Can you name the 100 best novels according to Modern Library Readers (1900 to 1998)? - sporcle

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Can you name the 100 best novels according to Modern Library Readers (1900 to 1998)?

Enter a book in the box below
Correctly named books will show up in the table below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
This game was contributed by Sporcle user: Ben
Source: Modern Library
Compare to the Modern Library quiz (chosen by the Modern Library Board)

You have 14 minutes to guess after you click the button below.

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Author	Book
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
L. Ron Hubbard
J.R.R. Tolkien
Harper Lee
George Orwell
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
James Joyce
Joseph Heller
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Frank Herbert
Robert Heinlein
Robert Heinlein
Nevil Shute
Aldous Huxley
J.D. Salinger
George Orwell
Thomas Pynchon
John Steinbeck
Kurt Vonnegut
Margaret Mitchell
William Golding
Jack Schaefer
Nevil Shute
John Irving
Stephen King
John Fowles
Toni Morrison
E.R. Eddison
William Faulkner
Vladimir Nabokov

Author	Book
Charles de Lint
William Faulkner
W. Somerset Maugham
Flannery O'Connor
Malcolm Lowry
Robertson Davies
Charles de Lint
Jack Kerouac
Joseph Conrad
Charles de Lint
H.P. Lovecraft
Mickey Spillane
Charles de Lint
Virginia Woolf
Walker Percy
Charles de Lint
Douglas Adams
Carson McCullers
Margaret Atwood
Cormac McCarthy
Anthony Burgess
Nevil Shute
James Joyce
Charles de Lint
Orson Scott Card
Charles de Lint
William Gaddis
Robert Heinlein
Ernest Hemingway
John Irving
Ray Bradbury
Shirley Jackson
William Faulkner
Henry Miller

Author	Book
Ralph Ellison
Terri Windling
John Fowles
Robert Heinlein
Robert Pirsig
Robert Graves
Jack London
Flann O'Brien
Ray Bradbury
Sinclair Lewis
Richard Adams
William S. Burroughs
Tom Clancy
Laurell K. Hamilton
Robert Heinlein
Stephen King
Thomas Pynchon
Robert Heinlein
Robert Heinlein
Evelyn Waugh
William Faulkner
Ken Kesey
Ernest Hemingway
Paul Bowles
Ken Kesey
Willa Cather
Charles de Lint
Cormac McCarthy
Robert Holdstock
Richard Bach
Robertson Davies
Salman Rushdie

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There are 60 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

	MichaelWilson:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:32 GMT	12 points
	"Fahrenheit 451" is misspelled

	shawnoc:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:37 GMT	4 points
	Doing so poorly on this quiz reminds me that I'm illiterate.

	Dorak:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:49 GMT	10 points
	So many science fiction books. Wonder why?

	cjcourt:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:49 GMT	60 points
	I love me some scifi/fantasy, but this an excruciatingly narrow selection. I also think scientologists and objectivists may have stuffed the ballot box. /conspiracy theory

	Hirsute:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:49 GMT	38 points
	Ayn Rand is not a very good writer, but the Internet sure seems to be fascinated by her...

	Jelle:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:52 GMT	41 points
	Quite an odd list. Did Tom Cruise compile it? In all seriousness there are some good books here, though. Surprised about the lack The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Crying of Lot 49, ...

	Thor:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:53 GMT	43 points
	This is a very odd list. What is all this L. Ron Hubbard nonsense? Meanwhile, no "The Color Purple", no "The Bluest Eye", no "Cry, the Beloved Country", no "Of Mice and Men", and (even in the sci-fi vein they seem to love) no Asimov. This is a VERY odd list.

	Zeutheir:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:53 GMT	51 points
	There's no way three L. Ron Hubbard books are that far up on the list, or even present. Scientologists must have stuffed this one to get more name recognition. We need to watch out for this in all submitted quizzes. Sporcle doesn't need to be a platform for Scientologists' man-worship of a terrible writer.

	jaymc:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:58 GMT	8 points
	What exactly do we need to watch out for? It was well-publicized when this list came out in 1999 that Hubbard, Heinlein, and Rand fans had campaigned to get their favorite books on the list. The poll is an interesting historical artifact and thus makes for a good Sporcle quiz, IMO.

	VeGates:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:58 GMT	10 points
	This was definitely compiled by Scientologists. Quizzes on sporcle shouldn't come from biased sources like this. L. Ron Hubbard is a terrible author.

	Ben:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 19:59 GMT	9 points
	When I made this I was kinda shocked as to how many L. Ron Hubbard, Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein and Charles de Lint books... the poll said in ran from June 1998-October 1998 with 217,520 votes cast... seems kinda odd that with that many votes more popular books were not picked... oh well

	jaymc:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:03 GMT	4 points
	It wasn't compiled by Scientologists; it was compiled by the Modern Library. I don't like the results any more than you do, but that doesn't make it a bad quiz.

