Best Ever Novels [RESULTS!]

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  • #1
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 07:35
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And at long last, here they are, the Best Ever Novels as voted by the BEA community. I'll be posting em all in tens so nobody post a damn thing until I give the signal (which will be in the form of Levar Burton lying in a pile of books). And I am formatting said posts as they're being posted so bear with me. Feel free to discuss how the list is unfolding right here until such a time as the whole thing is posted.

We had very nearly 750 unique books submitted, and I think the list turned out pretty cool. Thanks again to all the participants. Got myself many recs through this thing Very Happy

And without further ado, here they are. BEA's top 100 novels of all time:
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  • #2
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 07:35
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#100

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”


#99

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”


#98

Là-bas [Down There or The Damned] by Joris-Karl Huysmans
“Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.”


#97

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”


#96

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
“They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.”


#95

The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon
“Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.”


#94

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress by Charles Dickens
“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”


#93

The Floating Opera by John Barth
“the enemy you flee is not exterior to yourself”


#92

The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism [Les 120 journées de Sodome ou l'école du libertinage] by Marquis de Sade
“If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.”

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  • Posted: 12/22/2015 07:54
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#91

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”


#90

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien [Brian O'Nolan]
“Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch.”


#89

The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
“On the other hand in America, in the Republic, one has to spend the whole weary day paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street, and must become as stupid as they are; and there, one has no Opera.”


#88

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”


#87

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
“Solitude produces originality, bold & astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the forbidden.”


#86

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
“Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.”


#85

The Giver by Lois Lowry
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”


#84

A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov
“Ah, what stars there are in the Ukraine. I’ve been living in Moscow almost seven years, but I still feel drawn to my homeland. My heart aches, I get a terrible urge to board a train and be off. To see the cliffs covered in snow, the Dnieper … there’s no more beautiful city in the world than Kiev”


#83

White Noise by Don DeLillo
“No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.”


#82

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

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  • #4
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 08:13
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#81

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”


#80

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
“He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.”


#79

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”


#78

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
“Everything in life is just for a while.”


#77

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
“Experiment is the mother of knowledge.”


#76

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
“do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation”


#75

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”


#74

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
“There's a time for reciting poems and a time for fists. As far as I was concerned, this was the latter.”


#73

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”


#72

The Name of the Rose [Il nome della rosa] by Umberto Eco
“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”

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  • Posted: 12/22/2015 08:35
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#71

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
“I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”


#70

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
“All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great.”


#69

The Metamorphosis [Die Verwandlung] by Franz Kafka
“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”


#68

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”


#67

Death on Credit or Death on the Installment Plan [Mort à crédit] by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
“The main thing isn't knowing whether you're right or wrong. That really doesn't matter...The main thing is to keep people from bothering you...The rest is eyewash...”


#66

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things”


#65

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”


#64

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
“Human nature is the same in all professions.”


#63

The Count of Monte Cristo [Le Comte de Monte-Cristo] by Alexander Dumas
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”


#62

Dead Souls [Мёртвые ду́ши] by Nikolai Gogol
“However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.”


#61

In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way [À la recherche du temps perdu: Le Côté de Guermantes] by Marcel Proust
“Dinner parties bore us because our imagination is absent, and reading interests us because it is keeping us company.”

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  • #6
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 08:50
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#60

Crime and Punishment [Преступлéние и наказáние] by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”


#59

House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
“It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine.”


#58

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
“So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”


#57

Notes from Underground [Записки из подполья] by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”


#56

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
“No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?”


#55

Journey to the End of the Night [Voyage au bout de la nuit] by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
“An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time.”


#54

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”


#53

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
“It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.”


#52

Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote
“Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.”


#51

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”





aaaand INTERMISSION so I can go get me some damn honey bunches of oats and do some laundry before I forget... (don't go anywhere plz)

Oh also fun fact: Life, The Universe, and Everything got exactly 42 points. Arguably best part of this whole thing

Last edited by undefined on 12/22/2015 21:45; edited 2 times in total
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  • #7
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 09:30
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aaaand we're back!


#50

The Fall [La Chute] by Albert Camus
“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”


#49

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”


#48

Steppenwolf [Der Steppenwolf] by Hermann Hesse
“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”


#47

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien
“Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”


#46

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
“One reads alone, even in another's presence.”


#45

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”


#44

The Tin Drum [Die Blechtrommel] by Günter Grass
“You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.”


#43

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
“Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.”


#42

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
“Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.”


#41

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”


#40

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

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  • #8
  • Posted: 12/22/2015 09:40
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#39

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
“Consider anything, only don’t cry!”


#38

The Little Prince [Le Petit Prince] by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”


#37

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”


#36

Nausea [La Nausée] by Jean-Paul Sartre
“I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.”


#35

The Castle [Das Schloss] by Franz Kafka
“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”


#34

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”


#33

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”


#32

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”


#31

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
“Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”


#30

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
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  • Posted: 12/22/2015 09:56
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#29

The Stranger [L’Étranger] by Albert Camus
“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”


#28

Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday by Kurt Vonnegut
“in nonsense is strength”


#27

Dracula by Bram Stoker
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."


#26

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
“Good people drink good beer.”


#25

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
“I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.”


#24

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”


#23

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”


#22

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”


#21

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”


#20

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
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  • Posted: 12/22/2015 10:19
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#19

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view”


#18

One Hundred Years of Solitude [Cien años de soledad] by Gabriel García Márquez
“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”


#17

The Trial [Der Process] by Franz Kafka
“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”


#16

Animal Farm by George Orwell
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”


#15

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”


#14

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”


#13

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”


#12

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”


#11

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
“The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question."


top ten incoming...

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