List :: 100 Books of the Past Century by Koen Books

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  #51

  The Color of Water

  by James McBride

  (1 Review)

  Overall Rank: 401

  50 points

  "As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from -- where she was born, who her parents were."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #52

  The Bean Trees

  by Barbara Kingsolver

  (4 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 406

  49 points

  "I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbines's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #53

  Wide Sargasso Sea

  by Jean Rhys

  (6 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 125

  153 points

  "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #54

  Jane Eyre

  by Charlotte Brontë

  (35 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 17

  562 points

  "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined..."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #55

  The Old Man and the Sea

  by Ernest Hemingway

  (25 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 86

  215 points

  "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #56

  Native Son

  by Richard Wright

  (6 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 39

  348 points

  "Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
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  #57

  A Farewell to Arms

  by Ernest Hemingway

  (8 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 78

  230 points

  "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
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  #58

  The House of Mirth

  by Edith Wharton

  (6 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 113

  172 points

  "Selden paused in surprise."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
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  #59

  Kane and Abel

  by Jeffrey Archer

  (3 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 411

  47 points

  "April 18, 1906 - Slonim, Poland - She only stopped screaming when she died."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It
• 

  #60

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  by Betty Smith

  (5 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 438

  41 points

  "Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York."

  

  I've Read It I Want To Read It