Waterstone's Books of the Century

Numerical Listing

Copyright Waterstones

During 1997 Waterstone's announced two polls - one to find the Books of the Century, another to decide the Nation's favourite children's books. The results of those polls, one with Channel 4, the other with BBC's Bookworm, have been a source of widespread debate and interest ever since - from Richard and Judy to the New Yorker. By popular request we have now combined the two - so here they are side-by-side. The debate rages on about the relative merits of Dahl and Tolkien, the representation of poetry, writing by women authors, and 'new' books versus old.

J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings, amazon.ca, amazon.com
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four, amazon.ca, amazon.com
George Orwell Animal Farm, amazon.ca, amazon.com
James Joyce Ulysses, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Joseph Heller Catch 22, amazon.ca, amazon.com
J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude, amazon.ca, amazon.com
John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Irvine Welsh Trainspotting, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Jung Chang Wild Swans, amazon.ca, amazon.com
F.Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, amazon.ca, amazon.com
William Golding Lord of the Flies, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Jack Kerouac On the Road, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Aldous Huxley Brave New World, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows, amazon.ca, amazon.com
A.A. Milne Winnie-The-Pooh, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Alice Walker The Color Purple, amazon.ca, amazon.com
J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Albert Camus The Outsider, amazon.ca, amazon.com
C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Franz Kafka The Trial, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Salman Rusdie Midnight's Children, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Anne Frank The Diary of Anne Frank, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange, amazon.ca, amazon.com
D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Primo Levi If This is a Man, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Vladimir Nabokov Lolita, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Iain Banks The Wasp Factory, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, amazon.ca, amazon.com
John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Toni Morrison Beloved, amazon.ca, amazon.com
A.S. Byatt Possession, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness, amazon.ca, amazon.com
E.M. Forster A Passage to India, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Richard Adams Watership Down, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Jostein Gaarder Sophie's World, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Daphne du Maurier Rebecca, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Sebastian Faulks Birdsong, amazon.ca, amazon.com
E.M. Forster Howard's End, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Frank Herbert Dune, amazon.ca, amazon.com
John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Patrick Suskind Perfume, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Mervyn Peake Gormenghast Trilogy, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Laurie Lee Cider with Rosie, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Vera Brittain Testament of Youth, amazon.ca, amazon.com
John Fowles The Magus, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Graham Greene Brighton Rock, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Robert Tressell The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Armistead Maupin Tales of the City, amazon.ca, amazon.com
John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Louis de Bernières Captain Corelli's Mandolin, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, amazon.ca, amazon.com
E.M. Forster A Room with a View, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Stephen King It, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Graham Greene The Power and the Glory, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Stephen King The Stand, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roald Dahl Matilda, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Brett Easton Ellis American Psycho, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach, amazon.ca, amazon.com
D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Tom Wolfe The Bonfire of the Vanities, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Delia Smith Complete Cookery Course, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Brian Keenan An Evil Cradling, amazon.ca, amazon.com
D.H. Lawrence The Rainbow, amazon.ca, amazon.com
George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Arthur C. Clarke 2001 - A Space Odyssey, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Gunter Grass The Tin Drum, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Nelson Mandela A Long Walk to Freedom, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Michael Crichton Jurassic Park, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Alan Paton Cry the Beloved Country, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Nick Hornby High Fidelity, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roddy Doyle The Van, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Roald Dahl The BFG, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Anthony Burgess Earthly Powers, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Robert Graves I, Claudius, amazon.ca, amazon.com
Nicholas Evans The Horse Whisperer, amazon.ca, amazon.com