The Top 225 Greatest Novels of All Time

Daniel S. Burt first published The Novel 100 in 2004. Recently, he's revised it, and added another twenty-five selections to the mix, ranked 1 to 125. In addition, he's included another 100 honorary mentions, not listed in numeric ranking, but alphabetically by author, but for the purposes of this thread, I'll list them as if they were (the bottom 100) in numeric order.

I plan on listing ten per day, up to our Brothers Karamazov read (did BK even make the top 10 according to Daniel S. Burt?), we'll just have to wait and see.

This list isn't at all as predictable (excluding, I'd say, the top 25 or so picks) so I think we're not treading ground long trodden before.

Should Daniel S. Burt's listing of the top 225 novels be available online somewhere, would you mind not linking that list until we're finished here? The last list I attempted (Adventure Novels) someone from outside the group in their enthusiasm to participate dropped in a link of the entire list and thereby sort of made continuing listing the novels, ten at a time, pretty pointless. But, if someone just can't resist doing so, I think I'll still, this time, carry out the list, even if the order is known, because I disagree strongly with many of these selections, not so much that they shouldn't be ranked in the top 225, but that they're either too high or too low.

For instance, Burt has Dracula ranked 120, while Infinite Jest languishes in the bottom 100. Burt explains that he's not merely listing his picks based on quality of prose alone, but on their socio-cultural, religious, philosophical and/or political impacts at the time of their release.

Obviously, from a purely prose perspective, Dracula probably wouldn't make the top 225, but considering it's cultural impact, it definitely deserves a slot. Sheesh, if you considered it's present pop-cultural impact, it'd be ranked in the top ten if not number one.

So, w/out further ado, let us begin our journey through the top 225 novels of all time, as ranked by Daniel S. Burt in his revised ed. of The Novel 100.

p.s. Please jump in and acknowledge if you've read it, and whether you agree with it's ranking. Let the debates begin ...

(just give me a few minutes to get the last ten listed alphabetically by author up in the next post)

216 ~ The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

217 ~ The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (1923)

218 ~ Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (1920-1922)

219 ~ Rabbit, Run by John Updike (1960)

220 ~ Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)

221 ~ All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

222 ~ Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty (1946)

223 ~ Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West (1933)

224 ~ The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)

225 ~ Voss by Patrick White (1957)

Hmmm ... it's hard to get a sense of what the numbers "mean" at this point; what does a 225th-place book look like? Anyway, I've read Miss Lonelyhearts, which I can live with at 223 but could also imagine higher; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I can sort of live with at 216 but impressionistically want to put quite a bit higher, maybe in the 150s or so, and Infinite Jest, which now ranks with books like The Tin Drum, The Magus, The Magic Mountain, Madame Bovary and Riddley Walker on my all-time shortlist. So yeah, too low.

yummy lists !!

Undset, Welty and White are unknown to me.
The others have a place in the list. The place on the list is arbitrary and not important, I guess ... for the moment...

Stevenson's Jekyll & Hide stands out as culturally important. The Double being a major litterary myth

Throw us some more henri !

More coming tomorrow, Big Mac Daddy!

Er, wait, it is tomorrow isn't it?

This afternoon or evening okay?

" .....(the ) List...online....would you mind NOT linking..."

I see your point. But I hope we are eventually given a link to it.

Yummy! Lists!!

I know it's traditional to do these from the bottom up, but I would rather go the other way. After 100+ that many of us may not care about, the enthusiasm may wane, or not.

I wonder if Tobacco Road is on the list. We read it as a group read in the Southern Gothic group a couple of years ago and it was surprisingly good. Not the pot boiler it's made out to be at all. So I might judge the entire list on whether or not this work is included. After all, these things are mostly subjective. Not only that, but as I said elsewhere, The Leatherstocking Tales are either reviled or seen as second rate today, but when they were fresh and new people gobbled them up as if there was no tomorrow. Or how about Scott's Waverly novels? Not read much now (let's see a show of hands for those who've read Waverly or The Heart of Midlothian), but once again, earth shattering upon initial publication. How high up the list will we find Life on the Mississippi? Do either of Flannery O'Connor's two novels make the list? She was not a novelist. Although, I think The Violent Bear it Away is more representative of the novel form than the episodic Wise Blood. Some may see them as genius. It will be interesting if they show on the list and if so, where. Or one or more of Graham Green's "entertainments". Jeez, there's just so much out there. How do you come to just 225? Of course could such a list even exist without Shamela?

This should be a fun month.

I've read all but the Svevo, Wallace (I know I'm a heretic, but it just doesn't interest me) and White. As far as ranking is concerned Kristin Lavransdatter is a historical fiction masterpiece and Undset a Nobel Prize winner; House of Mirth and Miss Lonelyhearts are brilliant and savage indictments of, respectively, NYC/Newport riche society and Hollywood, and Delta Wedding is a small gem. Updike strikes me as a writer who was very important for his time, but will not last....
But I'm not sure how one ranks such very different kinds of books.

on their socio-cultural, religious, philosophical and/or political impacts at the time of their release.

Mmmm. No mention of quality? Originality? Artistic worth? Are we restricted to fiction? Does this mean the list includes Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, L.Ron Hubbard and all those repulsive little shits, all of whose works have had huge impact on their times, more's the pity?

I'll third yummy lists!

I've only read Jekyll & Hyde and All the King's Men. I don't have an argument about their placement, but All the King's Men does have one of my favorite quotes:

“I felt that a story was over, that what had been begun a long time back had been played out, that the lemon had been squeezed dry. But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn’t the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.”

Geneg,

Sorry to report that Erskine Caldwell did not make the cut. But, James Fenimore Cooper did, as did Sir Walter Scott. Flannery O'Connor, egad, did not make the cut. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Her effing AWESOME short stories completely overshadow her novels, and this listing is focused solely on the novels. And Henry Fielding you say? He's there, but maybe not the one you'd like to see there!

I thought about going top to bottom, but the one at the top isn't the one you typically see there; and the ordering of the top five, I think, are eyebrow raising, idiosyncratic in the least. So, as they say, from the "bottom's up" we shall proceed.

I agree w/you completely Janea on Updike. I almost put ??? next to that entry (I won't refrain from doing so in the future).

And keep in mind too, the first 100 I'm putting up, from 225 to 126, aren't in numerical order, but listed alphabetically by author's last name. I'm giving them numbers, Z - A, to keep myself on track.

Murr, yes artistic quality is also taken into large account by Burt, you won't find but a very few genre works on this list, save for a Wilkie Collins or two. Here's Burt's criteria for the ranking in his own words:

"In making my choice and arranging the ranking, I have been guided ... by a self-imposed selection criteria to try to identify the novels that have exerted the strongest impact, that have changed or altered the form in significant ways, and, based on critical consensus and the test of time, that continue to deliver importance, relevance, and enjoyment years, decades, or centuries after publication ...

"To the chagrin of my students, I often comment that you need to reread the greatest works of literature perhaps every five years, not because they change but because you do ... The ranking of greatest novels of all time may appear to some as misguided and foolish in the extreme -- too much subjectivity masquerading as objective truth -- but it has been done primarily to provoke consideration and comparison of literary greatness to further appreciate the achievement that is on display in these ... novels.

"I ultimately constructed my listing and ranking by considering which novels dominated their eras; in other words, what novels are indispensable for the fullest understanding of the novel as a unique artistic form. The next step was to evaluate each novel's impact comparatively ..."

and that's a great quote, Jane!

Here come the next ten ...

206 ~ La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas (1499)

207 ~ Julie; or, The New Eloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1761)

208 ~ Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Virtue by Marquis de Sade (1791)

209 ~ Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre (1938)

210 ~ The Heart of Midloathian by Sir Walter Scott (1818)

211 ~ And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (1928 - 1940)

212 ~ The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1962)

213 ~ White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000) -- ??? is that a curve ball or what? I like the selection, but I don't know if I'd have the chutzpah myself to include it.

214 ~ One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962)

215 ~ The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka (1965)

It takes a while to get going but HEART OF THE MIDLOATHIAN is a great novel after all. Scott's breadth of experience is the key there. Scott was excellent in just about every way. He was one of the first to champion Jane Austen. We are mere shadows, or shadows of shadows next to the great Sheriff of Selkirkshire.

Ukhgh, shut out.. Sure like Sartre (his philosophical works,but also The Age of Reason) though.

Sholokov did not write the Don ! It was someone else !

On 12, (#211) & 15:

"Sholok(h)ov did not write the Don!" . . .

Did too!!
(see the Sholokhov --spelled as above --
author page in "Search".)

I knew someone would react : )

Mac is referring to the plagiarism scandal surrounding this book.
See here for more on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholokhov#Accusations_of_plagiarism

Thanks, tomcatMurr. I didnʻt know about the controversy. If Wikipedia is right, Sholokhov has
been vindicated.

It was his wife ? Sholokova ?

it was the butler, I think.

Well. I have read Nausea which didn't really turn me on, and The Heart of Midlothian, And Quiet Flows the Don, both of which were very interesting in an historical fiction kind of way. I never really knew who the Cossacks were and what their service to the Tsar was before reading Sholokhov. And, finally, I've read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I read this after reading the three volume set of The Gulag Archipelago which in a way made it seem redundant.

I've got the Rousseau, but have not read it.

". . .It was the butler, I think" (21)

The butler seems to me an appropriate suspect in any controversy concerning Soviet Literature. I never became a fan of Soviet Literature-- neither the few who were in good standing with Soviet authorities and still somewhat respected, worldwide like Sholokhov Gorky, Ehrenburg, and even the younger Pasternak(!)--before the Khrushchev Era. and the seemingly apolitical Kataev, nor the dissenters who were supposedly "rocking the
Soviet union" -- according to the blurbs their foreign-published works got in the West, like Dudinstev and the later Pasternak.

Also, they wrote in some foreign tongue (?!) -- usually Russian, in which Iʻm not fluent, so I didnʻt relish looking up every other word, and at the same time
didnʻt have much confidence in the available translations.

But I must admit I enjoyed Valentin Kataevʻs
The Embezzlers. I admired but didnʻt exactly enjoy Dr. Zhivago. I was very impressed (and DE-pressed) by his descriptions of the contrivances on
how they managed to keep drinking during the
revolutionary crisis, when food, booze, and all consumer goods were scarce.

Oh goody! we were overdue for some lists. Let me check the ones so far.

First iteration:

I've read Jekyll and Hyde by RL Stevenson and Infinite Jest as you all know.

Second iteration: Here is where my french lit degree finally comes to the fore: I have read Nausea and The New Heloise - in French!

I have read White Teeth, in English, as well.

Nothing else on that list, but wanted to say I read Justine, but the one by Durrell, not the one by De Sade. I did not like it. My dad is a huge Durrell fan and I read the entire Alex. Quartet and just don't agree with him.

More, more! Rique must be off killing Bambi again - we want the rest of the list!

23> I'm glad you mentioned more Soviet-era literature. I talk up Aleksandr Zinovyev's, The Yawning Heights every chance I get, which isn't often. Late '70s, blistering satire of the Soviet state.

24> I wish I was off butchering bambi, like government postal workers and bank employees, this absurd Columbus holiday, but alas, I'm at work, sans my copy of the book with the listings. So, patience, Anna dear, another ten will get posted tonight.

Umm -- this time I've read Justine (years ago in a longago erotica era), The Heart of Midlothian (for PhD exams -- don't really remember it), White Teeth (which didn't make much of an impression on me), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (but the film with Tom Courtney hit me harder -- and allegedly he filed his teeth to do it) and The Interpreters which I thought was brilliant about 15 years ago. I think it's Soyinka's only novel and captures a group of young Nigerian intellectuals trying to deal with independence from colonial rule.

196 ~ McTeague by Frank Norris (1899) ??? haven't read it, but attempted, as you know, The Octopus (thanks A LOT GENEG!!!) so I suspect this is a dubious choice.

197 ~ At Swim-Two Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939)

198 ~ Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948)

199 ~ Fortunata and Jacinto by Benito Pérez Galdós (1886-1887)

200 ~ The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794)

201 ~ Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

202 ~ Pamela by Samuel Richardson (1740)

203 ~ Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet (1957)

204 ~ The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (1932)

205 ~ Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

I hear McTeague is kind of Norris's go-to book; I'd like to give him a chance to make up for the slimy lump of offal that is The Octopus one day. For the moment, I have read only Wide Sargasso Sea from this list--it's decent, I'unno,whatever--but Radetzky March has been in my to-read pile since, like, forever.

I just read that Ivan Illyavich re-cast as a philandering New Jersey Ad-man downer Everyman. Maybe I'll try Portnoy's Complaint next.

Only Wide Sargasso Sea for me from this bunch. Pretty good, lots of interesting ideas, but I don't think everyone would like it.

I am already bored by this list.
Henri sent us another !

FLANN O'BRIAN (Brian O'Nolan) is first-rate.
Brian O'Nuallain.
Myles n gCopaleen.
All the same accident prone Irishman. THE DALKEY ARCHIVE is another of his fine works. Featuring the Mollycule Theory. Robert Anton Wilson made much of de Selby and his ideas in one of his Trilogies.

Wide Sargasso Sea for me too.

I've read Portnoy's Complaint (shortly after it was published and hated it), Wide Sargasso Sea (Jane Eyre from the madwoman in the attic's point of view) and Cry the Beloved Country (probably the first classic of South African literature and heartbreakingly beautiful)

Truth be told, had that Wiener and Piccolo (or whatever the hell those tweeters' names are) gone after Philip Roth instead of Franzen, I'd of shrugged it off and thought "oh well" rather than getting my fruit 'o the looms in a wad. Would I have been wrong with such a blasé response to righteous Roth's writerly reputation being impugned?

186 ~ The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (1956-1957)

187 ~ The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)

188 ~ Man's Fate by André Malraux (1932) Been a long, long time, but I recall being riveted by that opening chapter (involving a political assassination) and not looking back from there.

189 ~ Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer by Thomas Mann (1947)

190 ~ Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (1985)

191 ~ The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith (1859)

192 ~ Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

193 ~ Ada by Vladimir Nabokov (1969)

194 ~ Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki (1914)

195 ~ A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Mann knew all there was that was worth knowing.
VD thought it really didn't matter, what you knew, that is. Meredith became an sage on the hill in his old age, even great men sought his opinion on things. Don't be fooled by Miller's pleasure seeking. Read his BOOKs OF MY LIFE, he knew where the cats put the rats. Old Norman could bring it, especially when on the scent. He made mincemeat of the Bushes, & co.
EF with all due respect Franzen is a chimp next to Roth.

I read the first book in the Cairo Trilogy. I have seen all three movies multiple times. Mahfouz was heavily involved in them. I've also read Love in the time of Cholera and of course, I loved it. In my experience one either loves or hates magic realism and I am a lover.

I read "La condition Humaine" by Malraux, is that the same thing?

"with all due respect" invariably means the opposite in a courtroom - i see it is no different in a chatroom! or, it means exactly what it says. which is worse?

Oh I know, Por, (and I agree) but I do like chimps nonetheless, and Roth, frankly, leaves me cold and doesn't make me laugh.

39> Yeah, that's right!

So ... phuck your withal doo respecteth, Por-Man!

I'm incensed. If I were a judge I'd SLAM DOWN the gavel: Disorder! DISORDER IN THE CHATROOM!!!

I am aware of that meaning, but it doesn't apply here, S. I think EF knows that I respect his opinion on chatroom, or any matters elsewhere. Thinking about it for a second, I do think about it for a second, sometimes, S: I was lending more weight to the Roth side of the argument, maybe at the expense of our leader's dignity. But leaders must not have a skin too few; we wouldn't follow them, would we? They'd be blackguards, check out the etymology.

Love in the Time of Cholera may be my favorite Marquez. I'm with you anna - love, love, love Magical Realism.

Just confirmed that I have indeed read Man's fate. Interesting that it's called "the human condition" in French. I always thought French was in general more likely to sound sexist than English. It is lucky for me that whoever authored this list has such respect for the French or I'd be a lot less well-read.... :)

I was only joshing, with all respect due to you both. 12 hour days! I musta seen that somewhere else. Nevermind. I've never read P. Roth - only that story about Portnoy in, I think, without feathers. Not read Franzen either, but I did break down and buy a cheap copy of the Corrections. I'll need to buy a cheap P. Roth and even the score.

I'd like to know what you think of American Pastoral, slick. I didn't like it, and yet everybody oooh'd and ahhh'd over it and it won the NB Award that year.

ʻManʻs Fate . . . (is) called "the human condition in French.ʻ (44)

During the era when La condition Humaine by Andre Malraux was translated , "Man" (usually capitalized)
was a very common expression(mostly in writing, not in speech) for "human being". It didn ʻt usually indicate any male chauvinism on the part of those using the word, but may have been part of a general usage that helped to keep a general male chauvinism in place.

The P. Roth I'd like to read is the one with the doppleganger Roth. Sounds like my kind of book, at least as far as that goes.
operation shylock!

I agree. Miller is worth reading, his prose is quite brilliant. I can't wait to read Meredith The Egoist, which is the only one I have managed to find.

I started the Mahfouz and could not get into it at all. Anna, what am I missing? ditto with Mann, whom, I seem not to be able to get. (are we still doing MAgic Mountain for a tome read next year?)

I don't understand all the brouhaha surrounding Roth. He is not a patch on Bellow, and seems to have moved over to occupy Bellow's place as the grand ol' man of American Letters since Bellow's death. I read Portnoy's Complaint years ago -lots of masturbation, is all I remember, and I saw the movie The Human Stain, which was remarkably silly, even for Hollywood.

