alt.hn

3/19/2026 at 12:58:25 AM

Books of the Century by Le Monde

 https://standardebooks.org/collections/le-mondes-100-books-of-the-century

by zlu

3/22/2026 at 8:01:56 PM

> Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?) As Le Monde journalist Josyane Savigneau aptly clarified in her article, the list is not meant to encompass the 100 most distinguished French literary works of the 20th century, but rather to reflect the emotional connections of the French populace.[1]

Limiting the poll to 200 books (if I'm understanding it right... the cited le monde page is paywalled), selected by the elite French-literati, who then polled sub-elite French-literati, is a questionable basis for a list of "books of the century", even in France. Numbers of votes for each book would've been nice, to see how unanimous the top selections were.

8/100, in any language, are from the last third of the century (after 1967). Of those, 4 are well-known in North America (Styron, Eco, Rushdie, Solzhenitsyn). Of those, only two, Styron and Rushdie, are originally in English.

The most recent -en- works prior to those two were Kerouac in 1957 and then Nabokov and Tolkien in 1955.

    year: number (fr/en/other)
    1900s: 7  ( 1 /  4 /  2)
    1910s: 4  ( 3 /  0 /  1)
    1920s: 20 ( 8 /  7 /  5)
    1930s: 12 ( 6 /  5 /  1)
    1940s: 19 (10 /  4 /  5)
    1950s: 20 (13 /  6 /  1)
    1960s: 12 ( 7 /  0 /  5)
    1970s: 4  ( 1 /  1 /  2)
    1980s: 2  ( 0 /  1 /  1)
    totals:    49 / 28 / 23
Given the chronological bias, and few postwar -en- works probably due to distribution and translation challenges, it's pointless to mention all of the American and even British classics they left out from later in the 20th century. English-language books from the 80s and 90s, particularly science fiction, might have barely reached mainstream French consciousness in 1999.

by harshreality

3/21/2026 at 7:57:49 PM

> Ulysses by Joyce => 264,258 words (16 hours 1 minute) with a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)

Don't want to know what difficult is

by jackconsidine

3/21/2026 at 9:50:29 PM

The reading ease algorithm we use is the Flesh-Kincaid algorithm, which works pretty well for regular prose books but clearly fails very badly on avant-garde prose like Ulysses or As I Lay Dying.

by acabal

3/21/2026 at 11:36:58 PM

Were these books easier to read when they were written?

If not then it's like being forced to untangle the mind of a twisted person. Finally a job for the LLM's that we can all be thankful for outsourcing.

by givemeethekeys

3/22/2026 at 5:23:22 AM

Using your mind to "untangle" is the whole point and pleasure of reading. Using llms to expand your understanding of it makes sense, but "Outsourcing" the reading not so much.

by sebastianz

3/22/2026 at 4:24:30 PM

Ulysses is not enjoyable.

by JasonADrury

3/21/2026 at 5:29:46 PM

I find this other list more deserving of this title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokklubben_World_Library

If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.

by rixed

3/21/2026 at 10:48:12 PM

> I find this other list more deserving of this title

How is a list spanning over the last 40 centuries deserving of the tile "Books of the Century by Le Monde"? Why would the "Epic of Gilgamesh" or the "Book of Job" be on a list of 20th century books?

> ... it starts with one of my favorite.

From that same Wikipedia page: “The books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way;”

The list is sorted by authors' name.

by idoubtit

3/22/2026 at 8:24:04 AM

Don Quixote is #1

everyone else is in alphabetical order

by Rant423

3/21/2026 at 3:35:04 PM

What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?"

Makes more sense like that.

by onli

3/21/2026 at 10:00:18 PM

For a French-leaning list I’m surprised not to see Memoirs of Hadrian, “often considered the best French novel of the 20th century”, per the recent LRB review. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/joanna-biggs/beneath...

by linehedonist

3/21/2026 at 10:59:13 PM

I agree, though the list contains "L'œuvre au noir", another wonderful novel by Marguerite Yourcenar.

I think some of the books on this list had very few readers, but were selected because of their relative fame among a list of 200 books. For instance, how many people have read the full "Gulag archipelago"? Or writings by Lacan or Barthes? Or the "Journal" by Jules Renard?

by idoubtit

3/21/2026 at 5:00:33 PM

> Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing

Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.

Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?

by kergonath

3/21/2026 at 8:36:45 PM

Hm, you are right. Those lists can't be perfect and giving this a second look, I guess my comment was hasty. For the choices I thought weird I can mostly see the justification when researching the titles a bit more (and partly by checking for their names in my language -> properly identifying them).

