I have three nominees:

The Widow's War, Middlesex, The Thirteenth Tale

I like it when this question comes up. It really gives me a chance to ponder over what I've read and see if any of it has staying power. There are many books that I liked, some of them I liked VERY MUCH, but do I think they have a chance at immortality? No. Often, I look back at the bestsellers of the year lists from 1900 through 1995 (link below), there are not many titles on those lists that I even heard of before written by authors who are just as forgetable. Therefore, I cannot just pick books that I thought were great. They have to have something more, something special... it's like the difference between a really good pizza and a lovely Christmas dinner. (Poor analogy, but please bear with me.) The pizza is great at the time, and I may rave about it for a bit, but it is just another tasty pizza. A lovely Christmas dinner is fulfilling on many levels - food, conversation, family, memories, all of which leave me not just full, but complelely satisfied. A classic-to-be must be fully satisfying and not just a book to make me haapy for a short while.

As a result, I do not have many on my list.
1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
2. Shadow Divers - Robert Kurson
3. Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner
4. Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha - Roddy Doyle
5. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
6. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
7. The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
8. The Sea, the Sea - Iris Murdoch - although this one may already be deemed a classic.

That's it for right now.
PAM

Here is a link that might be useful: Davis Public Library website - bestsellers from 1900 to 1995

In my opinion a true "classic " must be timeless and throw light upon the human condition. It must also transcend all cultures and nations.

Therefore, I can only come up with three authors that I've read who fill these huge shoes:

Cormac McCarthy: specifically, "The Road."

As well, W.G. Sebald, any and all of his work, as his "Austerlitz" and "Rings of Saturn."

Lastly, Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose."

(I am leaving out Undset's "Kristin Lavransdatter" only because it was written in the 1920's).

I like woodnymph's definition, so, using that as the premise, I would nominate:

A Thousand Splendid Suns because, while it appears to be culture-specific on the surface, it transends that. The condition, treatment and spiritual survival of women throughout time and world-wide. I had to keep reminding myself that the book was about women who were my contemporaries. (I didn't read Kite-Runner but I am sure that would also be nominated-I just could not read it. Maybe someday.)

Snow-Flower and the Secret Fan Again, a specific culture but the overwhelming themes are friendship, survival and self-respect.

Alas, Babylon written in 1959-so borderline all ready classic-the human response to overwhelming crisis.

Middlesex Personal identity, sexuality, family dynamics are all timeless themes.

Harry Potter et al. Classic good versus evil. Somewhere between Lion, Witch and Wardrobe etc. and Lord of the Rings for literary merit.

Shadow Divers The two faces of obsession.

I'll second the recommendations for Middlesex and Harry Potter.

I would also add Life of Pi to the list.

I think any books that have won the Pulitzer, Booker, or the author has won a Noble prize have the best shot of being considered a classic; just because that way the book is always "out there".

My picks would be:

Any book written by Cormac McCarthy or Toni Morrison

Harry Potter series (just because they were so popular, and new generations will be reading them all the time)

Those are the only ones I can think of right now! Honestly, I think most of the books published recently will be forgotten ten years from now, let alone in a hundred years.

I once read somewhere that a good rule of thumb for determining if a book has achieved classic status is whether it is still in print 30 years after the author's death. That's just as good as any other determinant I've come across. I agree with Woodnymph's nominees. I would also add (though I know some here don't like it) Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

I don't think award winners guarantee a future classic, though. Too many of these go out print, too! There are some we consider classics today that were almost lost. Wasn't that the case with Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"? I remember reading a snippet that it wasn't until an academic in the 50s raised interest studying it that it was even well received.

I like woodnymph's definition too. I also think that I book can become popular for capturing an idea or sentiment of the time it was written.

-georgia peach, I believe Fitzgerald's first novel, 'This Side of Paradise', was the only one that became an instant hit. His books became popular after the Great Depression and war; people going thru difficult times did not want to read about the fabulously rich and thier frivolities.

I have not read any of the Harry Potter books (though I hope I may find a book at the library sale sometime), but I think they will be classic one day, like CC said. Rowlings work seemed to have started the interest in that genre.

What do you think about this 'Twilight' series? Do you think it will be like the Harry Potter books, or is it just more of a passing fad? I have not read them, but they seem to just be apart of the big vampire craze.
CMK

Hmmm, I'd start thinking of a potential classic for a book that is still in print maybe 50 or 60 years after initial publication. It's far from being the only requirement but it is a good starting place.

