One Hundred World's Best Novels Condensed

by Edwin Atkins Grozier

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Genres: Fiction

535 pages, Library Binding

About the author

Edwin Atkins Grozier (1859-1924) was an American journalist, publisher and author, who owned The Boston Post from 1891 until his death. He authored the book, "The Wreck of the 'Somerset,'" first published in the New York World, May 1886.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant]

If I was the Booker : PB’s Best novels of the Year 1950-2013

Since I have recently passed the 500-novels-read count, I can strut about like a haughty popinjay and fling opinions around in high style. Therefore, here are the If-I-Was-The-Booker PB awards for the last 64 years.


1950 - Gormenghast : Mervyn Peake

1951 - Memoirs of Hadrian : Marguerite Yourcenar

1952 - Wise Blood : Flannery O’Connor

1953 - The Long Goodbye : Raymond Chandler

1954 - The Lord of the Rings : JRR Tolkien (suppressed and not so suppressed groans from some of you)

1955 - Lolita : Vladimir Nabokov

1956 - Could be Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin or The Fall by Camus but I ain’t read those

1957- What a good year - Dandelion Wine : Ray Bradbury for me beats On the Road (Kerouac - written 1951, published 1957) and A Death in the Family (James Agee)


1958 - Breakfast at Tiffany’s : Truman Capote

1959 - Also mysteriously I have read nothing from 1959 except Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake which really isn’t good. I should have read :

Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Absolute Beginners – McInnes
Billy Liar – Waterhouse
The Tin Drum – Gunther Grass
The Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

1960 - To Kill a Mockingbird : Harper Lee

1961 - Catch-22 : Joseph Heller (I know, obvious, but so good)

1962 - The Girl with the Green Eyes : Edna O’Brien

1963 - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich : Alexander Solzhenitsyn

1964 - Herzog : Saul Bellow (not that I like it so much; sometimes the winner is the least bad novel)

1965 - God Bless you Mr Rosewater, or Pearls before Swine : Kurt Vonnegut Jr

1966 - Beautiful Losers : Leonard Cohen (a controversial choice)

1967 - One Hundred Years of Solitude : Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1968 - A year of weirdness – check these out :

The Gas : Charles Platt
Steps : Jerzy Kosinski
The Last Unicorn : Peter Beagle
Myra Breckinridge : Gore Vidal

But the winner is – also very weird –

The Gospel Singer : Harry Crews

1969 - The French Lieutenant’s Woman : John Fowles

1970 - No award from me, except The Atrocity Exhibition (JG Ballard) will win any award for most extreme novel in any year

1971 - The Book of Daniel – E L Doctorow

1972 - Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

1973 - The Black Prince : Iris Murdoch

1974 - Child of God : Cormac McCarthy

1975 - Ragtime : E L Doctorow

1976 - A Feast of Snakes : Harry Crews (another Crews – what does this mean?)

1977 - The Women’s Room : Marilyn French (for the politics) and
The Painter of Signs : R K Narayan (for the joy)

1978 - Faggots : Larry Kramer (a controversial winner)

1979 - The Executioner’s Song : Norman Mailer

1980 - Midnight’s Children : Salman Rushdie

1981 - Lanark : Alasdair Gray

1982 Before She Met Me : Julian Barnes (with apologies - it was a weak year)

1983 - Flying to Nowhere : John Fuller (a forgotten gem)

1984 - God’s Pocket : Pete Dexter

1985 - Love in the Time of Cholera : Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1986 – Extinction : Thomas Bernhard – yes, I hated it, but it was still better than anything else I’ve read from this middling of years

1987 - The Black Dahlia : James Ellroy

1988 - I can’t choose between The Mezzanine : Nicholson Baker and
Libra : Don DeLillo - both American brilliance at its most American and, well, brilliant, er

1989 - The Quincunx : Charles Palliser

1990 - The Buddha of Suburbia : Hanif Kureishi

1991 - Such a Long Journey : Rohinton Mistry

1992 - Sacred Hunger : Barry Unsworth

1993 – Another joint award Trainspotting : Irvine Welsh
Random Acts of Senseless Violence : Jack Womack
Operation Shylock : Philip Roth

1994 - What I Lived For : Joyce Carol Oates

1995 - another joint award Morality Play : Barry Unsworth
A Fine Balance : Rohinton Mistry
Blindness : Jose Saramago

1996 - Alias Grace : Margaret Atwood

1997 - Bad news : Edward St Aubyn

1998 - Freedomland : Richard Price

1999 - No award – I read 6 novels published in 1999 and every one I more or less hated, such as

The Sea came in at Midnight : Steve Erickson
The Long Firm : Jake Arnott
Wittgenstein’s Mistress : David Markson

2000 - Under the Skin : Michel Faber

2001 - The Corrections : Jonathan Franzen

2002 - who could choose between

The Crimson Petal and the White : Michel Faber
Fingersmith : Sarah Waters
Family Matters : Rohinton Mistry

okay, gun at my head, I'll say Fingersmith

2003 - Clockers : Richard Price

2004 - Let the Right One In : John Ajvide Lindqvist

2005 - No award – look at this list – I suppose Saturday is the best novel out of this bunch but damned if I’m going to award a PB Booker to Ian McEwan

Haunted : Chuck Palahniuk
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian : Marina Lewycka
Flesh Gothic : Edward Lee
Saturday : Ian McEwan
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo : Stieg Larssen
Newfoundland : Rebbecca Ray
10.01 : Lance Olsen

2006 - What is the What : Dave Eggers

2007 – another boring year, next

2008 - Lush Life : Richard Price

2009 - Hitler's Niece : Ron Hansen

2010 - Skippy Dies : John Murray
Ravenna Gets : Tony Burgess

2011 - The Devil all the Time : Donald Ray Pollock

2012 - Blueprints of the Afterlife : Ryan Boudinot

2013 - Life After Life : Kate Atkinson