	C:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:08 GMT	16 points
	Good idea for a quiz but poor source material. There's much better surveys out there with results that are clearly not so skewed by interest groups. Whatever you may feel about Hubbard's and Rand's philosophies they are almost universally acknowledged as pretty poor writers.

	droxnar711:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:09 GMT	16 points
	I think it's more a tale-telling of the folks who take the polls at Modern Library than a conspiracy to turn Sporclers into Xenu believers.

	cigarette:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:11 GMT	8 points
	The list was created from an online poll on the Modern Library (owned by Random House) web site. Is it any surprise that there's ballot stuffing in an unregulated online poll?

	s1rweeze:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:15 GMT	6 points
	Surprised to see Richard Bach's "Illusions" on here, that book changed my life when I was 16, but hardly anyone I know has heard of it

	Disclaimer:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:18 GMT	15 points
	It doesn't make it a bad list because you or I don't like it, but it does make it a bad list if fans were campaigning for their favorites. It means that instead of it being any kind of objective judgment on the quality of the authors work, or even a fair assessment of what books or authors are most "popular", it's merely an assessment of who can best game the system. The list was obviously intended to "mean something" and it turns out not to. At best the list is uninformative and uninteresting, at worst it's actively deceptive. (The quiz itself is fine I suppose. It might have been nice to find another source for it, but I don't have a better suggestion.)

	jaymc:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:21 GMT	5 points
	Well, there's a link at the top of this page to the Sporcle quiz on the 100 best novels as chosen by the Modern Library Board.

	benmud:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:21 GMT	6 points
	"Slaughterhouse-Five" is actually spelled with a hyphen. Even if it's not changed in the final list, it should be acceptable with the hyphen there.

	Unidentifiedkiwi:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:24 GMT	1 point
	This list earns my approval for including Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

	sdh:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:39 GMT	4 points
	The H.P. Lovecraft novel is "At the MountainS of Madness". As in, more than one mountain.

	Jeremy:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:42 GMT	0 points
	A "reader's" poll that once again proves people are stupid. Only here will you find not one, but three L. Ron Hubbard novels. If this list went to the present day, I'm sure we'd be seeing James Patterson. sigh

	Jeremy:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:43 GMT	10 points
	To add, I wasn't even aware Ayn Rand had a 4th novel. Good grief.

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	RedLIon:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:52 GMT	8 points
	I normally hate it when people downvote a quiz because they don't like the list...but in this case, I'm guilty of it. Ayn Rand is a terrible author, Atlas Shrugged is a simply awful book, and Objectivism is a bankrupt, repugnant philosophy.

	RedLIon:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 20:53 GMT	4 points
	I am, however, glad to see Gravity's Rainbow on here.

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	jiminymatthew:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 21:09 GMT	17 points
	it's possible to hate a book because the writing is poor, rather than "because you see the truth in it."

	johnboy:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 21:15 GMT	3 points
	No Philip Roth?

	JerseyOrange:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 21:24 GMT	0 points
	@RedLion: If I commented that Christianity was a bankrupt, repugnant philosophy (which I may or may not believe), I'd expect to be blasted and have my comments removed. OTOH, I am an Objectivist and I'm still a little embarrassed about the presence of Anthem & We the Living so high on this list.

	Kitimat88:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:00 GMT	10 points
	I have a (good) degree in English Literature and I've never heard of Charles DeLint. I see what @jaymc means about it being an interesting historical artifact; there are other Top 100 Novel list quizzes that are better representations, so I don't object too much. I will refrain from commenting on Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard...

	swellwrench:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:02 GMT	17 points
	I guess objectivists are a little less than objective when it comes to judging books...

	rockgolf:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:04 GMT	18 points
	To think, I wasted my high school years reading crap like Great Gatsby, Catcher In The Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird, when I could have been reading Ayn Rand & L Ron Hubbard!

	dtownstomp:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:18 GMT	8 points
	Disappointed Goodnight Moon isn't on this list.

	thisisaname:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:18 GMT	-4 points
	People, stop complaining. Such lists are always very subjective. There are several other book list quizzes on Sporcle, and each of them covers an entirely (well, mostly) different selection of books. Given how many books there are out there, we shouldn't really be surprised when a certain one makes or doesn't make a comparatively short list.

	maniacalclown:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:20 GMT	3 points
	I definitely had some facepalming moments after revealing the answers for the 50 I missed. If I'd even noticed the second Kesey book on there, I probably would have gotten it thanks to Battlestar Galactica. :D

	DRB:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:31 GMT	6 points
	Seven Heinlein books but no Asimov? Foundation at the very least should have been on there. Oh well.

	yes:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 22:47 GMT	3 points
	This list needs more "All the King's Men."

	madhatter22:	Sep 4th, 2009 at 23:41 GMT	1 point
	I don't understand all this complaining that the quiz is bad because people don't agree with the book choices. It's not like this is a quiz of the author's choices for the top 100 books. Why would this quiz be any less valid than any other 'top 100' quiz? I don't agree with the list either, but I just took it as a "try to name the most popular books by these authors" quiz.