The Next 100 Great Southern Books: Part I

Yesterday, I gave you “The Top 25 Great Southern Books,” which was a sub-list of “A Southern List: 125 Great Southern Books," which was compiled several years ago by the James Agee Film Project.
Today, I give you a part of the rest of the list, which the good folks at the James Agee Film Project called “The Next 100 Great Southern Books.” This list, unlike the Top 25, is in alphabetical order.
Those of you who read yesterday’s post will remember that this list was put together by the James Agee Film Project while they were working on the award-winning documentary series, “Tell About The South: Voices in Black and White.” The list of great Southern books was compiled after a poll of book editors, publishers, scholars and reviewers. They were each asked “which of the thousands of Southern prose works published in during the past century should be considered ‘the most remarkable works of modern Southern Literature.’”
Without further ado, here’s what I’m calling “The Next 100 Great Southern Books: Part I.”
- A Death in the Family by James Agee
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The View from Pompey’s Head by Hamilton Basso
- The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
- Beasts of the Southern Wild by Doris Betts
- Dirty Work by Larry Brown
- Black Thunder by Arna Bontemps
- Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
- Brother to a Dragonfly by Will Campbell
- God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell
- Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
- I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
- A Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crew
- Deliverance by James Dickey
- Speak Now Against the Day by John Egerton
- Sanctuary by William Faulkner
- The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
- Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
- Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner
- Independence Day by Richard Ford
- From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
- A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines
- A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
- Death of the Fox by George Garrett
- Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
- Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
- Barren Ground by Ellen Glasgow
- The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
- Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus
- Roots by Alex Haley
- Dreams of Sleep by Josephine Humphreys
- Dust Tracks on the Road by Zora Neale Hurston
- Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
- Let the Dead Bury the Dead by Randall Kenan
- Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart
- The Velvet Horn by Andrew Lytle
- Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason
- Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (pictured above)
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
- All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
- The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
- The South and the Southerner by Ralph McGill
- Elbow Room by James Allan McPherson
- Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
- North Toward Home by Willie Morris
- Trainwhistle Guitar by Albert Murray
- Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan
And, I’ll stop right there for today. Visit the site tomorrow when I will pick up with the O’s and take us through to the end of the list.
In the end, I’d like to know if you’ve read any of these books. What did you think of them and which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.