Ranking Some Novels I Have Read

I have always had a love of literature, and I consider myself a budding literary critic. In the past four or five years, I have read a fair amount of novels, most of them for school. I admit that I have not read nearly as many novels as I have, and I am familiar with many more than have read, and it is somewhat of a personal embarrassment. I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov, and I am working on my skill as a literary critic. Do I have some talent for it: yes? Am I good enough to be an English major at a good university: probably not. My grammatical skill before editing something that I have written is fairly weak and I am more passionate about philosophy, history, and even though I am not close to brilliant at it, mathematics. Regardless, below I have ranked SOME of the novels I have read. Those who have attended school with me will recognize many if not most of the titles listed below. However, I have read more than these, but these are most of the novels on my list of books I read, and I encourage comments on the order of it. Note there are hundreds of novels that ought to be on the list, and when one considers that The Short Reign of Pippin IV is on the list it is arguable that there are thousands of novels better (note I liked Pippin IV). Regardless, examine the list, and I encourage respectful comments.


The Great Gatsby; F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Joyce
The Trial; Kafka
Great Expectations; Dickens
As I Lay Dying; William Faulkner
The Stranger; Albert Camus
Candide; Voltaire
A Tale of Two Cities; Dickens
Slaughterhouse-Five; Kurt Vonnegut
The Scarlet Letter; Nathaniel Hawthorne
Animal Farm; George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms; Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men; John Steinbeck
Washington Square; Henry James
Ethan Frome; Edith Wharton
Cat’s Cradle; Kurt Vonnegut
The Return of the Native; Thomas Hardy
Deep River; Shusaku Endo
The Death of Ivan Ilyich; Leo Tolstoy
The Sorrows of Young Werther; Goethe
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime; Mark Hadden
The Time Machine; H.G. Wells
Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
Moira; Julien Green
Beloved; Toni Morrison
The Old Man and the Sea; Ernest Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451; Ray Bradbury
Billy Budd, Sailor; Melville
The Pearl; John Steinbeck
A Separate Peace; Knowles
Holes; Louis Sachar
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Twain
The Short Reign of Pippin IV; John Steinbeck
The Call of the Wild; London
The War of the Worlds; H. G. Wells