I agree that Wallace Stegner and Cormac McCarthy have probably written classics. Maybe some of Anne Tyler and Larry McMurtry's books too.

And not to be singing the same song all the time, but Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as well.

Rosefolly

I will add a third for Stegner's Angle of Repose. It wasn't in my journal, although it is still sitting on the window ledge in my room. I like looking at it and remembering.

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

It is not fiction but I find Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamon is a book I keep referring to - it fills in so many quwarion marks about the 'why' things are as they are

And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

It comes back to that old question - what IS a classic? It's not just a great story, though surely it has to include that somewhere.

As far as a definition goes, I think "still in print fifty years after publication" is as good a way as any of defining it. I think thirty years is too short a time. Where children's books are concerned, that means that the Narnia books are classics, and I'm sure it means that the Harry Potter books are future classics.

But adult books? I don't think that many already listed here will actually be continuously in print for fifty years. For example, I really don't believe that Middlesex will make it. (Or is that just me hoping that it won't make it, because I disliked it so much?)

I suspect Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy are writing/have written books which will be future classics; for English authors, I think Kazuo Ishiguro and Iris Murdoch.

I liked Middlesex more than you did, Martin, and agree with others that it may, indeed, survive. Sexual identity will become of more, rather than less interest in a future that is more flexible of such. (Of course, if in the future we all live under Sharia law, it will be an underground classic.)

While I enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale, I think it a tad too derivative to make the classic cut. The setting, the relationships, the plot are all put together in a fine tale, but lacks something fresh to my mind. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, so have at it.

The Historian is a novel I enjoyed tremendously. I loved learning more about a historical character I mistakenly thought I already knew well enough. I loved being taken to regions mostly unfamiliar to us Americans. Still, I think one of my favorite aspects of the novel - all the research depicted - will keep it from transcending the classics barrier. YMMV.

I cannot convince you, Chris, that the Thirteenth Tale should be a classic. I thought it to be rather predictable and the characters rather two-dimensional. I disliked the book. It started with such promise and ended with a sad fizzle. To me, it simply died 2/3 of the way through, as if the author ran out of ideas. Just my opinion, of course.

More of my own two pennies:
It would be sad indeed to have nothing but Cormac McCarthy preserved for future readers from our age. How dreary and gray. I do not dispute his writing talent. He has a way with words, but I think his works would be a sad and fearful examples of our age by themselves. I say this as a person who has read SOME of his stuff but not all of it.

As for Harry Potter, I sincerely HOPE that this series shall long be cherished. Not only is it imaginative and entracing, but it (the series)almost single-handedly brought a love of books and stories into the lives of kids the world over. J.K. Rowling deserves every dime she earned.

PAM

I am afraid I did not care for 'The Historian' at all. But I am not sure that it is the amount of research that would hold it back from making it as a classic so much as the fact that there are just SO MANY books comming out about vampires.

It is interesting that no one has mentioned 'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle', which is on my pile, waiting to be read. It seems to be quite popular with the general public, but do you think it is classic material?
CMK

I think Phil Pullman's His Dark Materials has a shot at being around in another 50 years.

I liked The Historian, but I don't think it will become a classic. Too many books of its type are churned out year after year, and something more needs to distinguish it.

Going back to how you define a classic, the suggestion I read (as suggested by Norman Mailer in academic discussions) was that one should start looking at books that are still in print 30 years after the author's death (not 30 years after initial publication). I know I'm splitting hairs here, but unless an author died young or began his/her career very late in life, that waiting period might be fairly close to 50 or 60 years after date of publication. So... in my roundabout way, I guess I'm agreeing that 50 or more years after date of publication is a good starting point. I think another important element might also be whether it's a book you'd read again, and whether it holds up upon those re-reads. I tend not to look at these by author, but as individual cases. Even critically acclaimed authors have some works that fall out of favor and maybe only a few that represent them through the ages.

Within my lifetime (and I'm fast becoming a classic myself), my nominations are Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and quite a lot of Faulkner unless those books are already considered classics.

Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner. As with Veronicae, it has a place of honor in my home. I feel happy knowing that someone like Stegner once lived and wrote.

Anya - Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. I don't recall any horrific descriptions of the concentration camps in this book. What I recall is the odd collection of people who, as the war went on, made sure that this little girl survived it all.