For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but as mentioned in the other comments I was wrong about that, it's just listed with the numbers written out. Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french, but I never got the appeal. Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries, and regardless of that I think its just not readable. I would kick out two of the Lord of the ring books, one is enough and it's not like each of them had a different impact.

Maybe even more subjective, The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today? If not, which would be my opinion, should it be on the list regardless? And I'd consider replacing Thomas Mann Zauberberg with Tod in Venedig, just because I liked it a lot.

For missing books: Louis Begley is an author I felt to be missing, probably with Wartime lies, or About Schmidt. The first Harry Potter as well, but I understand that in 1999 it was too early for that judgement. Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre. Talking german literature with Thomas Mann above, Alfred Andersch Die Rote would have a place on my personal list, as well as Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer. Haruki Murakami is missing, though maybe with 1Q84 he better fits into a list of the current century. Stephen King? Paul Auster? Philip Roth? Though maybe that would be for The Human Stain, and that's from 2000.

As an aside, I was happily surprised to see The Master and Margarita on the list. It's one of the more known books that I thought had a very special charm, but not one I'd expect to see working on many, as one would have to have read Goethe's Faust and liked it...

by onli

3/21/2026 at 11:11:02 PM

> Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french

It is very popular and a huge influence. I am not surprised (but then I am French and always found St-Exupéry fascinating).

> Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries

Me too, to be honest. Quite a few English-speaking authors are maybe unexpectedly quite popular (Hemingway and Fitzgerald are there, and I think it is deserved; Dickens and Mark Twain should have been), but I would not think about Ulysses.

> The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today

Crime is an important genre and Sherlock Holmes is quite popular (even though I would personally put something by Maurice Leblanc or Agatha Christie instead).

> Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre.

Sci-fi is underrepresented. I would put Neuromancer definitely, and at least something by Jules Verne. I cannot believe 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas did not make the cut.

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll have a closer look at the books you mention I don’t already know :)

by kergonath

3/22/2026 at 1:32:29 AM

> Sci-fi is underrepresented

That's because "from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists"

by lostmsu

3/21/2026 at 3:43:46 PM

Out of interest, why does that seem a strange methodology?

by jdsnape

3/21/2026 at 4:08:32 PM

When reading "Books of the Century" I expected a list of the most important, most influential or just best books. Skewed towards the french perspective, given Le Monde as a source. But this was never the goal, just a "what stuck in your mind" question.

For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.

by onli

3/21/2026 at 5:31:48 PM

Ulysses was first published in Paris during the 20 years that Joyce lived there.

>I thought only the US ranks it high

Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.

by rorytbyrne

3/21/2026 at 5:57:59 PM

Right, Great Gatsby is another book one could highlight, where it's surprising that it is on the (french) list, while it would be on an US list. But I haven't read it, I do not know whether it is a good example for the difference between a good or important book and a memorable one.

by onli

3/21/2026 at 11:20:46 PM

If you found Ulysses confusing, what would you think of Finnegan's Wake? Ulysses is practically a children's book in comparison. As for the lack of 1984, Orwell was an important author sure, but not particularly a good one. People read 1984 and Animal Farm for the messages, not for the exquisite prose that someone like Joyce can manage.

by jhbadger

3/21/2026 at 11:28:48 PM

Sorry, I haven't tried to read that one. If it's even more, hm, abstract?, then I won't ever try.

Note that 1984 is listed, just as "Nineteen Eighty-Four". I missed it when searching, didn't think of searching for "Orwell" instead.

I'd disagree with you about its quality, I remember it fondly (well, as much as possible given the topic of having one's identity erased), it was a powerful experience - and I do remember it vividly, so when asked for books one remembers I'd absolutely mention it, and in a list of books of the century it does belong.

Joyce "prose" on the other hand did nothing for me but make me despise his book.

by onli

3/22/2026 at 2:46:39 PM

If you want a shot at liking Joyce try "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

by malloryerik

3/21/2026 at 4:23:29 PM

1984 is 22 on the list.

by jkingsbery

3/21/2026 at 4:28:00 PM

Upps. Searching for 1984 didn't turn it up.

by onli

3/21/2026 at 6:37:02 PM

> most influential

> "what stuck in your mind"

That's strongly correlated IMHO; and I don't really see any objective metric for the influence of a book anyway.

by shakow

3/21/2026 at 5:24:04 PM

James Joyce wearing his bottle bottom glasses (thick glasses) would like to have a word with you. You can call him genius, dirty, knowledgeable in many languages but certainly not gibberish. He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish. In our book club we often discuss for hours what he was trying to say on a page. Sometimes he says things in 3 different dimensions by writing a single sentence.

by Guestmodinfo

3/21/2026 at 8:34:21 PM

Woolf had his number, she was right on every count.

by jpfromlondon

3/21/2026 at 5:44:01 PM

Are you sure you are not just reinforcing my point? :)

by onli

3/21/2026 at 8:03:54 PM

Yep.

> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.

My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.

by RcouF1uZ4gsC

3/21/2026 at 5:35:25 PM

Ulysses was written in Paris, where James Joyce lived, and was published in Paris by the now legendary Shakespeare & Co. The US and UK banned it for being obscene.

When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).

by mmooss

3/21/2026 at 5:39:50 PM

It's completely irrelevant where it was written, where it was published and where it was banned, I'm talking about how it is seen today. It is possible I am getting this wrong -certainly possible, since I'm taking this impression from English speaking sites like this, that I attribute to the US what should be attributed to England -, but I have seen no argument so far that even strives the point I made.

by onli

3/22/2026 at 2:35:45 PM

Of course it's relevant to how it's seen today. French culture nurtured the author, a French publisher published it, and France didn't ban it while other countries did. This is all evidence that the book was well-liked in France when it was published, and there's no reason to think that would change over time.

If anything, it's surprising that English-speaking countries like it so much.

by rorytbyrne

3/22/2026 at 5:30:42 PM

I disagree, those aren't relevant factors. Just based on those facts it's possible there was one sponsor in France who published the book and then it bombed, never to be read by a significant amount of the public. That it wasn't banned is normal in a free society, but also says nothing about its popularity.

by onli

3/22/2026 at 5:55:36 PM

Anything is possible, but the facts make some things more likely, especially combined with the book's later popularity in France.

by mmooss

3/21/2026 at 8:36:25 PM

What is your question? If you just want to know why Ulysses is seen as influential you can start with the wikipedia article. If you want to try again to read it you can try to read it with a guide of some kind, there are multiple, I used this one https://www.ulyssesguide.com/1-telemachus.

by bondarchuk

3/21/2026 at 8:51:33 PM

No question. It's completely against my being to consider something as good if it can't be enjoyed without a guide. I hated the tendency in computer science to hide simple definitions behind jargon. I'm okay with stuff having hidden meaning, with texts being interpretable, I'm not okay with it just being gibberish when not studying it in closest detail.

I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.

by onli

3/21/2026 at 9:03:29 PM

Since you have no question I won't venture to answer. :D

by bondarchuk

3/21/2026 at 4:24:07 PM

1984 is N°22 on that list...

by Karuma

3/21/2026 at 5:32:30 PM

1984 is listed at number 22 under its actual title, written out.

by keiferski

3/21/2026 at 4:48:18 PM

Starting with only 200 titles in the survey, for a final list of 100, seems off to me for starters. Every book surveyed has a 50% chance of making “book of the century”

by hammock

3/22/2026 at 10:09:50 AM

It’s a shortlist that is ranked by a committee, just like how the Oscar’s have nominees and winners.

Or put another way “Every book surveyed” does a lot of heavy lifting here.

by wodenokoto

3/21/2026 at 5:36:19 PM

That makes it sound like 50 shades of grey would have had a 50/50 chance of getting into the top 100 if it only was included in the wider selection

by tstenner

3/21/2026 at 10:40:11 PM

Obviously 50/50 if random. But even if not random, I estimate 50 Shades would be 500-100,000 times more likely to be a book of the century using a list of 200 with it in it, vs an unaided open ended survey.

by hammock

3/21/2026 at 8:39:54 PM

If the question is "which book stuck in your mind" maybe it would've had a good chance to be listed as #1?

by onli

3/21/2026 at 5:30:50 PM

How is this strange? It’s pretty much what I’d expect from francophone readers. What were you expecting?

by keiferski

3/21/2026 at 5:46:00 PM

The sad thing is how many aren't available.

I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.

by specproc

3/22/2026 at 7:16:38 PM

Salman Rushdie is alive and still writing.

(Author of Midnight’s children)

by schaefer

3/22/2026 at 2:45:45 AM

Kinda ironic that standardebooks.org refuses non-English books but will happily promote a French ranking... I mean none of those books are actually available on standardebooks.org - at least not in their original French version.

by Ecco

3/21/2026 at 8:53:24 PM

It's a decent list of what readers in France think of as the books to read from the 20th c., in that it holds value. Including to myself, a French citizen with odd tastes.

The general debate on what's the objective list doesn't hold weight, and I'd rather see what each corner of the world values.

by Bayart

3/21/2026 at 5:35:04 PM

What would be interesting is to cross reference this list with an Anglophone one and pull out the writers that are big in France but almost unknown amongst the public in America. Céline is definitely one such example, I think.

by keiferski

3/21/2026 at 10:48:39 PM

About IP. It's 70 years after the death of the author in France, so Camus (car crash in 1960) books will be PD in 2030. There is an exception for people who lost live from war (+30 years), so 2044 is the year the elevate to PD for "Le petit prince".

