Time's Top 100 Novels

Time magazine has published a list of the best English-language novels since 1923, the year Time published its first issue. I love lists, they're fun conversation-starters -- the nay-sayers who claim lists are too reductive need to lighten up.
Time's list has interesting caveats. Because it starts in 1923, that disqualifies perennial favorite Ulysses, written by James Joyce in 1922. It only includes novels (knocking out of contention my beloved Spoon River Anthology, a volume of poetry). And it includes works written in English from all over the world, not just American novels.
Here's my quick riff on the list:

• Books I absolutely agree with: The Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange, The Grapes of Wrath, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Infinite Jest, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sun Also Rises, To Kill a Mockingbird, Watchmen.
• Books I haven't read but really want to: All the King's Men, Death Comes for the Archbishop, At Swim-Two-Birds, Lolita, The Moviegoer, The Sound and the Fury, White Teeth
• A book that shouldn't be on the list: Possession by A.S. Byatt -- I just don't think it's that good.
• A book that seems too recently published to have made the list: Never Let Me Down by Kazuo Ishiguro -- Didn't that just come out in 2005???
• Books on the list that I have never heard of, not even in passing, not even heard of their authors: Appointment in Samarra, The Assistant, Call It Sleep, A Dance to the Music of Time, Loving, The Man who Loved Children, The Recognitions, Red Harvest, Revolutionary Road, Snow Crash, The Sportswriter. Boy do I feel ignorant now.

Lest you think the list was created after exhaustive study and massive polling, you should know that apparently Time's two book critics merely put together their lists of favorite books and then hashed out small areas of disagreement. Not that I'm criticizing that -- the great novels are art, and there are limitations to how objectively you can quantify them.
Read the whole list here. (And thanks to my friend Ryan F. for telling me about it!)