I just found these two top 100 modern novels lists and am finding them really useful. In particular, recommending some to my students whose first language isn't English, to help improve their sense of grammar and widen their vocab.

http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels

or

http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/radcliffes-rival-100-best-novels-list

i'm always astounded at the massive reputation surrounding the great gatsby. i enjoyed it, it was a good, easy read that flew along, and it's very well written. but one of the best books of all time?? i just don't get it.

I see that fewer than a fifth are by women. Shame.
Susiex

Interesting list - very US-oriented, isn't it.

Always depends what you mean by 'great', of course. I can't be doing with Tolkein - stodge, stodge, stodge, plod plod plod and only Y chromosomes represented. But I understand that quite a lot of people would put him in that list of greats.

But I would put Gatsby in with the greats - near perfect, to my mind: prose, structure, ideas, character, plot, and the more you read it the more you see.

Emma

I agree - The Great Gatsby is prose of the quality that's so good it risks causing the faint-hearted to give up completely. But that's the only one of Scott Fitzgerald's works that for me qualifies as 'great'. I thought Tender is the Night was pretty poor although I know that it's generally highly regarded. I recently found a copy of his The Love of the Last Tycoon in a s/hand bookshop in Wales. It was enjoyable but not a patch on Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? - the ultimate masterly treatment of the same subject (the Hollywood big-shot).

Chris