#TopTenTuesday Books I Think Will Be Future Classics #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

• Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
• Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
• Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
• Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Modern Books You Think Will Be Classics In The Future. I struggled to come up with a precise definition of what makes a book a classic. The best criteria I could come up was a book that will stand the test of time (i.e. will still be read in 50 years’ time), has universal themes or is ‘ground-breaking’ in some way. I took the easy option of picking books that have won literary prizes. I accept some of them don’t meet the definition of ‘modern’ and in fact could be considered ‘classics’ already.

1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Booker Prize 1981)
2. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker (Pulitzer Prize 1983)
3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood (Arthur C. Clarke Award 1987)
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison (Pulitzer Prize 1988)
5. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Prize 1989)
6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Pulitzer Prize 2007)
7. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Booker Prize 2009, Walter Scott Prize 2010)
8. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Pulitzer Prize 2015)
9. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Booker Prize 2020)
10. Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Booker Prize 2024)