I thought The Grapes of Wrath was typical of American fiction - uninspiring and petty. It was obviously a betrayal of Steinbeck's pro-communist sympathies, but it may have helped to stop the excesses of Californian farm owners against the Okies, the same way that Sinclair's The Jungle helped lead to better regulation of the meat industry. However, neither book is really spectacular.

I think Lord of the Flies is a decent book, but it's overrated and overtaught. I think it is a popular choice because it deals with children (and educators seem to think that children like to read about other children, something I have NOT noticed after the age of, say, 12) and because it is short (because educators, probably correctly this time, anticipate that the longer the book, the less likely their students are to read it).