The Last of the Just - Andre Schwartz-Bart. IMO one of the great books of the twentieth century. On the surface it's about Hassidic Jews and WW2. Its actual theme is that of finally finding one's identity and accepting frightful personal responsibility. This book changed my life.

And The Band Played On - Randy Shilts. Non-fiction. The book begins with a Danish woman returning home mysteriously ill, after living for years in Africa. She quickly dies. Years later, a Los Angeles doctor examines his third patient with what would become HIV-AIDS and feels a chill, as he tells himself that something ghastly is about to happen. We all know that now, but Shilts's way of telling the story is masterful. He makes every character in this book alive and fascinating. Unforgettable.

The Mandarins - Simone de Beauvoir. Bless her heart, she was such a mess, but boy, could she write, much better than her faithless boyfriend, Jean-Paul Sartre. The Mandarins is her roman a clef about those madcap existentialists in Paris and elsewhere, and she rocked their world when she told all. Besides, her tale of her affair with Nelson Algren, in Chicago, is very sexy!

I can't think of many books written in the past twenty-five years, which I have read, that I think will automatically become classics. It makes me a bit sad, really.

However, the cynic in me figures if I hate a popular book enough that will probably indicate it is on its way to becoming a classic. I have had that sort of luck in predicting -- take, for example, Slaughterhouse-Five which I loathed so viscerally on first reading it that I made the mistake of voicing my disgust to the professor who thought it was the best thing he had ever read. Of course Vonnegut became many a reader's darling, much to my chagrin. Same with Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and all those Johns (Irving, Cheever, Updike, etc.) whom I still can't distinguish.

I have a feeling Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale will be around for a long time (another one that I detest).

I'm with Martin on Middlesex, which seemed to me just another dysfunctional-family-comes-to-America story with an en vogue twist. But what do I know...see above.

Girl with a Pearl Earring might reach classic status because it's short and elegantly simple and about a subject that has widespread, long-lived appeal, at least among female readers. It's the sort of material tailor-made for school reading and book-club types, in my opinion. I actually liked this one well enough.

I am going to add one more: "Birds Without Wings" by des Bernieres. It's classical in that it transcends national boundaries and crosses two cultures that are traditional enemies: Turks and Greeks. Yet the common humanity of the boys' friendship is so enduring. It's almost an archetype, IMHO.

I second Birds Without Wings. Wonderful characters, layered story, integrated history.

I am intrigued by this thread, though I am seriously out-of-touch with contemporary fiction. My reading habits are very similar to Christinmk's. I tend to stick to books which have stood the test of time. I am often suspicious that the designation that such-and-such is A Very Important Book is the result of marketing and not of readers themselves. For example, it's been ages since I've heard anything about A.S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, or D. M. Thomas. Yet I remember when each of their books was greeted by intense critical rapture. Where are they now?

That said, I believe that The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas and Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden will survive.

I believe that some of the work of Allan Gurganus and Peter Ackroyd will stand the test of time. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All has a Dickensian scope, with a multitude of characters. Ackroyd's English Music is a really beautiful book, though perhaps not one to all tastes.

I was also incredibly moved and haunted by Aharon Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939. I also admire the writing of Andrew Holleran, particularly his book of stories, In September, the Light Changes.

I think any Anita Shreve could be future classics...Fortunes Rocks definitely!
Harry Potter no doubt!

The Twilight series I doubt. I LOVED these books myself...but it does bother me how often Stephenie Meyer is compared to J.K. Rowling. She has a very predictable writing style. And despite the good story line the teen angst got a little old throughout all the books.

But Anita Shreve and Anne Tyler are my votes.
I read Middlesex but it was a while back and it didn't really make an impression on me either way...I'll have to read it again.

I would hope that "The River Why" by David James Duncan will remain on the shelves.
"Blue Highways" by William Least Heat-Moon has been in print since the seventies. Thinking it may hang around for a long time
AND
"The Stand" by Stephen King....I know, I know sounds like an odd choice but King has made a mark on whole generation of readers and The Stand actually contains a very important social/moral commentary.

Of course there are many many novels I'd like to see stay around. The above three are the ones I think have the best chance to do so.

Jeannie

Author William Styron is supposed to be a "classical" writer. ("Sophie's Choice", "Confessions of Nat Turner", and "Lie Down in Darkness" (the latter a roman a clef). However, I don't hear his name mentioned very much and seldom even find his books on shelves of either libraries or stores.