Man's Fate is utterly brilliant. Malreaux needs to be rediscovered imo. He was also a renowned art historian.

I preferred Love in the Time of cholera to 100 years of solitude, which I found meretricious.

The list is getting interesting!

I read Kokoro but don't remember too much. I gave up on The Naked and the Dead. The campaign was simply too long. I'll try to revisit sometime.

Yeah, we're doing The Magic Mountain in '11, taught by Mac Daddy (an maybe Lisa C.'ll peek in too as I know she read it last year and liked it). I think it's boring. But maybe I was boring when I read it. Lots of rest cures and naps do not make for grand drama; but there's certainly grand philosophy and politics which I know missed and need to be clued in on. Hint: the rest cures and naps are political commentary on the state of Europe at the time between the two world wars.

Yes, slick, you'll find that not-so-zany Zuckerman alter in OS as well as the book I mentioned. Roth is obsessed with Roth, indeed. Fascinating for the psychoanalyst no doubt. Couldn't most of his books be construed as some creative variation of masturbatory release? **Stifles yawn** (pardon me).

Roth writes a first-rate American English. Of course in some cases Onan is right around the corner, as sex, in what ever numbers remains a large part of the Roth corpus.

If Auden is right and a book reads us, we are up against it with Meredith. Very taxing even on strong readers.

#46 Enirque - American Pastoral...blech...OK, as far as I can tell it's a well written book and quite powerful in it's own way, but it's not a place I need to visit again. I've been hesitant to read more p. Roth since.

Oh man, I've only read American Pastoral of Roth's, but I thought it was quite wonderful. I can think of a lot of families I know who that kind of gobsmacked great-expectations hangover explains quite effectively (minus the homicide and usually the Jewishness).

Roth's one of those polemical literary icons seems like. There's no questionning his talent, no matter what you think of his content.

Bokai has recently reviewed Kokoro, incidentally.

I'd rather read Shamela than Pamela!

I like Stevenson but I can't buy one of his novels as a greatest of all time, especially given that the list includes books in translation.

#54 MM - You know, I think in a way I saw it as a painfully long lecture on bad parenting...and I kind of got the point early on. (There was some of me in the Swede, parenting-wise at least. I have a daughter, and I am Jewish, but I'm not an athlete and I'm not married to a beauty queen (goodness, hope my wife doesn't see this, or takes it the right way)...I also can't imagine french kissing my daughter...wtf?...but, anyway, moving on...)

WTF indeed! I completely forgot about that detail. But I do think it takes a writer w/some mucho cajones rancheros to delve into that type of dangerous territory. That shit goes on -- and worse, in families, unfortunately. Only a supremely confident writer like a Roth, I think, is willing to enter that taboo terrain.

Another thing I didn't like about AP was it's Zuckerman beginning. Actually, I take that back; I didn't like that Roth began a good story of Zuckerman taking his kid to the ball game and then after thirty odd pages he just jumped into the novel, and we never heard from Zuck again.

176 ~ The Bone People by Keri Hulme (1983) haven't read it, but it's another of those love it or hate it, as it tends to elicit strong negative reactions in those who don't like, from what I've seen roundabout.

177 ~ Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1884) Along with Wilde's works, it's Intro to Decadence 101

178 ~ Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji (1965)

179 ~ The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

180 ~ The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (1902)

181 ~ The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis (1955)

182 ~ Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

183 ~ Camel Xiangzi; or Rickshaw Boy by Lao She (1936)

184 ~ The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence (1915)

185 ~ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Hm, I can't remember if I read Rickshaw Boy though I am pretty sure I read The Good Earth and I think I read Rickshaw Boy around the same time, this is when I was a teenager.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird, of course.

Nothing else on this list.

Huysmans is always eye-opening. I read AGAINST THE GRAIN as a callow youth. It made an important appearance in Wilde's DORIAN GRAY. I read everything I could get out of the library, thank God for great university libraries, by and about H. A strange likeness between Huysmans and Strindberg. Both conjuring up things and entities they couldn't deal with. James is of course difficult but if you can go the 15 rounds it's worth it. I recently read the preface to DOVE. I found myself having to read some sentences 2 and 3 times to get the meaning. Suffice to say that James is no featherbed for sluggards and sometimes we must admit to being more of a sluggard than we are willing to admit. Lawrence always had an axe to grind, i much prefer his essays and occasional writings. THE REFLECTIONS ON THE DEATH OF A PORCUPINE is particularly good. He was guided early on by Constance Garrett's husband, who introduced L. to among others, F. Dostoyevsky.

#58 Rique - I'm with you, I really liked the opening section.

#61 Porius - I've really enjoyed your posts here, quietly, just so you know.

To Kill A Mockingbird makes four for me, out of the 1st 40...

#62
I'm at your pace. I read To Kill a Mockingbird VERY recently.

>57 dchaikin: yeah, I guess perspectives is some of that--I have no kids, but my own parents were pretty different from the Swede--"pleasant and permissive", in a phrase, perhaps? but certainly without expectations--and I just really really felt for the dude and how he ruined everything up.

Anyway! The Bone People I loved, but I'm sure there are a billion obnoxities that tourist me missed but a person who knew something more about rural New Zealand life and Maori traditions would have been enraged by. Kim is also a fave--my grandma used to read to me from it when I was very small (also from Barrack-Room Ballads!) and being Kim just seemed so much more achievable than being Mowgli somehow. A big yes to To Kill a Mockingbird as well, despite that New Yorker piece painting Atticus Finch as just basically a big ameliorist and obstruction in the great march of civil rights, etc. What a feel-good batch of books this is.

I have read 23 of the books out of the first 40 and something by almost all the authors on the list. Thus far, with a few exceptions, I am not dreadfully impressed with the list.

yes, To kill a Mockingbird, super book, that stands up to repeated rereadings.

Rudyard Kipling is sadly underestimated, imv, a great writer.

Lawrence, sadly overrated imv, a trashy novelist, but a great poet and short story writer. I would not include any of his novels on a list like this.

The Kazantzakis is very good indeed: I'm glad to see him on a list like this, and Christ Recrucified is better than Zorba. Also recommended is Freedom or Death.

Henry James is one of my all time faves, but what Por said about him above is spot on. James is DIFFICULT but worth it. He sure stretches you as a reader, but one is better for it afterwards.

Huysmans is simply divine:
http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2006/08/against-nature-jk-huysmans.html

The others I have not read. I am impressed with how many non English writers have made it onto the list so far. is this going to change as we get down to smaller numbers, I wonder?

There's a thread about difficult books over in snobs, although it's devolved over the last 200+ posts to a discussion of Pressman's Gates of Fire, a decidedly un-difficult book, but every time I see the thread James's Golden Bowl comes to mind. A very tough, demanding read, but I don't think I've ever read a better book. And the sense of accomplishment was fantastic. I'm surprised to find it so far down the list. I think it is James's crowning achievement. Although I did like The Bostonians, something of a knockoff for James and a much less demanding book, just as well. James started out telling stories and ended up painting pointilist pictures with words.

I may be the only person here not to have read To Kill a Mockingbird. For many years I felt it was a gaping hole in my literary education. Now, I take it (misguided as it may be) as a matter of honor not to have read it. Pfunny (that's for Porius) how that works.

Pfunny indeed Gene, I am innocent of the mockingbird's slaughter too. The movie was pretty good. And the author's brother was a good actor.

James keeps you on your toes. One reading of especially the late novels gets you nowhere. If you are not of the Tribe of HJ you shouldn't really bother.

Thanks for that great post from The Lectern. I was about to "take issue" with your non-Ph.D. dissertational "overstatement" that A Rebours started the Symbolist movement, but saw someone already had, so that I could go to bat for my boy, Arthur Rimbaud, as being that which got the French Symbolists going. Okay, okay, kill me for saying Rimbaud started it rather than that other French guy, Baudelaire, but, regardless, I was brought up to believe that Rimbaud "truly started it" and that had there been no Rimbaud, there'd be no school of surrealism in Art either.

Urania, please identify the "few exceptions" you are impressed with, so I can see if we're sort of on the same page.

I would love to see Club Balzac come up with its own Greatest Novels of all time listing.

so, Murr, you wouldn't include any DH would you? Well, guess what, there's more where that one came from up ahead, dislike it or not! I tend to agree with you, but calling his novels "trashy" sounds like a ribald and scandalous statement itself, to me. Trashy, for me, is Hollywood Wives or some Harlequin Romance. Care to explain yourself further, or is Lawrence, like a Hardy, say, perhaps not worth the time?

Gene and tomcat and Por-Man, more Henry James on the way, much much higher up.

66> I am impressed with how many non English writers have made it onto the list so far. is this going to change as we get down to smaller numbers, I wonder?

Few non-English in the next ten, but several beyond that ...

166 ~ New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

167 ~ The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (1766)

168 ~ Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz (1937)

169 ~ The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (1974)

170 ~ The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (1948)

171 ~ Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

172 ~ The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (1886)

173 ~ Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

174 ~ The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

175 ~ Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (1927)

The Naked and the Dead, imo, was perfect for what it was, and in retrospect telegraphs Mailer's later overrated stature, with the exception of his journalist-as-participant pieces, which occupy another realm, one with less competition.

I was batting about .33 with the first (last) ten. The percentage keeps decreasing with each additional ten. I am hoping the trend reverses as we continue down (up) the list.

What I like about this list is - I would consider reading just about anything on the list so far and it does try to include some Lit in translation. This list also feels like it would have some credibility 50 years from now. The list might be considered a bit middlebrow, but not by me. It gets harder and harder to have a common understanding concerning what most people reading primarily in English should have read and the damn authors (from all over the world now, mind you) keep writin' 'em! I like Thomas Hardy but, like some other authors on the list, one is enough to catch the oeuvre when you are compiling a list limited to only 225 novels. Whereas, say with Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, they are so different and each is monumentally great, you've got to include both.

Re: Kipling - if you like the way words sound and fit together, you've got to appreciate Kipling.

Some of the picks are too English major-y for me. Pamela? Vicar of Wakefield? Is either that good - or just important to the history of the English language novel? Others are a bit trendy. Mockingbird could be one of those, but it may turn out to be an enduring portrait of the time. Who knows?

Gissing had a hard-scrabble existence. A fine writer but who knows much about Gissing these days. 'Goldy' wrote an everlasting poem, novel, and play - who can say as much? THE DESERTED VILLAGE (1770); THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD (1766); SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER or THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT (1773). Greene is always or almost always worth the trouble. Hardy: I read the major novels this summer, in all cases for the umteenth time, and they are still matchless. And his poetry is a lot better than most of the Tribe of Eliot will admit to. Joe Heller is at the very top of the heap in American Letters. SOMETHING HAPPENED and GOOD AS GOLD are packed with humor and wisdom of the highest sort. I might admire some writers as much as JH but none more. Hem is better than most will admit, his stories are first-rate and he was a bluffer and blow-hard of the first magnitude. Hesse I read as I youth, I'd have to pick him up again to have an opinion. I have a feeling he would pass muster.

I'm sure I've read a more limited range of books than most here. I am, frankly, more of a writer, and an editor, than a reader. But I have read Hesse, and place him in a category of writers whose ideas I find interesting and worth reading, but whom I don't think were particularly good writers. I think Siddartha was his best.

Siddartha was mine and probably, oh, several million or so's, intro to Buddhism, if I may state the obvious. Read it and remember not disliking it during my first semester at CSULB in an intro to Comparative Religions course, in which we also watched The Mission, the one with De Niro and Jeremy Irons. I actually held The Glass Bead Game, Hesse's last novel, in my hands today, but didn't buy it. Maybe I should have.

Not if it meant tossing The Leopard. Read that one as soon as you can manage to fit it into your schedule!
P.S. It is not a ponderous read, so it is an easy fit.

Oh! Both Thomas Hardys and The Sun Also Rises! So far I feel far less well-read than the Uranias and the TCM's (not to mention the Poriuses - or should it be Porii?) but still able to hold up my head in this group.

Steppenwolf and Catch-22 are both on my TBR list for this year, if I have any time between Salon reads and Early Reviewer books.

Puttering right along, I've read:

The Heart of the Matter Love Grahame Green
Jude the Obscure I don't understand the literati's attitude toward Hardy.
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Catch-22 The second adult book I remember reading after Belle Poitrine's blockbuster expose of Hollywood, Little Me.
Steppenwolf Like a dream in the night, right between my sound machine. Any place it goes is right, With my Sookie-Sookie-Sookie-Sue by my side.

Thea Heart of the Matter isn't my favourite Greene, but still belongs on the list--he's such a master. Catch-22 ditto, although I haven't read any other Heller except the inferior sequel, Closing Time. Jude I'm more 50/50 on--I love Hardy so much at moments, but I have trouble ranking his dark tragedies on the same level as old fave Far from the Madding Crowd, where the happy ending is so paid for in pain it's like ... catharsis to 11.

>69 absurdeist: Reeeeeque, I see very little difference between Hollywood Wives and Women in Love, and Lady Chatterly's Lover, except perhaps that Hollywood Wives is written in better, less overblown prose. Their project is essentially the same.

I find Hesse to be overblown as well. I have not read Steppenwolf, but I have read Damien at least three or four times, basically coz it left no trace at all in my memory, and I still have no memory of it at all. What does that tell you about a book? Hesse's poetry is probably better than his novels. I am game to try the Glass Bead Game.

Hardy, I have not read either of those, but I have read some of the others: Far from the Madding Crowd is good. I do think he belongs on a list like, though I agree with slick, that some writers you only need one sample.

Gissing yes yes yes!!!!!! Let's have more of him! Fantastic writer and sadly rather unknown these days. New Grub Street is excellent, and so is The Nether World.

Hemingway. oh please. let's not go there (again).

Greene is always a good prose stylist, but I always want to shake his characters and give them a good slap, and tell them "There is no God, ok, so enough already." He makes too much of the whole Catholic thing, especially in the Heart of the Matter which is not his best. His best is Brighton Rock, which is a masterpiece.

Goldsmith is hysterically funny, but I cannot remember which of him I have read and have not read.

Group read of Pamela or Shamela, anyone, slick?

On the last two lists, I've read --

both the Jameses -- way back in the 1970s and don't remember either so they obviously didn't make the impression that Portrait of a Lady did.
Kim when I was a kid
The Rainbow when I was about 16 -- god, I loved Lawrence then....
To Kill a Mockingbird, of course
The Vicar of Wakefield
both the Hardys -- neither as good as Tess of the Durbervilles
The Heart of the Matter
Catch 22 -- brilliant
The Sun Also Rises -- mostly I remember Ava Gardner in the film and "Isn't pretty to think so?"
Steppenwolf -- still pretty intriguing

Hey, I added a quick 4 more!

As for the Sun Also Rises, I thought Brett was the bomb. I always fall for the unattainable bad girls.

>65 urania1: Urania, I also want to know why you are not impressed with the list? Are you saying that these books should not be on the list, or are you just disapppointed that you have not got more reading recommendations from it?

Feline minds want to know.

>69 absurdeist:
I was brought up to believe that Rimbaud "truly started it" and that had there been no Rimbaud, there'd be no school of surrealism in Art either.

I daresay this is right. Rimbaud is one of my saints, btw. He was truly great, for a short short time.

J'ai seul la clef de cette parade...

tcM: Savage Detectives has a big Rimbaud influence. If you are looking for a list that inspires you with reading material you might not have known of - I've noticed that the Best 100 Scottish books list looks quite promising: it contains many books that i, at least, have not heard of and that sound worthy of attention.
http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/The+List+100+Best+Scottish+Books

The Guardian 1000 is a good list, but not a lot of surprises in my cursory review.

Greatness is like a candle, sometimes it burns steady, but slow. Other times it burns white hot for an instant and is gone. Poe, DFW, Flannery O'Connor, James Dean, Robert Johnson. I'm sure there are many others, if I just thought about it for awhile.

To add to burnt too quick: Breece D'J Pancake Suicide at 26.

I'm very excited about these next ten, so much so, in fact, that I ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEJGk8qfAgI thanks, Slick, I blame you for this (and so should everybody else, for turning me on to this band and their anthem!)

156 ~ The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-1960

157 ~ Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1984) ??? Really! That's a ballsiest pick so far, I'd say.

158 ~ Light in August by William Faulkner (1932)

159 ~ Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)

160 ~ A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (1869)

161 ~ Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (1894)

162 ~ Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes (1975) Massive, encyclopedic. Before their was Bolano and 2666, there was Terra Nostra and Fuentes. Read this little known, little read masterwork, and be amazed and so crazed you'll rave hours on end about it!

163 ~The Recognitions by William Gaddis (1955) If there exists a bridge linking Ulysses to Gravity's Rainbow, The Recognitions is it. Forgery v. authenticity; true faith v. ritual lip service; the most ambitious first novel ever written? That languished in obscurity until the author's second novel, JR, won the NB award 20 years later. I love this book. It is deep, difficult, as allusive as Ulysses, but a couple notches down from Joyce in the "hard-to-follow" factor. I don't understand why we're not reading it in '11! Who came up with the '11 list but did not include The Recognitions?! Point this person out to me pronto that I may publicly skewer them for their oversight!

164 ~ Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1864-1866)

165 ~ Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet (1942) Vastly superior novel in dealing with the loneliness of onanism than the previously discussed, Portnoy's Complaint. Has a better prison novel been written? A better interior monologue ever penned? You tell me.

