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Ultimate Best Books

List: The 20th Centrury's Greatest Hits by American Book Review

American Psycho

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

3.55 (11)

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE, is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Misérables on its side blocking the view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

#210
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3,310
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The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant's Woman

John Fowles

4.0 (2)

An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay - Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched south-western leg - and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong possibilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.

#236
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2,837
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Shadow of the Torturer

Shadow of the Torturer

Gene Wolfe

4.0 (4)

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.To those who have preceded me in the study of the posthistoric world, and particularly to those collectors - too numerous to name here - who have permitted me to examine artifacts surviving so many centuries of futurity, and most especially to those who have allowed me to visit and photograph the era's few extant buildings, I am truly grateful. G.W. (Appendix)

#485
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674
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A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

4.0 (20)

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

#48
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13,157
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Ironweed

Ironweed

William J. Kennedy

4.0 (1)

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods.

#341
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1,623
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The Tunnel

The Tunnel

William H. Gass

5.0 (1)

#586
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334
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Omensetter's Luck

Omensetter's Luck

William H. Gass

3.0 (1)

#606
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286
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The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

4.0 (4)

He awoke, opened his eyes.Si svegliò, aprì gli occhi. La stanza gli diceva poco o niente, profondamente immerso com'era nel non-essere da cui era appena affiorato. Se l'energia di accertare la propria collocazione nel tempo e nello spazio gli mancava, gliene mancava anche il desiderio. Sapeva soltanto di esistere, d'avere attraversato vaste regioni per ritornare dal nulla; c'era, al centro della sua coscienza, la certezza di una tristezza infinita e al tempo stesso rassicurante, perché era la sola ad essergli familiare.

#452
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855
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0 votes on this list
Darconville's Cat

Darconville's Cat

Alexander Theroux

5.0 (1)

#607
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285
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Up

Up

Ronald Sukenick

3.0 (1)

#583
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335
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0 votes on this list