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  About the List
» Managing Editor James Kelly talks about the list and shares his John Le Carre favorite (which didn't make
the cut).

» Richard Lacayo lays bare the process (and the pain) behind stacking up
100 novels.
  Reader's Choice
1:  
2:  Lolita
3:  A Passage to India
4:  A Death in the Family
5:  Ubik

    See the full list
  Best Graphic Novels
TIME's Andrew Arnold picks Watchmen and nine other comix masterpieces

  Archive Trivia
Who was the first author to appear on a TIME cover? Get the answer and much more on our trivia page
  Talk Back
Why isn't the Harry Potter series on there!!?? It definitely should be on there!!
—Robin; Seattle, Wash.

Where is Ayn Rand and John Irving? I checked your list twice, I can't believe you did not list either author.
—Susan Sayfan; Longwood, Fla.

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  From the TIME Archive
Ernest Hemingway
"Make no mistake, Ernest Hemingway is somebody; a new, honest, un-'literary' transcriber of life...."
Writer 1/18/26

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Gone With the Wind (1936)
Author: Margaret Mitchell
It's one of the best-selling books ever bound between covers, but that's not what makes Margaret Mitchell's magnificent mint julep of a novel great. The ultimate, original sweeping historical romance, it follows high-spirited Scarlett O'Hara, roguish Rhett Butler and romantic, infinitely good-looking Ashley Wilkes as the world that nurtured them is swept away in the cataclysm of the Civil War. As quintessentially American as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is English, Gone with the Wind is a colossally readable romance novel—love stories do not come more triangular—but it's also the definitive telling of one of the basic American mythologies: the passing away, in blood and ashes, of the grand old South.—L.G.

From the TIME Archive:
Last week readers had an opportunity to learn about Atlanta's history in an imposing first novel chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club for July
—TIME Magazine, Jul. 6, 1936 (Read This Review)





Next: The Grapes of Wrath »


More From the Archive:
Great Books for Grown-Ups (6/10/46)
Dirty Book of the Month (4/22/66)
How and What to Read (10/2/72)
Dame Agatha: Queen of the Maze (1/26/76)
Rediscovering the Joy of Text (4/21/97)
Harry Potter Archive Collection
Writers in TIME Archive Collection





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