Onanism? JCP was a big fan. Hands off on this one. Gaddis: I know that I should know better but I don't. Sorry. Gaskell: a good biog. of Charlotte Bronte, and can keep you turning the pages when on the storytelling gear. Flaubert: What I can say amounts to a very very little when it comes to this giant. Call me a parrot of Flaubert's parrot. Poor Scott: he promised to throw himself out of the window in worship of Joyce's art, maybe he should have; much trouble would have been avoided. Nabokov called Faulkner's efforts corn cobby chronicles, I took a class with Joe Blotner, he made F. interesting. He was a fantastic barby-kewer. Durrell is sometimes too much of a muchness, but we should always recognize our betters, and I do.

>88 absurdeist: the best prison novel and maybe the best interior monologue I've ever read is Genet's The Miracle of the Rose, but I on't know Our Lady of the Flowers--it makes me suddenly feel so old and wish I could go back and read it in 1998. This list is getting me down of a sudden. Anyway, the Alex quartet I feel like I missed a lot of somehow--Durrell's style is reticent in some ways, for somebody who's so interested in feelings and interactions--but I still enjoyed them. Sentimental Education I haven't reread because of a haunting fear that it will turn out to be better than Madame Bovary, which will entail some existential reevaluation on my part.

>89 Porius: "corn cobby chronicles" is just flippin' perfect.

which will entail some existential reevaluation on my part.

HAHA!

This lot is exciting. I love the Alexandria Quartet. Durrell is much more highly regarded in Europe than he is in the Anglo world. He's essentially a European writer. AQ was probable the most formative fictional read of my youth. I read it again about three years ago, and some existential reevaluation was required, but that's always a good and necessary thing.

Of Flaubert, I have only read Madame Bovary, which is one of the funniest books ever. I desperately keep meaning to read more of Flaubert (especially after Captain MAc's brilliant recent blog posts), but his books are hard to come by here.

Genet: Another one of my saints. Nice comments on that one Freeeeeaky. I'll read everything by him, and I think at some point I have.

I've read some Faulkner, but not that one, and I love Tender is the Night, although with a title culled from Keats, how could one go wrong?

The Recognitions, I agree, a modern Masterpiece. I read it three years ago, and need to read it again with a group for mutual support. It's ferociously difficult but in a good way. I probably got about 30% of it.

Erdirch, dunno, never even heard of it. A friend whose opinion is always right in these matters swears that Effi Briest is effing best, so that's on my wishlist, as is the Fuentes, after reading those comments.

Slick: Savage Detectives is on top of my post Dostoevsky wishlist. Thanks for the link to that other list.

I read The Alexandria Quartet many years ago. I recall I read all four without problem, but don't remember much about it. I keep thinking I should read it again. That's it for me from this bunch. I too have read Faulkner, but not that one. As far as that source of intellectual farts, Nabokov, is concerned, he really shouldn't knock his betters like that. I much prefer an honest corn cob to an arrogant ass wipe.

Okay,

First I hate lists. I don't like having to choose masterworks. Furthermore, most of these books do not meet my criteria, which are as follows: (1) I reread this book at least three times (for pleasure). (2) One can analyze this book through a many critical lenses and still get an interesting and full readings of the book. Lesser works typically lend themselves only to one or two critical sieves. They just do not give as much as masterworks.

And then there is my personal favorite list, which doesn't bear scrutiny, and I will never reveal it anywhere not even in my diary. My PhD would probably be revoked.

I will start with the books which I do not think belong on this list. Many of these books are quite good, but top 225? No.

So here goes: Off the List

1. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – a nice Victorian potboiler, but great literature? Please.

2. Rabbit Run – a whiny novel that I would put on the top 225 for whiny novels but would never include on a list of top novels . . . unless the list were long . . . very long.

3. All the King's Men – Again another light weight as far as top 225 books go. I doubt if it will be read 100 years from now by anyone except a few scholars.

4. White Teeth – Zadie Smith? Please

5. The Heart of Midlothian – I love Sir Walter Scott, but I think he's way too sentimental.

6. And Quiet Flows the Don – no.

7. One Day in the Life of Ivan Densovich – I read this book when I thirteen and was tremendously impressed by it; however, I think better books on the topic have been written.

8. McTeague – Much better than The Octopus but great literature????

9. Portnoy's Complaint – I simply dislike the man and his books.

10. Kim – I can see the colonialism angle, but . . .

11. The Rainbow – I have read a lot of D. H. Lawrence and have a hard time taking him seriously

12. Justine – Read it, was fascinated by it, would probably put it on a longer list.

13. Julie; or, The New Eloise – I have taught this book, but I am not sure how much it produces in terms of discussion. Why read this book when one can read his philosophical works.

14. The Naked and the Dead – Read this one when I was 14. My thoughts? Can we just take outside and shoot? Whoop . . . too late.

15. Against the Grain – I am ambivalent about this one. I could be persuaded to change my mind.

Books that Deserve to be on the List

16. The Confessions of Zeno

17. Kristin Lavransdatter

24. To Kill a Mockingbird

18 At Swim-Two-Birds

19. The Mysteries of Udolpho – the greatest work in its genre

20. Wide Sargasso Sea

21. Cry, The Beloved Country

22. Love in the Time of Cholera

23. The Cairo Trilogy

24. The House of Mirth

25. Pamela

The Latest Additions

Books to Kick Off the List

1. New Grub Street – I wouldn't include George Gissing on any greats list.

2. The Vicar of Wakefield – Charming. I loved it when I read it. But then I had been locked up in a small town with only Reader's Digest condensed books to read. I tried it again recently. It simply didn't work for me.

3. Steppenwolf – Please, what is the big deal with Hesse?

4. The Mayor of Casterbridge – I like this book and think it is one of Hardy's best, but if the list is limited to 225, I'll back Jude the Obscure or Tess of the d'Urbervilles

5. The Heart of the Matter – I love this book, but on a list limited to 225?

6. Catch-22

8. The Sun Also Rises – Hate, hate, hate this book . . . Hemingway much overrated.

9. Love Medicine

Leave on the List

10. Jude the Obscure

11. Tender is the Night

12. A Sentimental Education

13. Effie Briest

14. Wives and Daughters

well, I'm more or less with you on most of this, with the notable exception of Gissing, who is really good, and Against the Grain.

>94 urania1: well, there should probably be one good Victorian potboiler on the list, right? Although in that case it should probably be The Moonstone.

or the lair of the white worm.

Hurrah for Urania !!!!!!!!!!!!

Isn't it interesting, Urania oh so hates these lists, and yet, yet, there she is, adding to the list, subtracting from the list, making evocative proclamations about the list. Truth is, she secretly loves lists and could not read without them! Admit it, Urania!

146 ~ Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (1900)

147 ~ The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (1907)

148 ~ Adolphe by Benjamin Constant (1816)

149 ~ Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (1963) Very pleased to see this fun, "experimental" type novel included.

150 ~ The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (1970-1975) I'm pleased for Porius, since I know Porius will be pleased. Though, should not Robertson Davies made at least the top 125? Yes or no. Let's argue and fight and fume furiously!

151 ~ Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997) A mistake in my estimation. Should've been White Noise included, not the highly overrated and anticlimactic ending, Underworld. Truth be told, only the first 100 pages or so focused on the chase for the "shot heard round the world," the mythic baseball Bobby Thompson hit in '51, were brilliant in my mind. The novel lost me in its sweeping narrative shifts. I'll never critique the actual writing, the way his words set together one word, one note at a time, make music, but the music gets lost for me in the mishmash of convoluted story lines, so that I couldn't discern whatever symphony it was Delillo was attempting to compose. Call me obtuse. Could be true.

152 ~ Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens (1855-57). Too low. Not every Dickens should be top 100, but I'll argue this one should.

153 ~ The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869)

154 ~ The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle (1987-1991) I haven't read it. I know Doyle won the Booker for one in this trilogy. I guess the question is, is he that good to last like those directly above and below him?

155 ~ Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900) Does Dreiser really deserve to be on a top 225 list, or would a top 1,000 list be more appropriate for his oeuvre? And I happen to like Dreiser, especially An American Tragedy, overwritten as it is, but I'm not convinced he's tier A Literary level quality. Tier B, top 500 definitely, but how high Burt has Sister Carrie and especially An American Tragedy strains credulity imo.

# 88

Hey EF, what did those concert special effects cost, about 10 Krone?

Weren't those special buttfects spectacular. Dunno the cost; worth whatever it was I'd say.

76> No, The Leopard was untossable. Cheap reading copy in bad shape, but better than nothing until I can find a better quality upgrade.

I tossed The Glass Bead Game --pricey!-- for another pricey work, Miss Macintosh, My Darling in two volumes, that I knew I could not no way no how pass up as Urania would've probably strangled me otherwise for doing so. And since it does come with such a high recommendation from Urania, I knew that was the pricier one to grab. Especially as it's rarely available in a brick and mortar store. I saw it, let out a hoot, and returned poor Hesse to the "H" section of The Bookman in Orange, CA.

I'm in there so often (at least once a month) that I've gotten to know the owners a bit, and they're very hip knowledgeable book people. I hope some here will check out their link above and order online from The Bookman as they could use your business.

I'm tired of seeing brick and mortar stores go out of business and this one is one of the last remaining most supremo of them. I'm not being paid for this Bookman plug, btw. These sellers really do know their stuff, can't say enough about them.

So, Please please please do peruse their online aisles and help keep them in business. Again, it's ...

The Bookman in Orange, CA. A local treasure for us bibliophiles.

I assume we'll see more of Conrad, but neither of those would even be in my top 5 of his. I'm also pleased to see the Deptford Trilogy on the list--we get Davies so crammed down our throats up here as part of CanLit official culture that it takes time, or did for me, to realize he's no Carol Shields or Timothy Findley--he's actually fantastic.

Roddy Doyle??????? Roddy fucking Doyle? Is this a Freeeeeky joke, or is this for real? Next we'll be having Angela's Blasted Ashes, and then some Jodi Picoult.

Everything by Dostoevsky or Dickens belongs in the top 30. Conrad, in the top 50. (I'm interested as to what your top 5 Conrad novels would be, Martin, I rate The Secret Agent highly)

Hopscotch, yes, Underworld yes - and I agree, the first section at the ball park is fantastic writing, and I hate baseball, it bores me to suicide, but I was gripped by the writing - Deptford Trilogy is probably too low on the list.

Dreiser. Meh. Meh. Meh.

I have not read the Benjamin Constant. Urania, is it good?

Dreiser was a great friend of JCP. He gets lost in the details, certainly, but what of that? I wrote a poem about his piano-playing song-writing brother Paul Dresser (he changed his name, making it less German) once, once. Davies is one of my all time favorites. Saw him many times at Stratford, Ont. I hoped that he would live longer than he did, but it will be close to 20 since his death. I've read him backwards and forwards, I'm mad about Davies. Joseph Conrad showed up in H.G. Wells' Autobiography, Shaw told him his books would never do. Conrad was insulted and was feeling the need for satisfaction. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed and no blood was shed. I enjoyed his CHANCE, though we landlubbers are not spoken too highly of therein. Knowing about Maria Beadnell, etc. makes LITTLE DORRITT more enjoyable. Dickens was not known as the 'Inimitable' for nothing. After Shaw read LITTLE DORRITT it was easier to become a 'socialist.' Dostoyevsky read Dickens with pleasure and profit.

>104 QuentinTom: well 1 and 2 would be Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, although I am not confident about that order. 3 is Under Western Eyes, which I haven't read since I was a callow teen (all of these I read within the same year or so when I was like 14-15), but which I hope would stand up--I rate it better than The Secret Agent simply because it immerses you so well in that Russian revolutionary exile world. 4 is Youth, which I love for its overthetopness ("Youth! Ah, youth!"). Next would actually be The Secret Agent, now that I list it all out, so I guess it is in my top 5--I wonder too whether I'd like it better now; when I read it I was deep in a Graham Greene phase and The Secret Agent just seemed to do what he often does in an earlier, more primitive, less polished and relevant way (although Greene's whole Catholic deal at the time seemed highly "relevant" to me, so as I say it may be that things have changed). 6 is The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', 7 and 8 are Victory and Typhoon (I'd have to reread them to decide on an order, but I remember them being fun sea stories from an obvious master--stronger than early Melville and almost as good as Jack London. Last is Lord Jim, which (or more accurately, who, meaning Jim himself) always kind of pissed me off for sort of postcolonial reasons. It was cool seeing Marlow, though--I read some autobio blurb that my dad wrote for some something around the time I got heavy into Conrad, where he was talking about how Marlow is the major literary character he's always identified with, and it made me positively disposed toward the guy. It occurs to me to wonder how much our ratings skew because of memory and changes in ourselves, and how different my list would be if I was reading the books now. Pretty sure that's all of his I've read.

#75 - I rather think the Glass Bead Game is about the most original of Hesse and the best. I went through a period of reading him - Siddartha, the Journey East, Steppingwolf, Narcissus and Goldman. If I were going to reread any it would be the Glass Bead Game. I remember it as having a weight the others didn't.

OK, I also read the Alex. Quartet, all 4 of them. My favorite of the 4 was Mountolive.

Nothing else off that list. I think I read something by Fuentes, but I don't think it was Terra Nostra.

Next ten:

I am pretty sure I read the Secret Agent but not Lord Jim. I read a bunch of Conrads one after the other about seven or eight years ago and I don't remember them very well.

I read the Deptford Trilogy but I was too young to really like it. I liked the Cornish Trilogy much better.

I also read Sister Carrie much too young. I was around 14 or 15 and it was on my mother's shelf along with Madame Bovary and really I should have waited about 10 years and I would have loved both of them but all I remember is being completely disgusted with the unlikeable characters.

I've been inspired, or maybe prodded, by the discussion here to read Tender Is the Night. I don't know why I haven't; I thought The Great Gadsby was great. Perhaps I can break my streak of books recently begun and put aside: it's up to five now.

Fitzgerald strikes me as right up your alley, Piero. Economy and precision of words to maximum effect. I've always wanted to read The Last Tycoon after watching De Niro's performance in the movie version.

136 ~ The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (1949) one of my finest reading evocative reading expereriences from the last decade. Love it. Show me a better, more powerful finale and I'll show you some beach front property in North Dakota.

137 ~ The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (1945) need to read, recently acquired The Sleepwalkers

138 ~ Villette by Charlotte Bronte (1853)

139 ~ Evelina by Fanny Burney (1778)

140 ~ Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972) I've nearly read it, if that counts, have had it in my hands with every intention of reading it, only for it to fall off the nightstand or slip between the couch cushions; it is a slim volume, not my fault.

141 ~ The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela (1942)

142 ~ Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1932)

143 ~ Rene by Francois-Rene Chateaubriand (1802)

144 ~ Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999) Yet another curve, er, screwball. I don't know. Isn't Waiting for the Barbarians Coetzee's finest hour? Really!? on a top 225 list?!

145 ~ The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

The Moonstone starts with a bang like the introductory set piece from a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie. Its not always as engrossing, even sags at one point, but its a great book.

Sheltering Sky is one of my favorites. Love Paul Bowles.

I only recently read Jane Eyre and it made a believer out of me. Guess I need to read Vilette. However, this is another place where I have to wonder - two Charlotte Bronte novels on a list of only 225?

Every time I take a look at Death of Virgil at the bookstore I decide there are a lot of other books I would rather read.

I will read Journey to the End of Night next year, come hell or high water.

I dig Calvino but have not yet dug Invisible Cities. Again, on a list of 225, how many Calvinos can you have? If you take more than one (and If on a Winter's Night a Traveller HAS to make the list) would it be this one?

My spouse read Evelina last year and enjoyed it, but I have the distinct impression she wouldn't assume it would end up on a 225 best list. Although, when you sit down to make a list and find yourself weighing all the different considerations, its a different game than reacting to someone else's choices.

I'm kind of sick of novels. It's a piddling little genre that's seen a little bit of truly great work over the last two or three centuries in Europe and the Americas and an absolutely mind-blowingly enormous amount of absolute rubbish.

Does anyone have a nice list that covers literature, not just novels? Or do we have to do that one ourselves?

--A_Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon? Heretic!

I'm currently reading The Moonstone for the first time. Most books don't get a second time with me. I find it interesting and in some places even pfunny. The section provided by Miss Clack is one of the greatest character assassinations of all time. The sad thing is I actually know a Miss Clack or two. I liked The Woman in White better.

I'm somewhat infuriated at the moment at the premise of this work. I know we aren't supposed to drag 21st century sensibilities into 19th century lit, but the premise on which this novel is built is extremely offensive to me, so far. I don't know how it turns out, and please no spoilers, but if the Indians don't wind up with the Moonstone, I won't be happy. Is it possible for someone to steal something that belongs to them? I find the idea that the Indians are trying to steal what rightfully belongs to them unconscionable. Do property rights only accrue to Westerners. It appears they do. Anyway, enough sermonizing.

Only if the individual Indians are serving the nation or whoever might have had a valid claim to the stone at that point!

Journey to the End of Night and Death on the Installment Plan: they go together. I almost finished The Sleepwalkers. It's a book in three parts, and I completed two, which nowadays is a personal accomplishment.

Having perused the list, all I can say is there better be a whole lot of Faulkner still to come - only 1 of the first 145! I'm betting these jokers will forget Pierre and Typee and only put Moby Dick on, too.

Urania's post is near spot on - I might quibble with a couple of calls, but they are close calls in each case, ones that, if they go on, should go at the bottom of the list either way and might well get pushed off when we see what else is on.

Nothing from the early days of the Novel in Japan and the Middle East. I trust we'll see Genji and its friends and 1001 nights and its bretheran nearer the top. But Bocaccio should have shown up by now. You know, that collection of 100 stories each longer than Miss Lonelyhearts, 10 of which are as good or better? I'm not sure how they define novel, but Miss Lonelyhearts inclusion opens doors.

Speaking of which, where's Ms. Lispector?! Hmmmm??

Any predictions, seeing what is missing, as to what the top ten will be? The usual suspects?

I GUARANTEE YOU, a Curmudgeon I'd like to Bludgeon, that of the next ten, four you've probably never read, let alone heard of.

Moby Dick isn't even in the top 5! And there's already been a Japanese novel on the list. It's a Good list, damn you, UnA_musing! This list doesn't get predictable until the top 68, I'll have you know, which is why I'll be ending the list at 70. You'll have to buy the book to find out who wins. Let's just say it ain't Joyce, and it ain't Proust, and it ain't Dostoyevski, and it ain't Tolstoy either, nor Melville, nor Faulkner, nor Dickens, nor Flaubert, nor Eliot, nor Mann, nor Weissman, nor Balzac, nor Woolf ...

I hope you're happy now.

Fanny Burney Madame D'Arblay (1752 - 1840), was the daughter of the great music historian Charles Burney and a great friend of the Great Cham of Literature and Mrs.Thrale (Piozzi) 1741 -1821). Lotsa greats, no? Your either in or out with EVELINA 1778, CECILIA 1782, Camilla; or A Picture of Youth 1796, THE WANDERER or Female Difficulties 1814, She wrote several plays, kept a Diary all her life, a journal, wrote letters, voluminous if not as entertaining as 'Davy' Garricks, and wrote a memoir of Dr. Burney, a long standing member of Sam: Johnson's club. Her work shows an interest in social behavior and the formation of the female personality. Some say that Dr. Johnson had a malign influence on her writing style, but humor and lively observation were almost always apparent. She owed much to that generous, and comforter of the young person, especially female, Samuel Richardson. Her work would have an influence on Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth.
Sorry, I get carried away now and then.
Gore Vidal thought much of Bowles, and what little I have sampled I agree. Villette is set in Macumbeira's neck of the woods, probably culled from C.B's work experiences. Wilkie Collins and Dickens were thick as thieves. Subtlety always takes a backseat to suspense with W.C., but we turn the pages with interest as always. If on a winter night a Calvino.

I liked Kokoru. I wouldn't knock it off the list, from what I've seen so far. But it's not even a shadow of Genji, which I trust we will see later.

I look forward to books I haven't heard of that someone thinks are great - I live for those! I hope you win your bet, O Freeeeeequay one.

Ezra Pound, that obnoxious but brilliant small-minded fascist, did the best job of describing what he meant by "great literature" in the ABC of Reading, a nifty little collection of his prejudices. He looked to that which broke new ground, that did something different or unexpected.* 2/3 of what's on that list doesn't make the cut, though I'd defend Kokuro on that score (which did as good a job of ripping off British form for the benefit of Japanese literature as Cervantes did in ripping off Moorish form for the benefit of Spanish literature, or Dante did when he stole hell from the Arabs). I read this list as simply "good reads", which is fine, but not the criteria I'd endorse. Example: Hemingway and F. Scott are both "good reads". Neither licks Faulkner's boots as far as greatness. OR, for that matter, Nathaniel West or James M. Cain, each of whom had more originality to their name.

It's not a bad list, though. A few interesting tidbits.

* This is why he kept flailing about trying to do something different. Too bad he failed. His old buddy TS just clobbered him on all fronts.

Oh, please, don't get freeque on us now, enrique. Take us to the end of the list, to numero uno, please?

Suspense dgene Suspense.

Wow, I've only read the Cela out of this ten. And only because I was a spanish major.

I will probably read the Calvino at some point because I read If on a winter's night a traveler... and absolutely LOVED it, a few months ago.

Freeque it is no fair to stop at 70!

No Weissman? Bummer.

$five says number one is Don Quixote.

It usually is.

I'm not taking your bet.

Henri,

If

"it ain't Joyce, and it ain't Proust, and it ain't Dostoyevski, and it ain't Tolstoy either, nor Melville, nor Faulkner, nor Dickens, nor Flaubert, nor Eliot, nor Mann, nor Weissman, nor Balzac, nor Woolf ..."

why bother with this list ?

Hope then it is the " Old Testament" on number 1.

Well, if it's the Tale of Genji because it's the first real novel, and great to boot, I understand.

If it's Don Quixote, because it's the first real novel, and great to boot, I'm going to be very confused.

I would greatly applaud the old testament as a choice. Good stuff. Moses really kicks it.

>129 A_musing: Am I to understand that you do not think Don Quixote is great?!?!? He had a hard life, man! Give him a rest.

Or just that he's not the first novel. In which case, fine.

I remember the first man in space was Alan Shepard, what was that, a year after Yuri Gagarin? The first man to orbit the earth was John Glenn, what two years after Yuri Gagarin? We have a very hard time crediting others with getting there first. It is much more important to the psyche of the West that Don Quixote be the first novel. Who ever heard of The Tale of Genji? Japan didn't even exist a thousand years ago.

The great irony is that Don Quixote was written by the Moor Hamete Benengeli, and Cervantes is merely a translator.

>130 MeditationesMartini:, I am happy to see the great Quixote as high on the list as one may place it, even right behind Moby Dick up in the second spot, but as anyone who reads it knows, it wasn't even the first novel in the West, since poor Quixote is himself quite a reader of novels and romances. It belongs where it belongs for the right reason, not the wrong one.

Moby is NOT the #1 novel. Far from it. If you have to peg an English language number one, its Ulysses. Moby belongs on such a list but it is terribly overrated.

And speaking of great novelists writing in something other than English, we've not seen Dumas yet.

During the final chase, one of Great Whale's advantages is that the poor wretches who seem to think themselves his equal have trouble seeing him. He dives unexpectedly, surfaces unexpectedly, claims his victims, and disappears in the water again, and then all is just as it was, there, in the open ocean, 5,000 years ago.

Moby Dick is not, I repeat not, overrated.
It is a fantastic book and will still be read in a 100 years.

Breugel's ICARUS

Clarification: Moby Dick IS a fantastic book that will still be read in 100 years - but it is not "the best book of all time" or a contender for that title!

Breugel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Well, on this list it's not number one. We're told it's not even in the top 5. So it's probably number 6.

I'm guessing Quixote at 1, with Joyce and Proust nipping at his heals. The top 10 will include Genji as well as Magic Mountain and a Dostoevsky. Fielding will get an undeserved nod for being early in English, and War and Peace will get thrown in as well, because this list likes the readable. That's my guess on 8 of the top 10. I'm not sure who the last two will be. Kafka maybe? Or is that too much of a challenge. Maybe a Chinese book? Dream, perhaps? No, this isn't that international a list. Bovary, maybe. Though the Red and the Black is better, but Bovary has a following among those who like readable narratives.

But of course Moby Dick is a contender for best novel. For best book? Much stiffer competition, and may not be on the top there. Going up against Homer, the Bible, the Mahabharata - that's not easy.

I don't think a list of "best books" comparing novels to poetry to religious texts is even a valid concept. I don't know how I would compare, for example, Infinite Jest to the Old Testament or Ulysses to the Mahabarata, especially if one has to "win" against the other. Just too different.

>138 A_musing:, yeah, those seem like pretty safe bets for a conservative list. I would venture also Old Goriot or a Dumas as an alternative French entry, and wonder if, should we lose Bovary, we might possibly see Anna Karenina subbing in for War and Peace (not otherwise--as if all novels are about is adultery and tragic ends!).

Oh! But what about Middlemarch? Or one postmodern entry? Pynchon? One more respectable modernist? The Sound and the Fury? At least one woman? Jane Eyre?

As the title of Burt' s book is The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, historical merit is not necessarily a consideration. So far all we are seeing, as Freeque points out at the top, are the 100 Honorable Mentions (in reverse alphabetical not whose-book-is-better order). Following which, if he's still up to it, we get the 100 - now 125 apparently - GREATEST NOVELS OF ALL TIME!

It is hard to make a list like that because, as many good books as you can name, they suggest others you will be leaving out. Try it!

E.F. - are the 100 (or 125) GREATEST in any order other than alphabetical? You can credibly identify 100 outstanding books. Ranking them against each other seems like a fool's errand.

Middlemarch, sure. Anything by George Eliot would be fine with me, and I know this is the one the critics like the best. (I am just a common reader, and prefer others that are not quite so sad. So sue me.)

Jane Eyre - am I the only person who loves 19th century lit who does not like it?

I agree with 138 that Red & Black is a much better book than Mme Bovary. I love the Dumas novels especially The Count of Monte Cristo. (There is a terrific old Egyptian movie made based on the Dumas story, called "The Prince of Revenge." So now you know.)

The top 125 are ranked based on Burt's opinion. He admits as much, that it's a fool's errand, but that he likes how it generates such good discussion in his classroom (and in the salon).

I also have the 2004 edition, so we'll compare/contrast to see what alterations he made over the past six years, thought the '04 ed. only has a top 100 listing.

I will say that all the theorizing as to numerical rankings ... every top ten pick has been mentioned, but not in the right order ... yet.

Here's something to do battle over: the 12th and the 14th picks are occupied by two hotly debated authors over in the KINGDOME HALL (Sp?) thread.

Name whether it's Dickens or Twain in the higher slot, and name which books Burt picked. Twain is obvious, which book; Dickens not so obvious.

Kafka and Dream of the Red Chamber don't even make the top 40 cut!

And here's another exciting question: Which author on the list is the first one to have a second title ranked on the list, and which books are they?

I propose a Salon thread (later) in which those members who care to list their "100 GREATEST BOOKS I HAVE READ" - not just novels. 100 may be too many to compose and slog through. Top fifty? Also, no historical or scholarly element to worry about. Forget about the importance of the work to the development of the novel or the zeitgeist of anyone but yourself. I'd like to weed out those works you feel like you would have to include in a canon though you did not get as much out of them. It would be interesting to see the overlap and explore the more unique choices.

Such an endeavor would allow for Aristophanes. I'd like that. Lysistrata is one of my favorite plays, as is The Clouds. Brack-a-ka-kak-koax-koax, brack-a-ka-kak-koax.

144 - I love that idea! That seems more interesting to me than continuing this list actually. I've already looked at this list many times, and I don't find it very interesting anymore.

Call me impulsive, spontaneous, whatever, but is anybody against hitting the pause button on this, Burt's list, and going with slick's idea? That's a liberating idea: just listing the books you actually like and aren't supposed to like. Dune is going on my list, I can tell you that right now. Time to vote, whether we pause this mostly redundant list right now! My vote is yes. If most of you vote no I may have no choice but to veto your votes.

at least give us the top 20 now

Damn you No Voters, all of you!

126 ~ The Bridal Canopy by S.Y. Agnon (1931)

127 ~ The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982)

128 ~ Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado (1966)

129 ~ Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

130 ~ Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand (1935)

131 ~ The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (1945)

132 ~ The President by Miguel Angel Asturias (1946)

133 ~ Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)

134 ~ The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll (1974)

135 ~ The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938)

Lucky Jim? Blech. Djuna Barnes has always intrigued me, but I have yet to read her.

Some old favorites here, a couple that have lingered on the tbr list, and just one with which I'm not familiar.

Boll and Andric are both fantastic. Boll ought to have multiples on the list, with what going where more a personal choice, and Andric ought to be in the top 100. I've been gathering up Andric's "other books" to read, but have only gotten to his doctoral dissertation, which is wonderful as well. Nightwood is an adolescent classic - wonderful at the time, but I don't know how it would fare now. Seething with high modernism and deeply self-absorbed. Fun language.

Bowen and Asturias have long been on the list to be read, but never made it to the top. I think of the movie more than the book when I think of Dona Flor - has anyone read it? I don't know Agnon at all. I've seen Untouchable around, but it's always looked like one of those books written by an Indian for a Western audience. Anyone have a first hand impression?

Lucky Jim and Isabel Allende? Really? I thought they were just airport books.

I'm looking forward to Slick's list. I say we list the "greatest books" without regard to number. There is a sort of natural break somewhere, where you move from life altering reads to merely great ones.

My guess on who shows up with two books first is going to be Joyce or Dostoevsky. Finnegan's Wake is the most admired unread book around. The choice between Crime and Punishment and Brothers K is impossibly difficult, though I'd go with the Brothers.

And I think the only woman on the top 10 is going to be Murasaki Shukibu with Tale of Genji - no Western Woman. Though Middlemarch is an interesting idea. I haven't read it, but it seems to have a large and growing following.

Very much enjoyed LUCKY JIM this past summer. Amis was a good bookman. Read NIGHTWOOD many years ago but it has receded into memory. Maybe I'll dig it out this Pfall. I've got a gaggle of Bowens' but not read yet.

Only the Allende in this batch. I liked it very much.

I happened to be reading The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum during the height of the Amanda Knox legal travesty that went on Italy a year or so ago, and I was stunned by the similarities between Amanda's case and Boll's book. Life imitating art (somewhat). Only Boll I've readed; greatly enjoyed it.

There's a little seen salonista hereabouts somewhere, though, who told me once that Heinrich Boll was "a puny man" and "a puny novelist". I gathered from that she didn't like Heinrich Boll much. I look forward to reading more of his stuff. Billiards at Half Past Nine and The Clown are around here somewhere.

I've read two Allende, Eva Luna and Zorro, both of which I really liked, but not that one.

Oh how I love different lists.........

I have to say out of the novels listed so far I am very ashamed to say I have only read one so far and that is The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. But I do have some of the others in my TBR pile. So hopefully I will be able to say "I have read that" on the top 100. :(

Ah, geez. So much to catch up on.

I have read:

Jekyll & Hyde 216
Rabbit, Run 219
All the King's Men (currently reading, so I'll count it) 221. It's brilliant.
White Teeth 200 (a bit baffled, but whatever)
Wide Sargasso Sea 201, love this book but...actually this whole list seems more than a little arbitrary, but, again, whatever
Love in the Time of Choloera 190 - this seems about right to me.
Ada, 193 TRAVESTY!!!!! 193 193 193? Anyhoo
To Kill a Mockingbird

I think Rabbit, Run might should be higher. The whole series, socially? sociologically?, is important.
I'm not sure what the social significance of Ada is, but it should be in the top ten of all top lists of books.

157: Apparently they are in reverse alpha order and not in order of importance. He only ranks the top 125, according to Brent.

156> Oh don't be ashamed. I'm pretty sure Urania#1 has only read three and A_Musing has only read two.

157> Yeah, the order from 126 to 225 isn't really Burt's order per se, but simply an extra 100 "honorable mentions" he made that didn't quite make his top 125 cut. I've "ranked them" in reverse alphabetical order. For all I know, what I've ranked 225 Burt might've ranked 126, had he ranked these bottom 100, rather than merely list them alphabetically by author.

The next ten you'll see listed are in numerical order, Burt's "official" top 125 listing from his revised, 2010 ed. of The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time.

What I especially like about this book, is that Burt provides in depth rationale for each of his top 125 picks (wish he'd done so for his honorary mentions, but it's a big book as it is) essentially writing 4-5 page essay/reviews per book a la Jason Pettus or our own tomcatMurr, in which he sets down the historical and artistic significance of each novel and why he thinks it belongs in whatever position on his list.

For instance, of the 125th pick, Burt explains:

"In his influential 1884 essay, "The Art of Fiction," Henry James advocated for the adventure genre as a serious art form in general and ________ _______ in particular. Not just a story for boys, _______ _______ tooks its place in the literary canon as a singular and beloved novel for all ages."

Can you name the novel?

Ragged Dick? It's said this book inspired Lord Baden-Powell to invent the Boy Scouts.

Please, please don't anyone mention Finnegan's Wake again, at least until there is reason. It might inspire another of Fearless Leader's amazing parodies. I don't think I ever laughed so hard as I did at the first parody of this work I "read" by EF. Incroyable.

Hm. On >159 absurdeist:, I think the choices are Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Rudyard Kipling. You have two spaces for the name and two for the title. 3 words in RLS, and I can't think of JV novel with two spaces, so I'm left with Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling - but that doesn't seem right.

Huck Finn?

162: That's what I assumed.

The two spaces delineate the same work, not the author's name, (sorry about that confusion); though A_musing did name the right author.

On the question of which author is the first to have a second book ranked, you're going to be surprised: Dostoyevksi is the third writer to get a second work on the list; and Joyce is the sixth. The second writer to get a second book ranked did not even make the top 10 with their highest ranking novel.

Huck Finn? in the 125th spot?!

Didn't either of you read post 143 where it was stated: "Here's something to do battle over: the 12th and the 14th picks are occupied by two hotly debated authors over in the KINGDOME HALL (Sp?) thread.

Name whether it's Dickens or Twain in the higher slot, and name which books Burt picked. Twain is obvious, which book; Dickens not so obvious."

Huck Finn is either 12 or 14, w/in two spots of Dickens' highest ranking.

and Gene, in all seriousness, thank you for kind words!

>150 A_musing: Temporarily surfacing: Untouchable I do not think was written for its potential impact on a western audience. Based on my limited exposure to history of India, it seemed to be an accurate portrayal by an Indian of reality in India. Definitely worth reading, although whether it deserves the "rating" given by Burt is another question.

116 ... The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1860)

"Collins's biographer Nuel Davis called The Woman in White 'probably the most popular novel written in England during the nineteenth century,' and critic Henry Peter Sucksmith has hailed it 'the greatest melodrama ever written'. It is, arguably, the first and best thriller ever conceived, the first mystery novel to feature private investigators (Walter Hartright and Marian Halcombe), what literary historian John Sutherland has suggested may be 'the first Mafia novel (with Fosco as the proto-Godfather)', and the archetypal page-turner that added to the experience of novel reading almost unbearable suspense."

117 ... Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1929)

"...Tanizaki has the reputation of the outlaw whose obsession with 'lust, cleptomania, sadomasochism, homosexuality, foot-fetishism, and coprophilia,' in a list compiled by the critic Anthony Chambers, has marked him as a connoisseur of the unsavory..."

118 ... A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipual (1979)

119 ... Cold Nights by Ba Jin (1947)

120 ... Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

121 ... The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe (1962)

"It is an irony not missed by Japanese critics that Kōbō Abe's The Woman in the Dunes, the best-known novel of the best-known postwar Japanese novelist, is probably the least Japanese, owing far more to the works of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett than to the Japanese literary tradition. As Hisaaki Yamaouchi has pointed out, Abe 'is probably the first Japanese writer whose works, having no distinctly Japanese qualities, are of interest to the Western audience because of their universal relevance'.

122 ... Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

123 ... The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844)

124 ... The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

125 ... Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

Now we're getting into it! I think Treasure Island is better than The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Three Musketeers is better than Dracula, and I could find room for all of them in the bigger list/my heart, but it's only the Dumas that I am 100% confident belongs in the top 125.

Topsy-turvy. Gone With the Wind. Ouch. As my old friend Eddie-baby would have said: 'Shut -up.' I read from a collection of RLS on my plane ride out west, excellent. William Wilkie is kool, as Charles Boles might put it. Sir ACD is on the outside looking in. Dumas pere, fils, blood - what. VSN, higher than Caradoc Evans, I don't think so. I prefer Sheridan le Fenu to the author of DRACULA.
Yes I admit to being somewhat nettled. If 'Cold nights' is better than 'Venus and the Voters', well I'm going to have to ask somebody to step outside.

Im with MeditationesMartini now we're getting into the good stuff. I have 3 out of 10. Dracula and Gone With the Wind true classics and loved both of them. Treasure Island I can understand why its here because after reading it I see references all in daily life. So looking forward to the rest.

A fun group.

A Bend in the River is simply haunting. It's one of those books whose images are often at the back of my mind and it colors how I perceive of much of Africa, though I know it really shouldn't. The town forming and dissipating, the jungle advancing and receding. I have many quibbles with Naipaul, but this writing is grand and eternal. This one is heads and shoulders above the rest I've read here.

123, 124 and 125 are all great fun. I'm sorely disappointed I've not gotten my kids into either Three Musketeers or Treasure Island, though I've tried. I agree that Dumas is at a literary level neither Treasure Island nor Hound even try to approach, but Conan Doyle's work is truly iconic pop culture and deserves a place. I think Treasure Island will fade over time, and will just be a nifty period piece. I miss it already.

I may be fonder of the Dracula industry than the book itself. More great movies from this book than any other. Really, does anyone think the craftsmanship here is at the level of either the Murnau or Herzog screenplay? Stoker is not Poe (does Poe make the list? Or are his works too short?). Still, the story itself is riveting.

Frankly, my Cervidae, Gone with the Wind doesn't belong here. It's only lasting importance is as a script for a star vehicle, and if that's what we're ranking, let's put Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? on the list well above this one. The movie is not even very good, though the performances are among the most notable ever. I'd be interested in how Burt justifies this choice, now that we're in to the ones he writes about. I've not read the Wilkie Collins, Junichiro Tanazaki, Kobe Abe or Ba Jin, but would love to get to all of them.

Argh, Gone with the Wind? Really? It's a potboiler.

Three Musketeers, Treasure Island, he's on a roll with the adventure novels, isn't he?

Hound of the Baskervilles, that's nice to see a Conan Doyle on such a list. And Dracula. Boy, this is the "genre ten", isn't it. Mystery, horror (well, early horror I guess), thriller/adventure, and epic romance. Where's the Tolkien? Seems like he should be rounding this out.

Anyhow, provincial reader that I am, those are it for me.

I also wanted to mention: The statement about the Japanese novel does not really make me want to read it.

Sorry for earlier confusion.

I see GWTW's significance for the US. In that respect it's huge (no need to go over why, I think), and I think it has also contributed largely to ...well, there's something, and something American I sense, about making a character like Scarlett a heroine. I believe that both she and Rhett serve as templates. And as such have, possibly, a more global effect. Sorry not more coherent. Need more coffee.

Of the three I've read: GWTW, Baskervilles and Dracula, I can see huge cultural effects: you know, PIs and vamps.

This last ten bothers me. I haven't read them books, but I get the impression that their being influential and well-known (and possibly original) is being given too much weight. I mean is Dracula really a great read? Or is it just there because the idea of Dracula and vampires has become such a big cultural thing and it all points back to Dracula (does it?)?

What I'm trying to say is that if they are on the list simply because they are influential...ok, but that doesn't make me want to read them. If they are on the list because they are one the best existing 125 books out there, that's different. Does that make sense?

I'll take a look later at the (un)sound reasoning for Gone w/the Wind's inclusion and post an excerpt. Burt does, I think, weigh heavy a novel's inclusion based on it's historical and lasting cultural influence, rather than focusing solely on its high-artistic merits (which I'd prefer), and of which a Dracula, despite being a fun gothic-Victorian-erotica read, certainly lacks.

I don't know what exactly Burt's formula-for-inclusion is, other than it's idiosyncratic and seems to be a mish-mash consensus opinion (and not just his own) as he cites multiple critics in defending his picks. I completely agree that if GWTW gets on, where the heck is LOR? LOR, far more influential than GWTW.

What's not included on this list will be disturbing I fear.

Dracula is not the highest art, but having recently re-read it (last year, I think, maybe two) I can say it is quite a bit better than you'd expect for its being run down all the time. It has enough literary merit that, given its monumental cultural impact, its easily defensible. On the other hand, if someone made a list and left it off, I wouldn't say - "Hey, where's Dracula?"

I dig Abe. Abe is very Japanese, even if his writing style and absurd take, are not representative of "traditional Japanese literature." Does every English language writer need to reproduce the Canterbury Tales? Is it a virtue to eschew the influence of other cultures? I think not. Tanizaki is good, but that quote makes him sound a lot more interesting than he really is.

Love Dumas and Stevenson. Stevenson is an excellent writer. Dumas is too, though I've not read him in French.

To use a basketball metaphor, it's like comparing point guards, shooting guards, power forwards, and centers, which is absurd.

Mystery, science fiction, horror, romance even, what we call genre writing has its points. A_musing mentioned James M. Cain a while back, an excellent writer who does some things Dostoievski doesn't (and wouldn't want to), and vice versa. The same with Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, etc.

Which is to say that these listings would make more sense if they were done for different categories, one of which might be the historical significance of a book, which otherwise wouldn't be a serious entry for literary examination.

Let's get this Burt guy over here to defend himself. And to serve as a target, because it's just fun to throw things, but we don't need to tell him that.

I would take an accomplished genre novel over most typical literary fiction which seems to have become restricted to coming of age novels, novels about the academy and novels about couples or families. In the case of all, but especially that third catagory, the less imaginative it is the more literary it will be considered.

Well put, copyedit.

Sometimes I get tired of defending or qualifying my enjoyment of certain books. I'd like to find an articulate way to advocate for the valid and sometimes unquantifiable pull, possibly primal, of a really good story, even if it's not "literary fiction."

Margaret Mitchell may not have been to Iowa, but she did something that I believe will last for a good long time, and will appeal to many readers, even to some of us who occasionally make the effort to sound out the big words and stretch our plebeian minds around the high concepts of the Ishiguros and Morrisons and Nabokovs, et al.

A little grumpy today.

Woman in White
GWTW always excepted shorthand does not have a touchstone for the book itself. Anyway, I read it and loved it. It's a much better book than movie.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Treasure Island - Back when I had a career I used to tease people about passing them the black spot. They would usually look at me like they had no idea what I was talking about. I don't think as many people have read this book as one might think.

I have no problem with GWTW being on this list. It is the go to book for antebellum life in the South and what the Civil War wrought. Of course everyone who lives in Atlanta is/was proud of MM for this. Back in the olden times around 1970 the house in which this book was written had been broken up into tiny units and was a hippy flop house. Some of the places Piero frequented in I Think therefore Who Am I brought the old Mitchell house to mind. I had a couple of acquaintances who lived in the room in which this novel was written. When we moved to Texas there was a big fight about restoring the house or bulldozing it. I don't know who won. Judging by this it looks like the restorers won. It didn't look at all like that when my friends lived in it.

I would place The Hound of the Baskervilles somewhere after Treasure Island if I placed it on this list at all. Holmes was smart, but C. Auguste Dupin was smarter. I guess the difference is one was a novel and the other a short story.

For those who are interested, this is OT, but i don't remember where I posted my earlier comment on this. I think it was this group. The Moonstone could not have had a more perfect ending. I was very pleased that the idea of theft of property was something that did not apply strictly to Europeans, at least Wilkie Collins eyes.

>170 A_musing: I'm picking up what you're putting down re Dracula, but the Herzog and the Murnau (to say nothing of E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire) would be well up in my top 100 all-time films, so I am comfortable with Dracs at 120.

>171 anna_in_pdx:, 175 I've only read the essay In Praise of Shadows, but I found Tanizaki gentle and thoughtful--there is some coprophilia of sorts, but it's ... gentle, thoughtful coprophilia?

>178 slickdpdx: ugh, seriously. this baffles me.

Tanizaki's Lord Musashi is actually supposed to be a bit crazy. Since it seems the coprophilia seems to involve severed heads, a tasteful rendition would take a truly gifted writer. Have to admit I've not read it (yet) or Nettles.

Umm ... I've read
The Woman in White -- a long, long time ago
Some Prefer Nettles -- long enough ago, so that I don't really remember it
Dracula
The Woman in the Dunes -- because I saw a beautiful play based on it back in the early 70s -- I remember the play far more than the book
GWTW -- after seeing the film when I was in Jr. High, and yes, both were memorable
The Three Musketeers -- fun
The Hound of the Baskervilles -- OK

I don't think any would make it into my top 125 -- there's rather a boy's book quality to much of this.

151 > in my list of the top 10, Lady Murasaki would be there -- so would George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.

citygirl, you feel free to get your grumpy on any day around here; I respect your sticking up for an all too easily picked on underdog, and if the book means something to you, then it means something period.

Thanks for the touchstones, geneg & janea! They went wacko on me last night and I never bothered getting around to html linking them as I'd planned.

Well, your top 10 list, janea, and Burt's agree on two of those four writers you mention. All four are in the top 50.

Daniel S. Burt on Gone with the Wind:

"Except for the Bible, no book has sold more hardcover (emphasis mine) copies than Gone with the Wind ...

"Yet despite its enormous popularity and impact, GWTW has received comparatively little scholarly attention, and its creator has been largely consigned to the critical limbo of the popular romance writer rather than considered as a literary artist. It may be that GWTW is more a popular culture achievement, not a literary one, that the creator of the most popular romantic novel in history should be viewed mainly as the chief progenitor of the modern romance genre. However, Mitchell deserves additional credit for creating an enduring woman-centered fiction that deals in important ways with issues about the ambiguous roles of women in modern society...." more in a moment ...

Speaking of historical importance and what it might mean, or not, on any list of the Top Novels of All Time, what about Uncle Tom's Cabin?

I have the December 1936 hardcover of GWTW with deckled edges. It's not in the greatest of shape, but I have treasured it since I got it from my former pastor's wife. I could not believe she was going to put it in our yard sale. Gah! Her loss, MY gain. ;-)

Good pick, Piero. It's not too far away ...

more on GWTW if anybody wants more ... on with the next 10 (this list needs to wrap up in time so as not to interfere with BK; so, pick up the pace, Henri!)

106 ... A Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (1840)

107 ... The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1840)

108 ... Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1722)

109 ... The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (1921-1923)

110 ... The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967) I think it's FREAKING ABSURD that this novel is not somewhere in the top 50 and that I glance above and see J.D. Salinger, to me, at best, an honorable mention, ranked three slots higher.

111 ... Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

112 ... The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (1984)

113 ... American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997)

114 ... The Handmaid's Tale by atwoodmargaretatwood::Margaret Atwood (1985)

115 ... Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost (1731)

That's a great find, Tani!

I know... *giggles* I was aghast that she wanted to even part with it.

Copyright Page:

Set up and electrotyped. Published June 1936.
Reprinted June (twice), July (three times),
August (six times), September (four times),
October (seven times), November 1936
(four times), December 1936 (twice)

Okay. I like Kundera but, better than M&M? Not a chance! Its top fifty material, in my estimation.

I got nothin' here. I tried The Handmaid's Tale a couple of times, but couldn't get out of the first twenty pages. I wanted desperately to read it but it just put me to sleep. I'm just not into dystopic fiction.

I liked better Salinger's short stories. Moll Flanders, hide the good silverware. Lermantoff Schmermentoff, Atwood, two termites. MM, good. Waugh, waugh I don't want no waugh, waughs. The unbearable lightness of kitsch. To P. Roth: 'In order to be happy you gotta be happy already.'
I don't recall anything of E.F. Benson; nothing of that honorable thief Raffles; BURR by Gore Vidal can take its place beside any novel; Surtees anyone; Tono-Bungay, what no Wells; Hortense Calisher?

I've read a mere 21 of the list so far (225-106, or 119 books). And that's counting Lord Jim, my all-time bete noire, a book I started three times but never really finished.

In defense of GWTW, here's why I like it: it's quite a long book but the plot moves right along and is, the war notwithstanding, not all that predictable; the characters are memorably individual, like them or not; for those who have not read it, I'd bet you'd be surprised by the amount of history included, with detailed information about the battles leading up to the burning of Atlanta; the portrait of the south before, during, and after the war is detailed and told from the point of view of an insider, even including such controversial subjects as slavery and the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

I'll take a novel strong in plot and character over any number of beautifully written books in which I'm wondering what happened and why I should care. I'll also take Scarlett O'Hara, spoiled, selfish, and determined as she is, over any number of modern literature's navel-gazing, angst-ridden "heroines."

#193 - Well said. I concur completely.

An eye for an eye and a toot for a toot. As long as we don't take our views too seriously. Sometimes a list is just a list.

hmmmm ... this one:

110 ... The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

is top 20; these three

107 ... The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1840)

111 ... Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

113 ... American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997)

top 50, and these two

112 ... The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (1984)

114 ... The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

definitely do not make the list.

I LOVE The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- I've read it at least 4 times.
Handmaid's Tale is interesting but not as good as Cat's Eye or Alias Grace.
I tried to read The Master and Margarita once -- guess I should go back and try again.
Catcher in the Rye -- a brilliant sliver in time, but I bet once the mystery of JD passes, so will his reputation.
Saw the TV series and film of Brideshead Revisited -- way too RC for me.
If I had had any silver, I would hide it from Moll Flanders.
Haven't read the others.

Oops! I guess I missed The Catcher in the Rye the first time I looked at the list. Growing up in the fifties/sixties it was impossible not to read this book if you were an angsty young man. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I read it. Don't aks me nuthin' 'bout it. I cain't remember. I could read it again and it would be new to me. All I remember is some young kid skulking around and making his life way harder than it needed to be. But isn't that the way of all youth?

Nice one, Martini. Spot on, Gene. "Skulking" sums the Rye up nicely. I like the skulking, but like Por-Man, prefer his short stories which, were we to rank them, a good handful would have to be considered for a top 225 list.

I'm sure most of us saw Bret Ellis' reaction to Salinger's death ... for those who didn't ... http://www.notanexit.net/past/2010/01/29_jd_salinger_dead_bee_taking_fire.shtml

#188

And spot-on to you, EF. M & M was a great book.

Although Behemoth made the 'ol dawg a bit nervous.

Hmm.. a giant, machine-gun toting cat. I wonder why....

OMG!!!! I finally checked all of the list. For someone who reads every damn day... I am not very well read. ;p

To Kill a Mockingbird and Gone with the Wind

W&P, AK and C&P had better be on this damn list or I am taking my toys and going home.

I would be very disappointed to find any of the three on the list this far down. They would have to be in the top 50, at least. Of course when you start whittling things down it becomes an exercise in whack-a-mole. Put one here and fifty more jump up. What an impossible task! Between the Rooskies (as Slim Pickens would have said), Dickens, Eliot, Balzac, and Zola where does one fit anything else? One would have to use all the imaginary numbers between one and fifty as well as the integers to encompass the top fifty novels in a list.

Well, at least I have a great deal of what's been listed so far on my kindle (except the titles after 1923) to be read. ;p

96 ... The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826) Haven't read it, though it's getting lots of love around here. I know little about it, other than some author famous writer impugned Cooper's ouevre mightily. Oh yeah, that's right, Mark Twain don't like Cooper much:

Burt explains: "Few today dare to claim artistic greatness for Cooper, particularly after Mark Twain's tour de force indictment of his "Literary Offenses": 'A work of art? It (in this case The Deerslayer, but certainly Twain would say the same of The Last of the Mohicans) has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh! Indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language." That could be a Hot Review!

97 ... Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1862) It's top 10 material for my own personal, biased reasons I couldn't possibly hope to objectively qualify or quantify to anyone -- it just is. Bring it on, Thou Vile Hugo Haters of LibraryThing!

98 ... Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) Love it! It's socio-historico-politico impact overrides whatever artistry it may allegedly lack.

Burt: "...the most famous novel of the 19th century, arguably the most influential book written by an American. It became the first to sell 1 million copies, the first undisputed American and international best-seller ... It is the most effective social protest and propaganda novel ever produced, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'with equal interest to three audiences, namely, in the parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house." Yet its sentimental didacticism is one that contemporary critics disdain, and readers now resist ... an unavoidable cultural and historical artifact, but what of its artistic achievement? Lionized by its proponents, reviled by its opponents when it first appeared, UTC has remained an ideological and aesthetic battleground. Langston Hughes called it a "moral battle cry," while James Baldwin at nearly the same time considered it "a very bad novel," simplistic and inherently racist, affirming the racial attitudes that made slavery possible....

"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his journal: 'How she is shaking the world ... Never was there such a literary coup-de-main as this' ...

Leo Tolstoy considered it the highest achievement of moral art, on the same level as Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities ..."

99 ... Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957)

100 ... Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)

Burt: "For sheer visceral assault few other novels can match ... commonly regarded as the culminating novel of American naturalism ... along w/ ... The Grapes of Wrath, one of America's greatest social protest novels, and, linked with Dostoevksy and anticipating Camus, a preeminent exploration of existential themes. NS also represents a watershed in African-American literary expression. Still the best-known and influential novel written by a black American, NS altered the terms by which racial identity and race conflict are understood in America, exerting an enormous influence on African-American novelists such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison ... The daring of Wright's conception and the morally chilling implication of his drama still disturb and still challenge more than 60 years later."

101 ... On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip
blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip
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blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip
blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip
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blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip
blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahi'marebelonaroadtrip

102 ... Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) Too low.

103 ... The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958) I hear it's good!

104 ... The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

105 ... Dom Casmurro by Joaquin Maria Machado de Assis (1899)

Les Mis warms my heart and makes me wanna believe, and it is on my list for sure. Of the others I've read Mohicans, On the Road, and Frankenstein, all of which are decent or decentish and none of which set my world on fire, although I do like the part about dingledodies and everyone goes awwww. But not as much as i like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuffHRacZMQ

Also, I'm in no way surprised that Bret Easton Ellis is a piece of shit. It's all right there in his books.

What to say? Frankenstine, a snooze; Les Mis, none wisht it longer; Keerroowhack, andthatsafacjac; the Wharton school for scandell; James Fenimore Cooper where's Washington Irving; Richard Wright, what about 'Ice Berg' Slim, or 'Kool Papa' Bell? Dr. Djivahgho, too bad Julie Christie wasn't in the book.

Gone With the Wind loved this book and have read it at least 4 times. GWTW it is the love story more then the subject of slavery. Is it does go into the relationship of the Slave owner to the slaves themselves but that is not the main point of this book that people love.

Draucula is even it does seem out dated at times there are some parts of the book it that is deliously creepy. The passage about the count scaling down the side of the castle like a human size insect. Now it doesnt get much better then that. But I have to admit it does seem alittle dated after reading Anne Rice, but still LOVED IT.

Gone with the Wind will always be one of my favorites.
Frankenstein definitely deserves a spot in the top 50 if not top 25.
And Les Miserables also deserves a spot higher!

And actually, I hope there is more Edith Wharton.

In my opinion, Moll Flanders as well as Native Son should not be anywhere near 100; they're both pretty terrible.

Oh boy, I am two lists behind you all.

OK of the list in 188:
Catcher in the Rye, very good and important, in my view, if only because it is so controversial

M&M, of course, I agree with everyone this should be higher - it is maybe my favorite Salon read. Well, maybe not. It, IJ and Tomcat Murr are all up there.

Handmaid's Tale, thought provoking, but I don't think I'd ever re-read it.

Manon Lescaut - I know the opera though I have not seen it performed- guess that does not count?

Unbearable Lightness... I saw the movie. I also saw the movie in Egypt - you would not believe how short it was because they cut out so many scenes - I have it on my list of "should read someday".

List in 205:

Les Mis (glad i read, but was hard for me to get through)

Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I read because The King and I piqued my interest)

Did not read Dr. Z but of course, saw the movie (my mother's favorite) and read the poetry.

And The age of innocence, which I really liked, and which is always what I want to call the song by Don Henley.

Okay feeling better about this list now that we are getting into the real meat here.

107 Cather in the Rye just read it in the past year so maybe if I had read it back when I was a teenager or early twenties I may have enjoyed it more, but reading it as an adult the kid was just too just get over it already. So for me I dont really get the "big impact" of this book.

96 Last of the Mohicans a little too much of the whole snobbery thing for me.

98 Uncle Tom's Cabin So glad it is here maybe it should be high on the list but oh well. I have to admit that at the end I had tears running down my face.

102.Frankenstein I felt so sorry for this poor creature and his maker was a pure idiot.

In long-past youth I read:
Last of the Mohicans -- Am. classic but not my cup of tea
Les Miserables, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and
The Age of Innocence -- though I've read a fair number of Wharton's other books recently

Have recently reread and taught
Frankenstein -- actually quite brilliant

Al, are you sure that's not Catheter in the Rye?

212> I felt so sorry for this poor creature and his maker was a pure idiot.

213> Frankenstein -- actually quite brilliant.

Concur completely. And I think even beyond brilliant, if such a laud is possible, considering Shelley was nineteen (19!!!) a teenager when she wrote it.

Haha sorry (blushing) I get all caught up in what I want to say.

>212 ALWINN:. I'm reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald at the moment. I think I might even break my string of abandoned books and finish this one. As with Catcher in the Rye, my own class annoyances crop up again and again, but the reality of the protagonist's life, and those of a few other characters, is so well done, so incisive, and at times even profound, that so far I've been able to transcend class consciousness ("which is false consciousness," a poet pal of mine once said) and appreciate the entirety of it, including the highfalutin monied settings. I wonder, if I were to go back to Catcher, whether I'd react the same way. I'm hesitant to try because that book captured a personal, rebellious historical moment for me, and for many of us back in the day, and I'd rather not shatter that idol.

Catcher in the Rye is quintessentially American, requisite for American high schoolers, but is there any good reason for anyone else in the world to read this book? It's terribly bound up in its own small world, and doesn't really play in the great global game of eternal coming of age stories with the likes of Joyce or Laxness. Likewise, Evelyn Waugh strikes me as a time piece that has long since ripened, fell to the ground, and rotted. Is there anyone under 60 who still thinks this stuff is funny or interesting? Apologies to those over 60, you can laugh at me for like Unbearable Lightness of Being. It just seemed so much the essence of the early 80s.

I've not read the Hasek or Lermontov, but heard good things about each. The only one on the first list I'd vouch for as definitely belonging here, and likely belonging higher, is M&M, though I'm rather partial to, and immensely enjoyed, Manon and Unbearable Lightness.

The next 10 reveal just how American this list is. I mean, he's got a broadway musical, yet another novel mainly read by American high school boys (if out of class rather than in), a novel that used to be read by American high school boys but isnt' any more, and a 19th century American icon read mostly for its historical importance. I can defend Wright and Wharton on the list, but the rest of the Americans really don't rise to this level at all.

I'm overly partial to Dr. Zhivago, as a novel written by a poet in a way that really shows, but it's here because of the movie, isn't it? Damn Americans, Americanizing good Russian culture. I want a good english translation of Spectorsky sometime. I've not read the de Assis, think he's got Shelley about right, and loved The Leopard.

My goodness, we can't win, can we? If an American lists American literature, it's because he's insufficiently cosmopolitan, I suppose, yet when he lists a Russian novel, it must be because he's seen the movie--one that was directed by a British director and that starred an Egyptian and quite a few British actors. It's a pretty good movie, at that, but somehow it's an American cheapening of great literature?

I can't think of any other explanation for putting Les Mis and Zhivago on par with Master & Margarita than that he likes the play and movie - and I like Zhivago. I like the movie. It is Hollywood at its very best, even if produced by an Italian (don't forget that!).

The Nobel committee long discovered that it's very, very hard to makes claims of "greatest" worldwide when you're bound up in your own culture and language. Some fight the inherant bias (there was a period when the Nobels did, though they've thrown in the towel), - this last 20 gives me the impression Burt isn't fighting it at all, and does indeed think of us Americans as the center of the universe. On the Road on par with Shelley or Bulgakov or even Kundera?

The Last of the Mohicans - A boys adventure from when most boys knew an Indian or six.

On the Road - Like Catcher, you couldn't really grow up in the fifties/sixties without having read this sometime. I liked The Dharma Bums as well. Would I put either of these as anything other than also rans? Probably not.

Frankenstein - The Modern Prometheus - and the same ignored warning given Prometheus, no matter what we think, human beings are not smart enough to be God. Of course, this book also turns that question upside/down and asks if God is smart enough to be God. I worry about some of the things we are attempting now based on our half-assed understanding of DNA and how genetics works. Hubris is in the wind.

The Leopard What a great book. The Italian Aristocracy crumbling along with their palaces. This would do well as an organized read sometime.

The Age of Innocence - The end of an era. A well told story of why progress happens. This would make another great group read. Of course I'm a sucker for anything written by Henry James and Edith Wharton. The seeds of cultural destruction are buried deep within the foundation of the culture and only become apparent over great spans of time. What an insightful story this is.

>221 geneg: Good point about DNA, etc. I just read an article speculating on whether we could "bring back" Neanderthals given that we have genetic material. One very basic question was where would such a being live--in a lab, a zoo, or a home? And what could we really learn from this kind of experiment, given that (Jean Auel notwithstanding) a modern Neanderthal couldn't tell us anything about how his ancestors hunted, used tools, communicated, etc.

But you just know some scientist is itching to do it.

Two lists behind, too! One thing I've noticed about the top 125 (the ones in the "bottom 100" I've read more recently)
list so far, is that each book that I've read from it I did quite young and each has stuck indelibly in my mind. Maybe that's why they're on the list. Is that happening for any of the rest of you?

Catcher - I reread it maybe five years ago and actually quite enjoyed it. I think it's there for its moment in time, for being original, different. It doesn't seem so amazing now that others have mastered whatever it is Salinger was doing in Catcher.

Unbearable Lightness - one of the best books I've ever read. I read it for the first time as a teenager and it opened a door in my mind like, Oh a book can be like this.

Handmaid's Tale - proably the first dystopian book I discovered on my own (you know, not being 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World) and truly, truly frightening. Maybe because this one came from a woman's point of view, and the forced breeding....It scares me now.

Native Son - one of the darkest, most tense books I have ever read. I start to feel the tension in my neck now thinking back on it.

Frankenstein - also one of the best books I have ever read.

Oh, btw, copyedit. This Side of Paradise is the one that made me fall in love with Fitzgerald, not Gatsby, but Paradise.

It was Tender is the Night for me.

I've never gotten to that one. It's like I'm saving it for something, what I have no idea.

>218 A_musing:, 220 well, another reason for putting Les Mis and Zhivago on a par with Master & Margarita would just be that Burt's a fan of old-timey social realism, right? Evidently your tastes (if you'll pardon me for characterizing them) tend more to the existential and experimental, but they're both legitimate, like, aesthetic preferences. Similarly, isn't being surprised that anybody under 60 has any interest in Waugh a bit like being surprised anybody under 150 has any interest in Austen? Isn't putting yourself in other people's shoes the oldest cliche as a justification for reading fiction? I feel like Catcher and Brideshead made their sort of lifeworlds real to me in a way that they weren't before--I'll not ever again look at '50s upper-middle class East Coast US teenhood (or whatever) or the decaying country-house class in '20s England except through the lenses of the books. I feel the same way about Unbearable Lightness, actually, except that Kundera seems to pretend to this extrahistorical relevance to a context-non-dependent human existential anxiety (the unbearable lightness of being, rather than being Milan Kundera, or being a post-Soviet Central European intellectual in the second half of the twentieth century, or being a guy for whom I can't help but think the imperative to, like, emotional or carnal self-realization excuses a lot of cruelty, which is lame).

But when I read this:

I read it for the first time as a teenager and it opened a door in my mind like, Oh a book can be like this.

I think it's probably time to stop being so sour, yeah? Enthusiasm! I hope Gatsby is top 20. Ol' Fitzy deserves it.

Oh, no! Did I get so down on some of those last 20 that you guys are going to banish me to the snobs! Not that, no, whatever you want, but not that!

Truth be told, some of the 20 are personal favorites, including the Zhivago (but I wouldn't put it in the top 125), and other's I'd push for any list (The Leopard - just great stuff; Wharton, timeless while still time bound). But please, please, don't make me say anything nice about Waugh. I never should have finished that book. Maybe if I just prattle on about Native Son, seconding CityGirl's assessment....

>228 A_musing: Orwell said (of Brideshead, I believe) that Waugh was as good a writer as it's possible for someone who's wrong about everything. I buy that.

I'll jump in on Native Son too. If he hadn't gotten so polemical in the last twenty pages or so, I'd unequivocally call it a great book.

What about Ishmael Reed? Chester Himes? 'Ice Berg' Slim? These cherces are too predictable.

You'll find Ishmael Reed on some top 100 postmodern lists. Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down gets huge love in the pomo crowd, though Mumbo Jumbo seems to be his most accessible; ergo, most known and read.

Chester Himes gets criminally overlooked. I was introduced to him in a college course focused primarily on social injustice, and If He Hollers Let Him Go, stuck out to me most in that class, (and the LT reviews on it are spot on) that also featured memorable novels by Sahar Khalifeh, A.B. Yehoshua, and lots of others I can't recall who'd been prominent authors in the Israeli/Palestinian divide up to the early '90s, but getting back to Himes, I'd argue If He Hollers... is one of the finest (definitely the angriest -- think Celine kind of righteous and, simultaneously vindictive, out for revenge, rage) debuts of the 20th century any day.

Himes' understandable anger quickly ruined him unfortunately, but in the interim, good Lord!, sparked some spunky literature (and sweet potboilers too: The Real Cool Killers!). And The Collected Stories of Chester Himes is another great place to begin with him.

Thanks for mentioning those guys Por-Man!

Yes, Himes, The Real Cool Killers. And among the black writers who finally got published, one of the earliest, Rudolph Fisher: The Conjure Man Dies. You won't find him on any list, but why should the opinions of others totally determine literary worth?

So much gets overlooked and lost through the eras. Glad to learn of writer, Rudolph Fisher, new to me. Having dipped recently into urania's recommendation of Miss Macintosh, My Darling, I'm scratching my head how something so good can be so forgotten (assuming it was ever much read).

Excelsior!

It's rather late, so maybe some Burt excerpts tomorrow ...

86 ... Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (1814) I need to read me some Walter Scott.

87 ... Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov (1859) Enjoyed it a lot.

88 ... Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) I remember RickyButler getting humourously thwacked by Belva ("rainpebble") for dissing the book in his review. Unread myself.

89 ... Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1949) Blackdogbooks don't like it; won't even let it inside his house. Love it or hate, I do certainly love the debased beauty of it. I think AA could easily make it required, preventive reading, along with their "Big Book".

90 ... Snow Country by Kawabata Yasanari (1937, 1948)

91 ... 1984 by George Orwell (1949) I'm surprised it's this low. I need to give it another go someday.

92 ... As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

93 ... The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1836-37)

94 ... The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (1827, 1840)

95 ... Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962) Another one I'm surprised is so low. It's a top 5 pick in a certain pomo list I used as a reading list once upon a time ... that list escapes me ...

As I Lay Dying's all right. And yeah, 1984 another go, as, like, an adult. Salon read?

Vivian Darkbloom up to his old tricks. Mr. Jingle paved the way for JAAJ. Count No Account will endure. Gads, 1884 has come and gone, is it possible? Malcolm Lowry ahead of Dickens! But running from Papa La Bas. Long Live the Sheriff of Selkirkshire. Pfunny, the dour Russkies dig Wodehouse. Everything is beautiful in its own way.

The Pickwick Papers is far from my favorite Dickens, probably not even my top five. But I'm betting he'll show up again on this list.

I can vouch only for Faulkner here, and a lovely Faulkner it is, full of sweet death and unsweet relations, thoughts profound and ordinary, and, of course, fish. What book belongs without fish? Ban all the books without fish I say, and you'll see that only the best of the best are left.

Dickens is always safe. I, too, am sure there will be more, since Msr. Freequi has already told us as much. But I've not read Pickwick.

I will now be whistling "everything is bew-ti-ful...." all day long.

Reading some of these comments on here about Frankenstein is maybe this can go alittle deeper into everyday life. We can create a being then we should be willing to take care of it for better or worst. And just like children if we leave them to their own it will never become a pretty picture. The creature just wanted its creature to except and love him.

Havent read anything I this 10 soooooooooo.

MM said: "a guy for whom I can't help but think the imperative to, like, emotional or carnal self-realization excuses a lot of cruelty, which is lame" re Kundera in ULB. Or does that describe Tomas? Either way, one of the most disturbing aspects of the book, along with Tereza's emotional masochism.

Latest list:

Their Eyes - unlike the others on this list, this book did not stick with me.

1984 - I read this when I was ten and haven't picked it up since, no need to. It scared me down to my individualistic little marrow and I believe it greatly informed my political, legal and world views from that point on. (Formerly precocious kiddies, raise your hands. Aside, I think LT is our support group.)

Pale Fire - Sometimes I don't feel worthy to comment on the offerings of M. Darkbloom, like today. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Or undercaffeinated.

Waverley Typical Scott - the namesake of his "Waverley Novels".

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Great read. I enjoyed immensely maybe because one of the settings was Green Cove Springs, Fl. A town I lived in for a year. Great read.

1984 - He loved Big Brother. A good polemic on the evils of the Republican Party. Forever Wars, Willful ignorance, ideology as God, Authoritarianism, torture, mind-control, FOXNews, and, of course, NEWSPEAK. Need I continue?

As I Lay Dying - What a devastating indictment of the rural South during the Depression. These are the same people who support the Republican Party. I love Faulkner's social critiques.

The Pickwick Papers - My introduction, in print, to Dickens. What a ride! It may not hang together as well as some of his later works, but I found a belly laugh on every page. Possibly the best first novel ever. As it so happens it was the first book I read after the aforementioned Looking for Mr. Goodbar. This book helped me realize how dreadful modern lit had become.

Pale Fire - I've said what I have to say about this one elsewhere. Suffice it to say, I didn't care for it. I'm not a fan of most POMO lit (Barth is generally THE exception), and this book is an excellent example of why. Way too clubby. Like being a Heidegger fan boy. I have no patience for anything to do with Post-Modernism. Much of it is an attempt to make the world of experience act like the quanta, which of course is stoopid in the extreme. Welcome to the Republican Party. They make their own reality.

I can't believe I haven't read the Goncharov, yet. The must be corrected soon.

I see Pale Fire as a game, a riddle, fun to unravel.

Wow, geneg. I take it that you're not a loyal member of the party of Lincoln? You know which one--the one that uses the words fascism and socialism interchangeably.

All kidding aside, I'm impressed with that list so far. It won't please everyone, but it's more inclusive and imaginative than many of the lists that crop up like crab grass. I was recently shown one that was almost entirely comprised of European philosophy and everything that Dostoevsky wrote, ever. I would have suspected TomcatMurr, except I'm pretty sure he'd go less heavy on the Heidegger and Leibnitz. Monads indeed.

About 1984: rarely do I see mention of the atmosphere, the writing, that moved (and chilled) me when I read the book. The solitary store, the isolated room, the sense of fear in the street ... This from the usually dry, factual Orwell of Homage to Catalonia and of course the wonderful essays.

Wow, only 1984 from this list. I have Burmese Days on my TBR pile.

I read several Scotts, but somehow missed Waverly. ditto for Dickens and the P Papers.

The only thing I've read by Nabokov was Speak, Memory and boy, oh boy, I am all excited to read more. I have Lolita sitting at home and intended to get to Pale Fire next.

Sorry, Faulkner, my dad absolutely loves you but I cannot get into you. I periodically try again - maybe in a year or two.

Read Lolita first, imho.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of my favorite books -- the hurricane scene in it is terrifying. Zora captures small-town black Florida in the 1930s as well as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings captures 1930s Cracker Florida in The Yearling. And Janie is a protagonist to be reckoned with.

Other than that only 1984. I think I read Snow Country a few years ago, but I don't remember it.

I've finally figured you out, Gene. You are a pomophobe!

242 and 250: I'm discerning a pattern. Nabokov probably voted Republican.

I think you've got it, Rique, about the POMO thing. In all honesty, there may be some jealousy here, too, like I'm not smart enough to see the trick, or solve the puzzle. Of course the fact that I don't read for tricks or puzzles might have something to do with that, too.

I didn't intend to inject so much politics into this thread, but the possibility that those dunderheads may get back in power is totally distressing to me. They may call themselves Republicans but they are decidedly not the party of Lincoln.

Urania, if you want to meet me somewhere I will be happy to listen to you discourse on what I missed in Neuromancer. Once again, it may be the idea of cyberspace as more real than virtual, especially in today's world, puts me off. I am, at heart a conservative, and leaping into cyberspace in the way Gibson uses it in this novel makes me very uncomfortable. It reminded me a lot of a Silverberg I read in the early seventies about people being hooked up to virtual reality machines and fed drugs that fueled their unreal lives filled with gratuitous sex and violence, when the real world was the realm of power and avarice. I understand what he was getting at, but I just hate to see humans relegated to drug crazed automatons.

My wife went through a period in which she had her identity, let's say, shared, not stolen, with a thief and the implications, aside from being a major pain, were definitely unsettling. I suppose my problem is that I don't put as much work into reading things that I have fundamental issues with. I spend more time fulminating against the central conceit than actually paying attention to what I'm reading.

Yet, there is the underlying feeling that I'm in over my head sometimes with this group.

I don't think so Gene. You are one of our more astute voters, certainly.

I think I've felt like I've been in over my head with this group from about day one. This group was begun as a gag. Reading Ulysses start to finish? Hahahahahaha. My goal was to mock the very idea. But the joke, turns out, all along somehow, was on me.

I'm glad you've got a venue to vent, Gene, w/out all that Pro&Con drama to deal with.

Thanks Porius and Rique for the kind words. I stay away from Pro&Con (I was one of the original members). I think I lurked once in the last two years. My heart and my blood pressure can't take it. Besides, I much prefer to spend my time with this group. You guys are so much more fun. I come here and have hope for the future of community.

I found Neuromancer unreadable. If I could have given it no stars, I would've, but then folks might have thought I'd merely not read it. I did. A dozen pages anyway. Feh!

76 ... Cities of Salt by 'Abd al-Rahman Munif (1984-89) This sounds like really really something we should all take a look at in '12. It's lonnnnnng and epic.

77 ... A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)

78 ... The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (1962)

79 ... Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)

80 ... Candide: or, Optimism by Voltaire (1759) Hmmm. Wouldn't question the placement, except I see Ernesto three slots higher.

81 ... The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch (1932) Another epic omnibus we should tackle sometime.

82 ... The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (1866-67)

83 ... The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)

84 ... Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

Burt: "England's first significant novel ..." True, or false?

85 ... Call it Sleep: a Novel by Henry Roth (1934) Wanted to get to this one for a long, long time. It's got a fascinating rise and fall, er, fall and rise, I should say, amongst the literati. Briefly, it disappeared shortly after publication, and after modest sales and modest reviews, during the Great Depression. It was mostly completely forgotten about, until 1956, when The American Scholar asked those in the know to make their picks for the "most undeservedly neglected" books. And Call it Sleep was the only book selected twice. As a result, slowly, over the next eight years, the novel was enjoying some (what wouldn't have been termed at the time but how I'd express it now) cult, underground following. But! Then! In 1964, The NYTRB gave it, from what I'm gathering as I paraphrase (and cite Burt for all of the preceeding and following information) was an unheard-of up till then front page review of a paperback reprint. The rest is history. One million copies sold since.

When I wrote earlier that I didn't finish The Sleepwalkers, I should have said it wasn't Broch's fault. I thought it was great. It was I who fell short of the challenge,

Wow, I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back over how many of the previous set I had read. Were it not for Voltaire, I would have nada on this list. Good old Voltaire.

With all of Betteredge's encouragement I still have not read Robinson Crusoe.

I'm coming very late to this game. I'll have to take a look at past entries, but of this set I've only read The Awakening and Farewell to Arms. Been meaning to read Call It Sleep for ages.

Only Hemingway, Voltaire and Chopin on this list -- Candide should be much higher up.

Nothing for Salt Cities; Hem, ahem; zilch for Fuentes; though I love Joe Heller better than I love Bellow, I love Bellow; CANDIDE & RASSELAS how'd they do it? SLEEPWALKERS by Koestler (tho no novel) but no Broch; THE LAST CHRONICLE, possibly my favorite novel, Trollope claimed to have scant knowledge of the cathedral close, I guess that's why he's so great. Mrs. Proudie was one of Trollope's favorite creations; read AWAKENING ages ago, no memories; Defoe, not just anybody can read Defoe or Swift, it's very much like tennis, it takes a lot of practice. How many voters can hit a solid backhand? Reading these is comparable to hitting a backhand top-spin lob on the run; CALL IT SLEEP, have got no ammo.

Later on the first English novel.

Hmmm. I like Candide; I'm more or less positive about Herzog; but nothing on this list blows my mind. Also, Gene, I like that you're around to keep it real, no matter how much I like pretending that the emperor has clothes.

I didn't have time to check the dang touchstones earlier, so I fixed that Sleepwalkers link, Por. But I had no idea that Arthur Koestler had written something with "Sleepwalkers" in its title. Speaking of Arthur -- is it sad how sordid and morbid his life ended? (I don't recall his politics but I vaguely remember they were controversial). Anyway, is anybody as stunned as I am, since it just occurred to me via that touchstone gaffe, that Darkness at Noon does not (repeat: DOES NOT, sound the incredulous sirens swiftly!) appear anywhere on a top 225 list?

Gene - re your post 254 - Amen brother!

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE and JANUS are important studies. CASE OF THE MID-WIFE TOAD, books on Synchronicity, THE CHALLENGE OF CHANCE, if I remember correctly.

I'll propose Chaucer's Tale of Melibee as the first novel. Shorter than most, but, still, a lengthy prose fiction in (pre-vowel shift) English. But this debate may be a tougher one than the 225 most notable novels.

Looking at where I stand with the list. From the supplementary:

Light in August by William Faulkner – lovely, the most easily accessible Faulkner I’ve read, including the short stories.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – I quite enjoyed this, though a lot of that was from it spurring these long conversations with my dad about his time in the Army.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Probably should be in the top 125.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys – Very good.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – Fun.
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren – I loved it, but probably in a good location.

And from the list proper:

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway – I didn’t dislike it. Kinda meh.
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry – Very good.
1984 by George Orwell – Like many, I need to re-read this one.
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – Excellent, should be higher.
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper – Yuck.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – Wonderful, but I have a soft spot for digression.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe – Important, belongs on the list, but I didn’t enjoy reading it.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – Interesting thoughts from everyone, probably should re-read this too.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – Saved this to read over a Christmas in New York which helped me enjoy it on that level.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh – In the minority here in that I loved it for the overwhelming Catholicism.
Dracula by Bram Stoker – Really wanted to love it, but Mina drove me absolutely bonkers.
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Don’t remember too much.

Cities of Salt is a worthy book.

I want a totally different kind of list: Good (not necessarily great) books that you've never read because you've never heard of them and/or their authors. Then, and only then, will I become interested in the whole list game.

"T he overwhelming Catholicism (of Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited . . ." (267)

That may explain Graham greene's remark that
Waugh was a "Catholic writer", whereas he, Greene
was "a Catholic who writes (not the same thing)".

It struck me when I first read that, that it was the
other way around -- that Waugh wrote about people who happened to be Catholics, and might be called "a Catholic who writes" while Greene was
writing about people to whom Catholicism was central in their lives, and so might be called "a Catholic writer". But maybe with the exception, in W.'s case, of "brideshead" ?

I loved the sleepwalkers by Koestler. Mesmerizing subject. I get excited again, just by thinking about it.

Haven't read the Broch one.

Broch is good. Broch is great.

>269 urania1: I'd have a pretty good list just based on this one, as there are an embarrassing number I've never heard of. I'm going to blame it on being old--I know the stuff that was assigned to me in college, but that was 30 years ago.

On the other hand, a lot of the time I'm perfectly happy reading a mystery or a fantasy novel--doesn't have to be litterachure.

If Gene and our fearless leader feel like they are over their head...

*walks away mumbling*

>270 rolandperkins: well, Waugh is a lot more didactic about his Catholicism, to my mind, and more political. Whereas for Greene it's an obsession, but a personal one--he's not demanding we believe or looking down his nose at us socially if we don't. (God, it takes a weird kind of snobbery to look down your nose at people for not being Catholic in mid-20th century England.) Maybe that's the difference?

Sorry dont have anything on this list of ten hopefully I will on todays list. *sigh*

I'm in favor of tackling Bruch or Roth or Munif; I have City of Salt but have never gotten to it.

Candide, yes, an old classic, a wonderful short novel worthy of repeated rereads over the years. I've found something new every time I've picked it up. Defoe is great stuff, a true classic, but better as an adult than as a kid. Less adventure than we all remember and more philosophizing. I've not been able to finish Herzog, though I've enjoyed other Bellows. Just didn't grab me.

The Hemingway I'd advocate for the list is Garden of Eden. The next best Hemingway is Faulkner's screenplay for To Have and Have Not. Call me contrarian.

All I've got is Candide, which I read in a French literature class. I liked it.

Next list!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Terrific thread, Henri. Pat yourself on the back.

Oh God, I"m so behind. Way back to 166 if you don't mind:

Woman in White should be in the top 100. It's a Victorian masterpiece.

I have a hard time with V.S. Nailpuller. There's no doubt about his greatness as writer, but his view of humanity is soooo jaundiced. R.K. Narayan has still not appeared on this list, and he is much better than VSN.

I adore Treasure Island, and I"m glad to see it here. The image of Israel Hands chasing Jim up the mainmast with a knife between his teeth has stayed with me ever since I first read it when I was about 10.

188
The only one in this list I have not read is the Roth. Are we back to Roth again? Two novels by him? The ubiquitous Atwood. Mm.

Lermontov belongs in the top 100, as does Master and Margarita.

Catcher in the Rye is a work of genius. It fools even sophisticated readers into accepting the veracity of its voice: it's so believable that people react to the narrator as a person rather than marvelling at how brilliantly Sallinger sustains the fiction. Salinger is the American inheritor in this work of the teenagers of Dosteovsky: Ipolit Ivolgin, Arkady Makarovich, Raskolnikov...

The Good Soldier Svejk is a masterpiece of WW1. someone should (re)read it for the WW12 thread starting 11.11

Brideshead Revisited is dreadfully overrated. Dreadfully. The only interesting and intelligent thing in it is Sebastian's teddy bear.

205

The Last of the Mohicans was one of Dostoevsky's favourites, and it gets a mention in BK, so it must be worth something, surely?

What Geneg said in 203 is right.

(and I like the idea mentioned earlier in the thread (by slick?) of doing personal/group lists)

'Dr Zhivago' was not a Hollywood movie, it was directed by the immortal (obviously not in this thread) genius David Lean, featured an international cast, and was produced by an Italian.

I agree the list is getting too American.

235

Zora Neale Hurston? In the top 100? And Hugo (for example) only has one novel on the whole list? HAHAHAHA! another joke by Henri? Where is Jodi Picault? Where is Dan Brown? Robert Ludlum?

Bollocks!

Everything else on this listette is great. Pickwick of course should be in the top 10. (I want it in my coffin, please take note). Anyeon who has not yet read Oblomov, I urge you to do so immediately. I only read it last year for the first time, and it's incredibly brilliant, a book to read again and again.

>254 geneg:: I come here and have hope for the future of community.

ditto that. and well said.

256

Broch yes, fantastic book. I need to read this again, I know I only got about 30% of it. For fans of Musil and Joseph Roth, this is a mustread.

Is this the first Bellow we've had so far? Are there going to be more? (There'd better be!)

I have not read any Fuentes, but managed to acquire some last week, the Trollope, or the Roth. All on my TBR as of now.

>275 MeditationesMartini: MArtin, your comment on snobbery in 20th C England made me chuckle. You have no idea of the cartography of snobbery the English have drawn up. Hah.

Only Farewell to Arms, which I had to admit I liked very much, though I was already sure I hated Hemingway (this was in my callow youth) and Robinson Crusoe, which I just read a month ago for the very first time. Yes, I think it was an important novel for its time. It's kind of preachy by modern standards, but eminently readable.

I've always wondered why I have not gotten to Voltaire. I was a French Lit major, for Christ's sake, yet somehow he passed me by. Rabelais, Corneille, Rousseau, Malraux, St. Exupery, you name him, I've read him, but no Voltaire. Must remedy that. Can this group do a read of Candide sometime? (Boy, no touchstone?)

Oh, if Waugh is a Catholic writer and Graham Greene is a Catholic who writes, what would we call someone like David Lodge? And Murr, don't roll your eyes at me. I can see you all the way over there in East Asia.

ETA: And what about CS Lewis?

I like Jules Verne quite a bit, but I enjoyed Crusoe as much as, maybe more than, Mysterious Island.

I'd reread Candide at the drop of a hat. Wouldn't take long, either. His philosophical dictionary is a lot of fun too.

>286 slickdpdx: I don't know why, but I'm getting a mental picture of someone saying that ("I'd reread Candide at the drop of a hat. Wouldn't take long, either. His philosophical dictionary is a lot of fun too.") in a crowd of random people and getting a lot of blank stares. It makes me chuckle, but I admit to being a bit twisted.

Only in the Salon, kids, only in the Salon.

>283 QuentinTom: if only a charitable person would send one such a map, one would hang it in one's solarium.

>285 anna_in_pdx: never read David Lodge--and CS Lewis's Christianity for me is too mixed up with whip-wielding half-shoggothe dominatrices, or whatever it was in That Hideous Strength, for me to possibly answer that question. But here is an excerpt from an interview with Anthony Burgess that may be relevant (I recall him and Waugh had some public catfight--sorry, Murr--because Waugh said he got some part of his theology wrong):

"This Catholic emphasis accounts in part for the frequent comparisons made between your novels and Evelyn Waugh’s, and yet you’ve said you don’t find Waugh’s aristocratic idea of Catholicism attractive. What do you like about his work?

BURGESS

Waugh is funny, Waugh is elegant, Waugh is economical. His Catholicism, which I despise as all cradle Catholics despise converts, is the thing in him which means least to me. Indeed, it injures his Sword of Honour.

INTERVIEWER

This charge has often been made—along with that of sentimentality—against Brideshead Revisited, but Sword of Honour is often called the best novel in English about World War II. How does Waugh’s (or Guy Crouchback’s) Catholicism weaken it?