I don't understand that right is attached to local legislation. Like you will have access to these book before we do because of the local legislation of USA? That is a bit crazy.

by _ache_

3/22/2026 at 1:39:34 AM

Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf

what wonderful surprises, i thought these amazing books were forgotten and lost

by GeoAtreides

3/21/2026 at 4:04:21 PM

This should have an 1999 in the title even if the site and ebooks published are newer

by haunter

3/21/2026 at 6:21:13 PM

The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close.

I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.

by throwforfeds

3/21/2026 at 6:34:39 PM

Honestly, American lists are the same. Every decent English speaking author, plus some selections of other languages.

Any national worlds book list, and this explicitly includes US and UK lists, are heavily skewed and I mean ridiculously so

by zwaps

3/22/2026 at 1:13:17 AM

Oh for sure, agreed. These lists do well to drive traffic and sell things, but I never put much weight in them.

by throwforfeds

3/21/2026 at 8:50:39 PM

Cormac McCarthy is decently translated (for having read him in both English and French) and is well known. But for the average French litterati, American literature harks back to Hemingway, Steinbeck, Salinger, Burroughs, Capote, Nabokov and so on much before McCarthy. Toni Morrison isn't well known here yet, if only because her writing is embedded with Afro-American reality which is off-phase with Europe culture. For the same reason you'd hardly hear about Ralph Ellison in France if you're not in circles aware of post-colonial African diaspora writing.

To the same token, French authors who make it across the Atlantic aren't always the most valued here.

by Bayart

3/21/2026 at 10:49:15 PM

Yep, I had never heard of Derrida until I read a mention of him in an American Physics journal of all places.

by fmajid

3/21/2026 at 9:13:40 PM

It's interesting Nabakov is thought of as American. Yes, an American citizen beginning age ~46 (in 1945) but born in Russia, wrote in multiple languages, lived much of life in Europe.

by mmooss

3/21/2026 at 9:17:49 PM

I write him down as American because that's his elective nation, although he's quintessentially European.

After all you might not chose where you live, but how you live and where you die can be up to you. And as far as I can I try to respect what people chose for themselves.

by Bayart

3/21/2026 at 9:53:05 PM

I know it's subjective, but personally I think Nausea by Sartre is the much better "The Stranger", and it always saddens me a bit to see Camus so high up on every list while missing Sartre.

by LucasOe

3/21/2026 at 6:44:52 PM

[dead]

by noads2000

3/21/2026 at 10:35:28 PM

I'm surprised to see Brave New World amongst these. The idea it presents is indeed powerful and influential, but for such a smart guy it comes across stilted and craftless. Try reading it now and it just doesn't hold up to more nuanced fiction.

by gausswho

3/21/2026 at 6:10:49 PM

I'm happy to see so many philosophy or philosophy-adjacent books on that list. And I also wonder why that is.

by BiraIgnacio

3/22/2026 at 4:45:32 AM

Nice.

But very Eurocentric.

Where are Kalidas , Mahfouz , Soyinka or the Mahabharata?

by KnuthIsGod

3/22/2026 at 7:40:34 AM

This is a very interesting point. Is there a similar list in India, Japan, Korea or any other country? Will be interesting to compare them and see if some of those books on the other lists are translated.

by testrun

3/21/2026 at 7:52:06 PM

Why are some numbers skipped? E.g., 58 [59 60] 61 [62] 63 64 65 66 67 68 [69] 70

by yallpendantools

3/22/2026 at 10:34:25 AM

Standard Ebooks doesn’t produce graphic novels, so Asterix, Tintin, etc. are excluded. And although SE does produce collections of short works like essays and poetry, it does so in a way that doesn’t usually map one‐to‐one to existing published collections, which is probably why essays and poems have been excluded from this list.

by bentley

3/21/2026 at 3:47:40 PM

I don't think I would place all of them in any 'top' list, but all the books I have read, ~60%, are great read. Weird list though.

by orwin

3/21/2026 at 3:42:54 PM

Infinite Jest?

by pcasca

3/22/2026 at 3:14:38 AM

Kafka at number 3? Meh. It was incredibly dull and tiresome IMHO. I understand it's supposed to be written like a fever dream but to what end? It was simply tedious and difficult to follow.

Then again I also hated the episode of The Sopranos which has an extremely long dream sequence.

by wackget

3/21/2026 at 5:54:05 PM

pretty french heavy that list.

by raffael_de

3/21/2026 at 6:17:16 PM

well, it is a french newspaper surveying french people

by throwforfeds