Project Treeleaves: DDD's Favorite Novels

Welcome to the first ever Project Treeleaves list. It's just like Project Treefingers, only with literature. For those of you for whom that still doesn't clarify things, ordered lists of 25 novels were submitted to me and then compiled into a weighted composite list. The number one spot received 25 points, the number two spot 24, etc. with the overall points from everyone's list determining the spot at which an individual novel ends up. Ties were broken, if possible, by the highest placement on an individual list (i.e. if two novels had a score of 24, but one was made up of two scores of 22 and 2, and the other 12 and 12, the one with the score of 22 was placed higher). Thanks to the following contributors: Pnoom, Piper, Dreww, Chemical Ali, creeps, Cripplers Quest, and Jess.


DDD's Favorite Novels

T50. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
T50. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
T50. Middlemarch by George Eliot
T50. Ada, or Arder by Vladimir Nabokov
T50. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
49. Herzog by Saul Bellow
48. Winesberg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
T46. Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
T46. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
T41. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
T41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
T41. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
T41. 1984 by George Orwell
T41. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
T38. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
T38. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
T38. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
37. Persuasion by Jane Austen
T35. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series) by Douglas Adams
T35. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
34. The Plague by Albert Camus
T32. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
T32. Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry B.S. Johnson
31. Atonement by Ian McEwan
30. A Song of Ice and Fire (series) by George R. R. Martin
29. The Sacred Fount by Henry James
28. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
27. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
26. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
25. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
24. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
23. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
22. Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
21. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
20. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
19. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18. The Stranger by Albert Camus
17. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
16. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
15. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
13. The Trial by Franz Kafka
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
11. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
10. The Lord of the Rings (series) by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
7. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
6. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
3. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky



Blurbs forthcoming!


Contributors' lists:

Dreww
1. Henry James - The Sacred Fount
2. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
3. William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
4. Jane Austen – Persuasion
5. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick
6. Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time*
7. James Joyce – Ulysses
8. Leo Tolstoy – War & Peace*
9. George Eliot – Middlemarch
10. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
11. Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts
12. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
13. Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers
14. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
15. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
16. Samuel Beckett – Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
17. Ian McEwan – Atonement
18. Don DeLillo - Mao II
19. Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
20. Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
21. Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
22. Franz Kafka – The Trial
23. Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
24. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
25. Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse

Chemical Ali
1.The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkein
2.Ulysses - James Joyce
3.In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
4.The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
5.1984 - George Orwell
6.Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
7.Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
8.Moby Dick - Herman Melville
9.Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
10.Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
11.War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
12.Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
13.The Plague - Albert camus
14.Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
15.The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
16.Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
17.Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
18.Herzog - Saul Bellow
19.Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
20.Light in August -William Faulkner
21.A Song of Ice and Fire - Geroge Martin
22.The Road - Cormac McCarthy
23.The Stranger - Albert Camus
24.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
25.As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Jess
1 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
2 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
3 The Stranger - Albert Camus
4 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
5 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
6 A Song of Ice and Fire - G.R.R. Martin
7 The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoesvky
8 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
9 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
10 Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
11 The Fall - Albert Camus
12 Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
13 The Road - Cormac McCarthy
14 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
15 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
16 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
17 Sophie's Choice - William Styron
18 East of Eden - John Steinbeck
19 Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
20 Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
21 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
22 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
23 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
24 As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
25 Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger

creeps
1 The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
2 Invisible Man - Ralph Waldo Ellison
3 Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
4 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5 As I Lay Dying - Willy Faulkner
6 Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
7 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
8 Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
9 The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
10 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
11 Harry Potter - JK Rowling
12 The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
13 House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski
14 Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
15 Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
16 Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
17 American Pastoral - Philip Roth
18 Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
19 Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
20 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
21 Light in August - Willy Fox
22 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
23 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
24 The Asiatics - Frederic Prokosch
25 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Tudwell
1. Samuel Beckett – Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable
2. James Joyce – Ulysses
3. David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
4. Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow
5. William Gaddis – The Recognitions
6. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick
7. Thomas Pynchon – Mason & Dixon
8. Franz Kafka – The Trial
9. William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom!
10. Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
11. William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying
12. Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
13. Thomas Pynchon – Against the Day
14. William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
15. Samuel Beckett – How It Is
16. Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway
17. F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
18. John Barth – The Sot-Weed Factor
19. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
20. John Crowley – Little, Big
21. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
22. Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
23. Thomas Pynchon – Inherent Vice
24. Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
25. Alexander Theroux – Laura Warholic; or the Sexual Intellectual

Piper
1. "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
2. "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry" by B.S. Johnson
3. The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
4. "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor
5. "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick
6. "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
7. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
8. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka
9. "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick
10. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
11. "White Noise" by Don DeLilo
12. "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
13. "Neuromancer" by William Gibson
14. "The Violent Bear It Away" by Flannery O'Connor
15. "On the Road" by Jack Keroauc
16. The Lord of the Rings series by JRR Tolkien
17. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury
18. "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger
19. "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
20. Southern Victory/Timeline-191 series by Harry Turtledove
21. "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
22. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
23. "Albert Angelo" by B.S. Johnson
24. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
25. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

Pnoom
1. James Joyce - Ulysses
2. Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace
3. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick
4. James Joyce - Finnegans Wake
5. Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenin
6. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
7. Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
8. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
9. Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor
10. Ian McEwan - Atonement
11. Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
12. Franz Kafka - The Trial
13. Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
14. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
15. Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Idiot
16. Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
17. Joseph Heller - Catch-22
18. James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
19. Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground
20. Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
21. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
22. Saul Bellow - Herzog
23. William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
24. Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
25. Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

Cripplers Quest
1. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstory
2. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
3. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
4. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
6. As I Lay Dying - William Faulker
7. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
8. Winesberg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
9. Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
10. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
11. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
12. Infiinte Jest - David Foster Wallace
13. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
14. The Death of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
15. The Plague - Albert Camus
16. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
17. Cane - Jean Toomer
18. Rabbit Run - John Updike
19. Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
20. Herzog - Saul Bellow
21. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
22. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
23. Light in August- William Faulkner
24. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
25. Persuasion - Jane Austen

So is Dubliners allowed under the unified story collections heading?

