Our Favorite Novels - NYTimes.com

Well, hello again. After digesting your additions to, and critiques
of, our nonfiction list, we decided to reconvene our panel of
nonexperts (ourselves) and come right back at you with a list of the
best fiction of all time. Using our customary precise, scientific
approach, we asked each member of the staff to pick their five
favorites. The full list is after the jump.
And the winner is … "Lolita"! Before bestowing this glorious honor, we
went through an exhaustive series of bonus rounds. First, we asked
everyone to vote again, this time for one book that a colleague cited
but they had not. The second round helped "The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay" gain ground on "Lolita," which had been an early
leader. A dark horse, "The Great Gatsby" pulled out from the pack and
gained on the front-runners. Coetzee's "Disgrace" made a late surge.
"Anna Karenina" fell back.
What to do? A bonus-bonus round, of course, pitting Vladimir Nabokov
against Michael Chabon. It was a thrilling last leg of the race. Sweat
beaded on the brows of editors as they e-mailed in their votes. Sam
Anderson declared that as the magazine's critic at large, he had the
right to break the tie all by himself. From one photo editor came this
primal howl: "L-O-L-I-T-A!!!!!!!" In the end, "Lolita" won by seven
votes. (Sam approves.)
The biggest lesson learned from this exercise are that we have some
high-falutin' readers in this office. Tenth-grade English teachers all
over the country can congratulate themselves on a job well done. I was
personally distressed that nobody saw fit to join me in endorsing "The
Godfather." Also, I'm sorry, but "White Noise" is overrated — a great
novelist cracking grad-student one-liners. I'll take "Libra" any day.
Just my opinion.
Another lesson: Having fancy literary taste does not predispose one to
abide by rules. Yes, we had a rash of folks who broke the five-book
limit, including one nonconformist who tried to pass off "all P.G.
Wodehouse" as one book (ahem, Mr. Bittman.) There was also all kinds
of complaining about the reductiveness of lists, how impossible it is
to pick favorites, etc. What is it about books that make people so
annoying?
Below is the full list, with the five-book groupings of each staff
member intact. Check back in next week, when we'll write about which
books people are planning to read this summer. As always, please write
in with your own suggestions.
"The Awakening," by Kate Chopin
"The Passion," by Jeanette Winterson
"The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald
"To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee
"A Visit From the Goon Squad," by Jennifer Egan
"Crime and Punishment," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"At Swim-Two-Birds," by Flann O'Brien
"Infinite Jest," by David Foster Wallace
"Ulysses," by James Joyce
"Molloy," by Samuel Beckett
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Rabbit, Run," or anything by John Updike
"American Pastoral," or anything by Philip Roth
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon
"Middlesex," by Jeffrey Eugenides
"For Whom The Bell Tolls," by Ernest Hemingway
"The Mezzanine," by Nicholson Baker
"The House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton
"The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Master of Go," by Yasunari Kawabata
"The Golden Bowl," by Henry James
"In Search of Lost Time," by Marcel Proust
"The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis," by José Saramago
"The Savage Detectives," by Roberto Bolaño
"Light Years," by James Salter
"Green Wheat," by Colette
"To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee
"The Sound and the Fury," by William Faulkner
"Neverwhere," by Neil Gaiman
"The Turn of the Screw," by Henry James
"All the King's Men," by Robert Penn Warren
"Snow Country," by Yasunari Kawabata
"Plainsong," by Kent Haruf
"Eventide," by Kent Haruf
"The Sportswriter," by Richard Ford
"Sense and Sensibility," by Jane Austen
"The God of Small Things," by Arundhati Roy
"Cathedral," Raymond Carver
"Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen
"Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy
"The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
"Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Brontë
"The Shipping News," by Annie Proulx
"Underworld," by Don DeLillo
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan Kundera
"White Noise," by Don DeLillo
"Mating," by Norman Rush
"Another Marvelous Thing," by Laurie Colwin
"American Pastoral," by Philip Roth
"A Sport and a Pastime," by James Salter
"V.," by Thomas Pynchon
"Cat and Mouse," by Gunter Grass
"The Floating Opera," by John Barth
"The Blood Oranges," by John Hawkes
"A Confederacy of Dunces," by John Kennedy Toole
"Passage to India," by E.M. Forster
"Wolf Hall," by Hilarty Mantel
"Atonement," by Ian McEwan
"The Tin Drum," by Gunter Grass
"White Teeth," by Zadie Smith
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan Kundera
"Middlesex," by Jeffrey Eugenides
"To The Lighthouse," by Virginia Woolf
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Moby-Dick," by Herman Melville
"Pale Fire," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Dead Souls," by Nikolai Gogol
"A Confederacy of Dunces," John Kennedy Toole
"The Power and the Glory," by Graham Greene
"The Age of Innocence," by Edith Wharton
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," by Carson McCullers
"Brideshead Revisited," by Evelyn Waugh
"The Leopard," by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
"Crime and Punishment," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon
"Leviathan," by Paul Auster
"My Name Is Asher Lev," by Chaim Potok
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," by Mark Haddon
"Cloud Atlas," by David Mitchell
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon
"The Executioner's Song," by Norman Mailer
"London Fields," by Martin Amis
"Disgrace," by J.M. Coetzee
"Invisible Man," by Ralph Ellison
"Moby-Dick," by Herman Melville
"The Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger
"Jaws," by Peter Benchley
"1984," by George Orwell
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman," by Haruki Murakami
"Remains of the Day," by Kazuo Ishiguro
"Against Nature," by Joris-Karl Huysmans
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Disgrace," by J.M. Coetzee
"Birdsong," by Sebastian Faulks
"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," by George Saunders
"Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy
"American Pastoral," by Philip Roth
Also: "James & the Giant Peach," by Roald Dahl
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," by James Joyce
"A Personal Matter," by Kenzaburo Oe
"To the Lighthouse," by Virginia Woolf
"Invisible Man," by Ralph Ellison
"Sirens of Titan," by Kurt Vonnegut
"The Godfather," by Mario Puzo
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon
"The Thin Man," by Dashiell Hammett
"The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.," by
Robert Coover
"Bright Lights, Big City," by Jay McInerney
"A Confederacy of Dunces," by John Kennedy Toole
"Catch-22," by Joseph Heller
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," by Mark Twain
"Infinite Jest," by David Foster Wallace
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Middlemarch," by George Eliot
"Persuasion," by Jane Austen
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"The House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton
"Franny and Zooey," by J.D. Salinger
"Cruddy," by Lynda Barry
"Chelsea Girls," by Eileen Myles
"House of Leaves," by Mark Z. Danielewski
"The Rules of Attraction," by Bret Easton Ellis
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," by Douglas Adams (God, I'm such a nerd)
"Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen
"Pere Goriot," by Honore de Balzac
"We All Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales," by Julio Cortazar
"Middlemarch," by George Eliot
"White Mule," by William Carlos Williams
Right now I am reading, in honor of the capture of Whitey Bulger, "The
Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V.Higgins, a fantastic crime novel
set in Boston, composed almost entirely in dialogue.
"Infinite Jest," by David Foster Wallace
"The Golden Notebook," by Doris Lessing
"Catch-22," by Joseph Heller
All P.G. Wodehouse
"Alexandria Quartet," by Lawrence Durrell
"Baron in the Trees," by Italo Calvino
"Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand
"Dance, Dance, Dance," by Haruki Murakami
"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," by Mark Twain
"Strange Pilgrims," by Gabriel García Márquez
This Summer: "Don Quixote" by Miguel De Cervantes
"The Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger
"A Prayer for Owen Meany," by John Irving
"Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen
"To Kill a Mocking Bird," by Harper Lee
"My Antonia," by Willa Cather
"The Sportswriter," by Richard Ford
"Independence Day," by Richard Ford
"All the King's Men," by Robert Penn Warren
"The Moviegoer," by Walker Percy
"Slaughterhouse Five," by Kurt Vonnegut
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
"Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy
"The Sound and the Fury," by William Faulkner
"The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle," by Vladimir Nabokov
"The Needle's Eye," by Margaret Drabble
"The Master," by Colm Toibin
"Middlearch," by George Eliot.
"The Ambassadors," by Henry James
"The History of Love," by Nicole Krauss
"Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy