The best books of the 20th century are tried in different ways: they conduct interviews with readers, invite eminent writers to cooperate, compare circulations and sales of literary works. But such methods of assessment are subjective and do not reflect the whole picture: surveys are conducted more often in one country, the opinion of the famous author is the point of view of one person, and a large circulation does not guarantee people's love. For example, Mao Zedong's quotation is published in the number of 900 million copies and is in second place after the Bible, but he is on the "best books of the century" list only in China. And, probably, it is impossible to make a rating of books, which all interested parties would agree with, every individual will still have his own opinion on this issue.
But there are such works that are found in each list, and are absolute leaders in terms of readership and the number of fans. The best books of the 20th century are Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Dog Heart, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Francis Fitzgerald's The Great Getsby, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and many others. These works will be popular at all times and will never lose their relevance. The best books of the 20th century are not only interesting novels, fantasy and detectives, but, first of all, the author's unique point of view, which he expresses in his literary masterpiece. Among the writers of the 20th century, many thinkers and philosophers such as Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Gabriel Marquez, Ernest Hemingway, whose books literally turn the inner world of man and make them reconsider their perception of reality.
The best books of the 20th century were written by authors whose names and surnames are known to everyone, even those who have never picked up a book from school. Such popularity is explained by the mass adaptation of literary works - films from the books of Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov, Margaret Mitchell, Ken Kizi and many others have long been shot. It's good or bad - you can argue hoarsely, but the books of the 20th century continue to be screened, and some are photographed every 10-15 years. If you recall, the movie based on the novel "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov was filmed four times, the first time back in 1972 in Yugoslavia, and the last in 2005 in Russia. Other works too will not be able to avoid such a fate, and maybe, in 10-20 years, we will watch the next version of the movie "The Hound of the Baskervilles" or "The Chronicles of Narnia".
Some believe that books, as a phenomenon, have already outlived their time and will soon go to the past. Such skeptics should be reminded that the theater was predicted the same because of the development of television, but it is still alive and so popular that sometimes it is impossible to get a ticket for the next play. Perhaps in the past will leave paper books, and people will read only with the help of electronic devices, but they will still read. You can stop this process only if you do not allow people to think.