Hmm. If you put it on your list, I probably wouldn't throw it away, but for whatever reason that seems to be considered a story collection more than the likes of Faulkner's fragmentary novels.

The reason I ask is that it has a clear structure (moving from youth to adolescence to adulthood) and revolves around a clear theme (Dublin's paralysis), so it is a unified work of art, even though it is also clearly a collection of stories that stand on their own. I'm perfectly fine with not including it; I just want to know where the line is drawn.

Yeah, I'm not sure where the line should be drawn either. I was planning on including John Barth's Chimera, which is similar in that it's a collection of different but thematically related stories, only these stories are novellas and not short stories. At the moment I'll say they're okay, but if other people disagree and want to keep it more strictly novel- and novella-based, I don't mind. There is certainly a difference between one continuous 300-page narrative and three smaller ones that are considered a single work.

I won't participate, since I'm a really slow reader and I haven't actually read that much since I started reading books again about five years ago, but, man, I'm eager to see the results, even if only the threesome of dreww, pnoom and tudwell actually submits lists.

In terms of short story groupings, what about something like "The Martian Chronicles"?

I do enjoy Bradbuy and The Martian Chronicles but I feel that's getting even further away from the spirit of the list. Maybe I'll do away with the collections bit. I want the focus to be on novels and not other things.

I think that's a good idea. I'll leave Dubliners off.

I feel like my list is gonna be so generic. All big names except for Alexander Theroux, and almost all writing in English.

Okaythen, might as well break the ice with a first draft of a list then.

1. "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
2. "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry" by B.S. Johnson
3. The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
4. "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor
5. "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick
6. "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
7. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
8. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka
9. "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick
10. "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
11. Southern Victory/Timeline-191 series by Harry Turtledove
12. "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger
13. "Albert Angelo" by B.S. Johnson
14. "Neuromancer" by William Gibson
15. "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
16. The Lord of the Rings series by JRR Tolkien
17. "Thank You for Smoking" by Christopher Buckley
18. "The Violent Bear It Away" by Flannery O'Connor
19. "White Noise" by Don DeLilo
20. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury
21. "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
22. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
23. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson
24. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
25. "Ubik" by Philip K. Dick

Preliminary, very roughly ordered, still to be greatly expanded list, primarily compiled from my goodreads account.

1. James Joyce - Ulysses
2. Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace
3. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick
4. James Joyce - Finnegans Wake
5. Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor
6. Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenin
7. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
8. Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
9. Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
10. Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
11. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
12. Ian McEwan - Atonement
13. Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
14. James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
15. Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground
16. Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Idiot
17. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
18. Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
19. Vladimir Nabokov - Invitation to a Beheading
20. Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

i'm going to add more to this out of order list later. i'm just keeping track.

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoesvky
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
A Song of Ice and Fire - G.R.R. Martin
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Fall - Albert Camus
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck


rereading, hopefully in time:

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

reading now or soon, hopefully in time:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

wish i had read (books i mostly own): Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, V, Crime and Punishment reread, some Dickens, more Hemingway than the tOMatS, more Faulkner, The Plague reread, more Hardy and Joyce, The Pale King, 1Q84. where does my time go damn it?

This is preliminary and I've limited myself to one per author (an approach I may decide to abandon) but here.

1. Henry James - The Sacred Fount
2. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
3. William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
4. Jane Austen – Persuasion
5. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick
6. Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time*
7. James Joyce – Ulysses
8. Leo Tolstoy – War & Peace*
9. George Eliot – Middlemarch
10. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby


11. Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts
12. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
13. Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers
14. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
15. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
16. Samuel Beckett – Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
17. Ian McEwan – Atonement
18. Don DeLillo - Mao II
19. Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
20. Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow

21. Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
22. Franz Kafka – The Trial
23. Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
24. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
25. Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse
---------------------------------------
26. Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
27. Jose Saramago - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
28. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther
29. Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove
30. Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire

31. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
32. Norman Rush – Mating
33. W. G. Sebald – Austerlitz
34. Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio
35. Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
36. Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
37. Philip Roth - American Pastoral
38. Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
39. Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
40. Yann Martel - Life of Pi

41. W. Somserset Maugham – The Razor’s Edge
42. J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
43. Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises
44. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
45. Saul Bellow – Herzog
46. Stanley Elkin – The Living End
47. William Golding – The Spire
48. John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
49. Norman Mailer - Armies of the Night
50. William Burroughs – Naked Lunch


*In truth I haven't finished either of these but I've read enough to know that even if every other page of the novel is terrible and offensive I would have them at least this high because their beginnings are so good.

Do graphic novels count?

1.The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkein
2.Ulysses - James Joyce
3.In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
4.The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
5.1984 - George Orwell
6.Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
7.Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
8.Moby Dick - Herman Melville
9.Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
10.Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
11.War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
12.Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
13.The Plague - Albert camus
14.Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
15.The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
16.Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
17.Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
18.Herzog - Saul Bellow
19.Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
20.Light in August -William Faulkner
21.A Song of Ice and Fire - Geroge Martin
22.The Road - Cormac McCarthy
23.The Stranger - Albert Camus
24.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
25.As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner