy comes from here. This is a major influence in creative writing.

1938 – Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – One of the most disturbing tales about the power the dead have over the living.

1939 – Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood – The end of Weimar Germany and the beginning of history’s darkest hour is brilliantly captured here.

1940 – For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemmingway – The brutality of Civil war is nowhere better expressed

1941 – The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis – A correspondence with the Devil – a theological argument which inspired Dawkins

1942 – Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus – This meditation on man’s futile search for meaning is one of the greatest philosophical works

1943 – The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – The most read, most translated French book and a profound study about human nature

1944 – Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges – These minimalist short stories have influenced countless writers. Unique and original.

1945 – Animal Farm - George Orwell – This satire of the Russian Revolution is the fable of our times and continues to inform on the true nature of power

1946 – Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake – Gothic and mad, this masterpiece of fantastic writing was born out of the horrors of the Second World War

1947 – Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry – A masterpiece which tells an autobiographical story in a series of original ways. Very influential.

1948 – The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene – A story which explores the place of faith in a secular world. Greene’s most thought-provoking work.

1949 – Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller – A landmark in dramatic presentation-technically complicated this play speaks of post-war disillusion.

1950 – The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing – A novel which deals with life in South Africa under Apartheid. Topical then, still relevant today.

How many did you read and what's your favorite?