Out with the old and in with the new? Take a look at this list of 100 Modern Classics

November 4, 5:39 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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Which books should make up the sacred canon of high school and college required reading lists is a question that has been so often and so hotly debated in bookish circles, spectators can come away with the impression that disagreements over things like genetic cloning, abortion, whether New England or Manhattan Chowder is superior, and the like, are mere childish trifles.

According to a number of modern English teachers and professors, the recommended reading books of old are hopelessly outdated and miserably fail to make any kind of connection with young readers.

For instance, Anne Trubek, a professor of English at Oberlin College argues that moldy oldies like The Catcher in the Rye, once sacred high school fare, is:

...not so contemporary anymore. I think that most American teenagers will find it rather tame and sort of laughable....

Trubek and others insist that in order to make literature compelling and meaningful to today's youth, required reading lists should include much more modern works that address current issues and concerns.

Proponents of the old masters, however, argue that one of the best reasons to defend the reading of the golden oldies is precisely because they provide a window for young readers to see into the minds, emotions, and lives of people different from their own experience. Alan Bloom, who was a staunch supporter of classical reading, said:

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.

And while readers are experiencing life through another perspective, they are also realizing one of the most fundamental human truths: that regardless of culture, gender, or time period, the struggles and joys of life have remained the same since the beginning of time.

According to book reviewers for Entertainment Weekly, here is the list of The New Classics: The 100 best books written between 1983 and 2008:

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

There are some books on this list that I agree wholeheartedly with including in the canon of Books that Everyone Should Read at Some Point in Their Educational Sentence of High School and College (Toni Morrison's Beloved; Art Speigelman's Maus); others, however, leave me somewhat perplexed: Jon Stewart's America? (hilarious--particularly the nude Supreme Court justice paper-doll bit; but a "classic?") Bridget Jones's Diary? The Joy Luck Club? That was a fantastic book (it almost read like an autobiography for Asian-American women like me recovering from a childhood with mothers we could barely understand) but right off the top of my head I can think of two or three other books written by Asian women that I would consider much more edifying reading. And I know all of you Potter-haters out there will be foaming at the mouth when you see that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire snagged the number 2 spot.

Don't think I'm an anti-modern lit gal though: I'm not. I actually vote as a moderate in this debate--I think a grounding in the golden classics is ESSENTIAL, but there is so much energy and intensity in modern writing, I can't imagine not giving young readers a taste of some of the great stuff out there, much less not enjoying it myself. Basically, I ascribe to Andrew Lang's theory of reading:

Distrust a course in reading. People who really care for books read all of them.