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Time’s 100 Novels Ranked By Amazon Sales

By Robert Bruce @robertbruce76

One of my favorite parts of Amazon is the Amazon sales rank. It’s just a quick gauge of how the public generally receives a book.

While sales don’t always indicate a novel’s quality or critical reception (see Twilight), they’re sometimes a decent indicator. So because I have tons of free time (I don’t, really), I thought I’d dig up the Amazon sales ranking for all of the Time Magazine 100 novels. Then, throw them all in a spreadsheet and see how they rank.

Let’s take a look at how the Time 100 novels rank by sales on Amazon. Note: The book’s overall ranking is the number to the right.

  1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (60)
  2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (165)
  3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (175)
  4. 1984 by George Orwell (175)
  5. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (344)
  6. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (501)
  7. Animal Farm by George Orwell (580)
  8. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (794)
  9. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (936)
  10. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1,040)
  11. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (1,091)
  12. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1,116)
  13. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,233)
  14. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1,352)
  15. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (1,384)
  16. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1,467)
  17. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1,537)
  18. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1,720)
  19. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1,977)
  20. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (2,052)
  21. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (2,260)
  22. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (2,272)
  23. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (2,434)
  24. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (3,448)
  25. Neuromancer by William Gibson (3,546)
  26. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (4,671)
  27. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (4,735)
  28. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (5,199)
  29. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (5,992)
  30. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (5,998)
  31. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (6,157)
  32. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (6,736)
  33. Atonement by Ian McEwan (6,756)
  34. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (7,120)
  35. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (7,135)
  36. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (7,196)
  37. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (7,499)
  38. Ubik by Philip K. Dick (8,175)
  39. Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys  (8,505)
  40. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (8,584)
  41. Herzog by Saul Bellow (9,087)
  42. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (9,320)
  43. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (9,792)
  44. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (9,855)
  45. American Pastoral by Philip Roth (10,452)
  46. Light in August by William Faulkner (11,121)
  47. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (11,410)
  48. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (14,138)
  49. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (14,205)
  50. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (14,595)
  51. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (15,976)
  52. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (16,212)
  53. Native Son by Richard Wright (16,500)
  54. White Noise by Don DeLillo (16,684)
  55. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (18,908)
  56. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (19,348)
  57. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (20,571)
  58. Rabbit, Run by John Updike (21,097)
  59. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (22,815)
  60. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carre (24,825)
  61. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (25,759)
  62. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (26,387)
  63. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (26,554)
  64. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (31,063)
  65. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (31,892)
  66. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (33,357)
  67. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (37,243)
  68. A Death in the Family by James Agee (37,969)
  69. Possession by A.S. Byatt (38,389)
  70. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (39,561)
  71. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (40,025)
  72. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’ Brien (40,381)
  73. Under the Volcano by Malcom Lowry (42,997)
  74. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara (47,397)
  75. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (47,527)
  76. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (49,280)
  77. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (49,748)
  78. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (52,266)
  79. Falconer by John Cheever (54,904)
  80. Deliverance by James Dickey (55,866)
  81. Call it Sleep by Henry Roth (58,828)
  82. The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (58,844)
  83. The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood (60,042)
  84. Money by Martin Amis (65,284)
  85. The Recognitions by William Gaddis (65,866)
  86. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (69,675)
  87. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (98,353)
  88. Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (101,302)
  89. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (103,159)
  90. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (106,878)
  91. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (112,558)
  92. A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (113,814)
  93. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (141,967)
  94. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (142,770)
  95. Loving by Henry Green (173,648)
  96. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (181,602)
  97. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (188,838)
  98. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (213,016)
  99. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (277,900)
  100. The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (286,833)

A few thoughts:

It’s interesting how closely the top of the sales list mirrors my personal rankings of the novels. Gatsby and TKAM are in my top 3, and 1984 is in my top 10.

Watchmen‘s sales ranking at #9 surprises me, but I guess that’s because I’ve forgot how many people are into graphic novels of this sort. It wasn’t my favorite. Also, Infinite Jest at #13 is probably more of a testament to how many people attempt to read it, not how many people actually read it.

The bottom of the list made me laugh.

How about A Dance to the Music of Time at #99? Maybe a few people read my reviews on that one? It’s dreadful. I’ve yet to read three of the novels in the bottom 10 (Tropic of Cancer, The Sheltering Sky, and The Man Who Loved Children).

I have a theory on The Man Who Loved Children. Nobody buys it because it’s a terrible title. Who names their novel The Man Who Loved Children? I have no idea what the novel is about but I wonder if This Novel is About a Creepy Pedo would be a better title?

Also, a little surprised by The French Lieutenant’s Woman at #97. Isn’t that a fairly famous novel?

Again, sales numbers don’t always indicate the quality of the novel, but I thought this was a fun experiment. It took a little time, so I hope you enjoyed looking through the rankings.

Any insight into these sales rankings?