Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years (London Times)

[Franz Ferdinand]

Certainly some very interesting picks, but in ten years, the book for 2005 is going to look ridiculous. Hell, it looks ridiculous now!

[dreaMaker]

Twilight? LOL

There are some very good picks, but we had just too many tremendous titles in the last 60 years.
Btw, i can't believe it s been almost 13 years since the first Harry Potter book!

[flipp525]

Any list that is calling itself the Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years and fails to include novels or collections by Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, etc. is pretty much worthless to me.

Which Charles Johnson book would you selected? Middle Passage is great, but that's the year of Possession and The Things They Carried, which are practically legendary. Dreamer has to deal with Birds of America and The Love of a Good Woman.

I was actually thinking of Oxherding Tale (1995). Middle Passage, while spectacular, would probably not be able to overcome either of the two books you cited as the "best" of that year. And I would've placed Birds of America above all else the year Dreamer came out.

Have you ever read Moore's Self-Help? I love the risks she takes in that collection.



Edited By flipp525 on 1249745944

[Okri]

Any list that is calling itself the Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years and fails to include novels or collections by Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, etc. is pretty much worthless to me.

Which Charles Johnson book would you selected? Middle Passage is great, but that's the year of Possession and The Things They Carried, which are practically legendary. Dreamer has to deal with Birds of America and The Love of a Good Woman.



Edited By Okri on 1249697247

[Zahveed]

I never noticed how many film adaptations were released so close to their respective novels.

[Big Magilla]

Calling the books on this list the most popular or the most influential might have made sense but the best - no.

[flipp525]

The Times team has compiled its favourites to celebrate the Cheltenham Literary Festival anniversary. Do you agree?

In a word: no.

Any list that is calling itself the Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years and fails to include novels or collections by Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, etc. is pretty much worthless to me.

I mean, Twilight and Harry Potter? Please.

Although, kudos for the inclusion of The Line of Beauty, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Secret History, The World According to Garp, The Time Traveler’s Wife and several other favorites of mine which even I can recognize might not have been the "best" of their respective years, but are still rather superb.



Edited By flipp525 on 1249663261

[Okri]

No. The list has Twilight on it. Therefore it's inaccurate. Even if I like some of the choices.

[Reza]

From The Times August 3, 2009

The best 60 books of the past 60 years

The Times team has compiled its favourites to celebrate the Cheltenham Literary Festival anniversary. Do you agree?


1949
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell

1950
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis

1951
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger

1952
Pigs Have Wings
P. G. Wodehouse

1953
Casino Royale
Ian Fleming

1954
Lord of the Flies
William Golding

1955
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

1956
The Hundred and One Dalmatians
Dodie Smith

1957
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak

1958
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene

1959
The Leopard
Giuseppe di Lampedusa

1960
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

1961
Catch 22
Joseph Heller

1962
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

1963
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

1964
Funeral in Berlin
Len Deighton

1965
Dune
Frank Herbert

1966
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys

1967
Towards the End of the Morning
Michael Frayn

1968
2001
Arthur C. Clarke

1969
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
John Fowles

1970
Play it as it Lays
Joan Didion

1971
Americana
Don DeLillo

1972
Watership Down
Richard Adams

1973
Crash
J. G. Ballard

1974
Fear of Flying
Erica Jong

1975
Salem’s Lot
Stephen King

1976
Even Cowgirls get the Blues
Tom Robbins

1977
A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick

1978
The World According to Garp
John Irving

1979
Smiley’s People
John le Carré

1980
Earthly Powers
Anthony Burgess

1981
Lanark
Alasdair Gray

1982
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende

1983
Waterland
Graham Swift

1984
Money
Martin Amis

1985
Love in The Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1986
Tourist Season
Carl Hiaasen

1987
More Die of Heartbreak
Saul Bellow

1988
Mother London
Michael Moorcock

1989
Sexing the Cherry
Jeannette Winterson

1990
Get Shorty
Elmore Leonard

1991
The Famished Road
Ben Okri

1992
The Secret History
Donna Tartt

1993
Trainspotting
Irvine Welsh

1994
How Late it Was, How Late
James Kelman

1995
Northern Lights
Philip Pullman

1996
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt

1997
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J. K. Rowling

1998
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami

1999
Disgrace
J. M. Coetzee

2000
The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

2001
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

2002
Atonement
Ian McEwan

2003
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Audrey Niffenegger

2004
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst

2005
Twilight
Stephenie Meyer

2006
The Road
Cormac McCarthy

2007
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini

2008
Netherland
Joseph O’Neill

2009
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters