Here’s the list from The Atlantic (paywall-free).
It’s a fun list – eclectic and not too snooty. I’d add The World According to Garp by John Irving there, also A Confederacy of Dunces.
I got 43, I’ve put *’s next to the ones that left a lasting impression on me:
- The Great Gatsby*
- A Farewell to Arms
- Sound and the Fury
- The Big Sleep*
- Grapes of Wrath*
- Catcher in the Rye
- Charlotte’s Web
- Invisible Man*
- Fahrenheit 451*
- Giovanni’s Room*
- Haunting of Hill House
- Catch 22
- A Wrinkle in Time
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
- The Bell Jar*
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
- Portnoy’s Complaint
- Slaughterhouse Five*
- The Dispossessed
- The Stand
- Kindred*
- Watchmen*
- Blood Meridian
- Dawn*
- Bastard Out of Carolina
- Secret History
- Shipping News
- Sabbath’s Theater
- Infinite Jest
- The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay*
- The Corrections*
- The Namesake*
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*
- A Visit From the Goon Squad
- Americanah*
- The Fifth Season
- The Sellout
- Lincoln in the Bardo
- Severance
- There There*
- Lost Children Archive*
- No One Is Talking About This*
- Biography of X*