BURGESS

Crouchback’s Catholicism weakens Sword of Honour in the sense that it sectarianizes the book—I mean, we have Crouchback’s moral view of the war, and this is not enough: We need something that lies beneath religion. In our age it’s a weakness to make Catholic theology the basis of a novel since it means everything’s cut and dried and the author doesn’t have to rethink things out. The weakness of Greene’s Heart of the Matter is derived from its author’s fascination with theology: the sufferings of the hero are theological sufferings, invalid outside the narrow field of Catholicism. When I taught Waugh and Greene to Muslim students in Malaya, they used to laugh. Why can’t this man have two wives if he wants them, they would say. What’s wrong with eating the bit of bread the priest gives you when you’ve been sleeping with a woman not your wife, and so on. They never laughed at the tragic heroes of the Greeks and Elizabethans.

INTERVIEWER

Does the difference between cradle and convert Catholicism influence an author’s work in such an essential way that you tend to prefer a novelist like François Mauriac to Graham Greene?

BURGESS

English converts to Catholicism tend to be bemused by its glamor and even look for more glamor in it than is actually there—like Waugh, dreaming of an old English Catholic aristocracy, or Greene, fascinated by sin in a very cold-blooded way. I wished I liked Mauriac more as a writer. The fact is that I prefer the converted Catholics because they happen to be better novelists. I do try to forget that Greene is a Catholic when I read him. He, too, is now, I think, trying to forget. The Comedians was a kind of philosophical turning point. Travels with My Aunt is deliciously free of morality of any kind, except a very delightful kind of inverted morality.

INTERVIEWER

In an essay on Waugh you mentioned “the Puritan that lurks in every English Catholic.” Do you see this residue of Puritanism lurking in your own writing at all?

BURGESS

Of course it’s in me. We English take our Catholicism seriously, which the Italians and French don’t, and that makes us earnest and obsessed about sin. We really absorbed hell—perhaps a very Nordic notion—and think about it when committing adultery. I’m so puritanical that I can’t describe a kiss without blushing."

Speaking of Burgess, Martini, Urania, my first thought was: great idea, I can come up w/a list like that, the best unknown books out there. But then I thought, 90% of what I'd come up with, you'd probably already heard of! So, I challenge you (or Club Balzac) to come up with such a list. And listen, you, I had every intention of pimping your nun, but you weren't able to delay your gratification, were you Dr.?

Burgess writes for a rarified audience. I must be armed with my reference books and any electronick assistance that I can trust. Ecueil: what the pf - - K is this? I probably have the spelling wrong.

You can't vote "undecided"! YES OR NO, PEUPLE!

The next question would be, is he on the top 100?

66 ... Germinal by Emile Zola (1885) I may have incorrectly said earlier that Zola did not make the list. Obviously incorrect. Want to read some Z soon.

67 ... My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

68 ... An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925) I think it belongs somewhere, (and don't you dare say "up my butt" tomcat!) but would be better as an honorable mention, imo. It stayed with me for a long time. Clyde Griffiths, anti-hero extraordinaire.

69 ... Hunger by Knut Hamsun (1890)

70 ... Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin (1929)

71 ... Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

72 ... U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos (1930-38)

73 ... Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782)

74 ... The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal (1839)

75 ... The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)

Midnight's Children seems well placed; Werther is no Faust, and I am dubious about its inclusion. You know the suicides never actually happened?

Only Germinal and Midnight's Children from this list. I read The Red and the Black and I loved it, but not Charterhouse. I should read more by Stendhal.

ZZZZZZZZzola; Cather, it's cold outside, Beaufort plenty to do here; T.D. had editors, a good friend of JCP & Charles Fort; Hamsun's GROWTH OF THE SOIL had an influence on me when I was young, still readable; Berlin in the 20's, say no more; I can't help but picture Rushdie in a slump after his fancycooking girlfriend left him of a sudden; it's been forever since I lookt at Dos Passos, soon, maybe; nothing for de Laclos; Stendhal deserves standing; to describe something of Goethe's as slight seems not quite right, but . . .

Can a trilogy be considered a novel? Is the Rosy Crucifixion, for instance, then also a novel? Or is it and the U.S.A. Trilogy three novels each? And while I'm at it, where does this relatively new category called "Memoir" fit in? Is not the Rosy Crucifixion three memoirs, according to present-day categorization, at least as much as each book is a "novel"?

289 - Great stuff.

From this list I've read An American Tragedy which was ok and My Antonia which I finished recently and is so far my favorite read of the year and one of the top all time. Here I'll even pimp my overly gushing review.

Excellent review. You make your reader want to get a hold of the book. I think W.C. would have been pleased to read it. Well done JPE.

I don't think anyone can give you a satisfactory answer on the whether or not a trilogy is a novel, P.

Well, Peter, I'm not entirely disinterested in the answer, since I'm engaged in writing books dubbed by the PTB to be memoirs, and when I come up for air in about a year or so I'll have three of them back to back. Personally, I consider them separate, nonfiction novels, even though they will eventually comprise a "set."

Btw, I give a thumb to Hamsun's Hunger and a McLuhan to the Dos Passos trilogy.

>289 MeditationesMartini:

The weakness of Greene’s Heart of the Matter is derived from its author’s fascination with theology: the sufferings of the hero are theological sufferings, invalid outside the narrow field of Catholicism.

This is exactly right. Exactly what I didn't like about THOTM.

>302 QuentinTom: yeah. And I do agree that Greene tried to get beyond it later on. Monsignor Quixote, to me, is an example of how to do Catholicism right--slap the priest and the communist together, send them on a road trip with some bread and cheese and wine, and see how far they get toward reconciling their differences before the Guardia get 'em. Sounds like a sitcom pilot, but really, what good story doesn't?

My Antonia (one of my favorites, glad to see it so high), U.S.A Trilogy (way back in college during my Lost Generation phase) and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Has Sister Carrie been on the list?

Midnight's Children is all I can swear to. The haze of THC in his uncles courtyard in Kashmir always seemed like a lovely image.

I'm pretty sure I've read My Antonia, but can't swear to it. I went through a short Cather phase that included The Troll Garden. What a great set of stories. She really makes prairie life and prairie people sound like something to avoid if one can.

I've read Sister Carrie, but not An American Tragedy.

Young Werther. Didn't he invent a particular gruesome form of candy?

303> LOL. I need to read that book! Sounds hysterical.

Cather has a way of describing the landscape that makes you almost taste it.

Great line among many Jane! I'm wondering, salonistas, as I see that review was penned two months ago, why no one bothered pimping it sooner?

Well, I'm about to post another ten so that after today I can post one per day up to Halloween and thus not interfere with The Brothers Karamazov, and I know many of you are full of guile and once you see another ten w/out poor Anthony Burgess overlooked again, you may decide to change your vote to "No".

So, the answer is, in fact, "No," Burt not only did not pick a Burgess book, I searched the bibliography and Burgess doesn't even get a single mention anywhere in the book, which I find strange since Burt quotes just about every critic out of left field and Burgess was certainly a very mainstream, highly respected critic, so his complete absence, I'm not sure what to make of. A Clockwork Orange should at least be an honorable mention, and I know many of you also think very highly of his 1980 novel (damn I can't remember the name of it!) with that classic opening line about the "catamite". Fwiw, William S. Burroughs didn't make it, either. So, so far, the oversights, as I see it: Koestler, Burgess, Burroughs, so far. No Barth either. Burt leans away from the edgier experimentalists it seems like to me (except for the most iconic ones -- yes, you'll see Pynchon shortly -- in favor of being more internationally inclusive. Cities of Salt, for instance, I'd never heard of, and quite happy to hear about it in his book, so I'm not really that peeved that some of the usual top 100 suspects are absent ...

So, none of you voted correctly! 8 yes' and 3 undecided's. No nos.

Here goes - Germinal - oft begun, never finished, seems good, just hasn't been the right time yet... My Antonia - I hope Death Comes to the Archbishop is north of here, then all's right with the world; I can vouch for this, the taste the landscape is right on target, also a haunting book, that won't leave you once you've read it; Dreiser, no, net yet, same with Hunger and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Midnight's Children - I finally got to it this last year, thoroughly enjoyed it, yes, you can taste his landscapes, too, though the air is heavier and there a touch of masala in the very wind; Dos Passos - not all of it, I remember enjoying it much, but it doesn't haunt.... Laclos - no, just the movie; I've not read Charterhouse, but loved Red and Black.

The Sorrows of Young Werther - yes, this is unquestionable brillance, great, lasting, profound even in its comedy. We should read Goethe, lots and lots of Goethe.

So urania will compile a list of books unknown to Henri? Get to, urania, there's work to be done.

And since I read this thread from the end up, I was able to vote correctly when the time for voting came.

56 ... The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette (1678) Have not read it. It seems high to me, but then I see, whoa, this goes back nearly 350 years, and people still talk about it, so perhaps its position is just right.

57 ... The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)

I've got some bad news, "Mother died today. Or perhaps yesterday. I do not know."

58 ... The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

Crane quoted by Burt: "Preaching is fatal to art in literature. I try to give readers a slice out of life, and if there is any moral or lesson in it, I do not point it out. I let the reader find it for himself."

59 ... The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide (1926)

Burt: "The Counterfeiters is the prototypical metafiction that problematizes how we see and express the world".

60 ... The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

Was it artful social protest, or propaganda?

61 ... The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

Burt: "...has been viewed as the prototypical postmodernist self-reflective text, a feminist manifesto, an anatomization of contemporary culture, and one of the most thorough probings of a woman's consciousness in literature..."

62 ... Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (1913)

63 ... The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

64 ... A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)

65 ... Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876)

Red Badge of Courage, The Grapes of Wrath ("Was it artful social protest, or propaganda? I vote both.) and Sons and Lovers.

"We should read Goethe, lots and lots of Goethe." Agreed.

It's worth the couple of hours that Cleves takes to read, it's neither difficult nor long, but it is rather rich. A sort of ultra-sweet galub jamun, dripping with goodness, full of flavor and texture, but not a filling main dish. Yes, I had some of that for dinner tonight.

Cleves strikes me most from the last 10. It's just fun and interesting from so many perspectives, as a bit of history, as a literary vehicle, as a social phenomenon.

As to the rest, well, all that I've read are good, none truly great; I'd revisit FMF most willingly, it's been a long time and I wouldn't trust my now-ancient recollection of him, and I would most like to get to The Golden Notebook.

I always thought Camus was pretty good ... until I read his bud, Paul Nizan.

Hmm . . . read L'Etranger by Camus and not that Gide, but La Symphonie Pastorale, both in French in high school. Sister Suzanne was an amazing French teacher, IMHO.

Also read Crane, to whom I might be related, and Lawrence. Don't know if I read the Forster or just saw the movie! Have seen the miniseries of Daniel Deronda but the book is in Mount TBR.

56, nothing; Camus, I'm too happy to look into Camus; long time ago for St: Crane, little; Gide, not this one; GRAPES, loved his book on ARTHUR; Lessing, also too far back there; David Herbert, gawditssohardtosay; Ford Maddox Huefer, knew some great writers very well, just shy of that category himself, a tolerable bookman though; I can't add anything of any interest; DERONDA, Trollope told G.E. not to shoot over her readers' heads, she could hardly resist. How could she do otherwise?

>306 absurdeist: Earthly Powers (the catamite book) is his best, as far as I'm concerned, and I would also not be averse to Clockwork Orange or even A Dead Man in Deptford appearing on this list. Suck it, Burt! The Sot-Weed Factor is a top 40 book for me for sure.

And on Lawrence, I endorse Murr's earlier-offered opinion. And on Werther, maybe I should give it a second chance? Maybe, contrary to all reason, it's better in English, or when you're not 15.

Anyway: of this lot I have Grapes of Wrath (which I never liked as much as East of Eden, even though I'm pretty sure it's a better book--something about the didactic symbolism in East of Eden, again against the odds, pleases me) and A Passage to India, which is an incredible book that remains with me closely. Those freaky caves.

Well I am sad to say that the only book I have read in the past 20 is The Grapes of Wrath. All I can say is LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Les Liaisons - such lovely characters. So sad about la Marquise. And poor Valmont. Love that time period. *drifting off in reverie*

Tried to read Midnight's Children. I was enjoying it but must have been the wrong moon phase or something, cuz I like Rushdie.

L'Etranger - tres interessant. I think I enjoyed the sociopathy.

Did not read A Passage to India and will never read A Passage to India after suffering through A Room with a View, which wasn't as bad as the most boring book ever written, Maurice.

The Stranger - I've never read L'Etranger given that I'm a monolinguist, unfortunately, and were I to learn more languages (fat chance at my age) French, I'm sorry to say, would be pretty far down the list. I liked it and it is one of the few books I reread now and again. Still trying to break through that veil of existence.

The Red Badge of Courage - I read this many years ago as a boys book. Should probably read it again, as an adult book this time.

The Grapes of Wrath - Great, great book. A study in humanity, the will to live, and fear. The protagonist of The Stranger got nothin' to teach the Joads. He's a whiny-ass cry-baby next to people to whom life is a little too real.

Well, better than the previous ten, but not where I'd like to be.

The Stranger - Also read a couple months ago, on the beach in Santa Barbara mostly which was sort of odd but extremely enjoyable.
The Grapes of Wrath - Read in high school and only vaguely remember. Need to re-read
Sons and Lovers - Also fuzzy memories of this one though I think I liked it.

>318 janemarieprice: Seems oddly appropriate for beach reading!

I loved La Princesse de Cleves. I have re-read it several times. The French is charming, the Passe Simple is everywhere and you just don't get that in modern French novels. I also loved L'Etranger. (Remember that song? I think it was the Cure?)

Red Badge of Courage, I had to read this for school. It was kind of annoying to me, at the time, that we had to look at maps of the battle and other outside resources. Now looking back, I think the teacher did a good job of teaching it. I still remember the feeling, conveyed very well (like in All Quiet on the W. Front) of just not knowing or understanding what the hell is going on, that an individual soldier would feel in a battlefield.

Grapes of Wrath, I loved this. I had a Steinbeck Summer where I read a whole bunch of his books that were on my parents' shelves.

I have read several G. Eliot books and somehow missed Daniel Deronda.

Darn, I can't remember what we read by Andre Gide in college, I know we did read something by him. Hm.

#318 I also read The Grapes of Wrath in high school and then re-read it a few months ago. I love the book so much more now that I am older. Well worth the re-read.

Of the past 20:

Germinal -- in college for Western Civ -- all I remember is coal mines
My Antonia -- Cather is lovely and fragrant
Midnight's Children -- my first Rushdie, but I like The Moor's Last Sigh better
The Princess of Cleves -- agree with all above. It used to be in the Norton World Lit -- not there anymore for some reason
The Stranger -- in English, when I was being existential
The Grapes of Wrath -- memories of this are wrapped up with the film
The Golden Notebook -- in the 1970s when you couldn't be a feminist unless you had read this one. Not my favorite Lessing.
Sons and Lovers -- of course, when I was 16 and again in college
The Good Soldier -- I did read this, but all I remember is that it's about WWI
A Passage to India -- a yes, the caves!

Oh, I missed The Stranger! Great book; so glad it's stuck around on the disaffected teen reading list beside, like, Kerouac.

No time to comment right now.

41 ... The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

42 ... Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

43 ... Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

44 ... Nostromo by Joseph Conrad (1904)

45 ... Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862)

46 ... The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)

47 ... Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

48 ... Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

49 ... Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791)

50 ... Clarissa: or, the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson (1747-48) I will say I read this in a single evening sitting. It's not boring at all!

51 ... Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818)

52 ... Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)

53 ... David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849-50)

54 ... Petersburg by Andrej Bely (1916/1922)

55 ... Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)

Scarlet Letter, Gravity's Rainbow, Nostromo, The Trial, Lolita, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Things Fall Apart - all terrific books. Been meaning to read Petersburg and Fathers and Sons. Will probably read Persuasion at some point.

The Top 50. The best of the best. It ought to be very hard to get here. These should all be books that floor us.

The Scarlet Letter - another book from high school that I've not read since...Gravity's Rainbow, yes, a must, but where is V? Beloved. Eh, the opening couple of chapters didn't seem like anything special, but I'll leave the judgments to those who read further. I've not read Nostromo. Fathers and Sons, excellent, enjoyed it. The Trial, fantastic, suprised it's not higher, and surprised there not more Kafka. Lolita, actually, I keep stalling on this. Mrs. Dalloway is quite at home, very good, though not one that totally floored me. Dream. So only one of the Four Great Classic Novels of China make it on the list? Room for everything we Americans read in high school here, but for just one of the four, though they've survived longer than most of the rest of these? I've read two of the four (not Dreams, though I feel like I've read it through osmosis at this point), and I'd put the Monkey King in the Top 50 and Three Kingdoms in the next 50. Dreams is supposed to be even better than either. I wonder how many American novels would make a Chinese list?

I've not read Clarissa, Austen, well, I won't go there; Bronte isn't so bad; Copperfield is fun, Peterburg, yes, I remember fondly - but how about adding We to the Russians represented? Though not the top 50.

Things Fall Apart. Yes, they do. A great piece of African fiction, and a very memorable read.

Of the list, I'll vouch for Gravity and the Trial as true greats, recommended for the top 50 without reservation and put Bely, Fathers and Sons, Things Fall Apart, and Mrs. Dalloway as contenders.

41, SL, Hawthorne mastered all forms of story-telling. He Described Trollope's vision wonderfully well; 42, GR, couldn't finish it; 43, nothing; 44, N, didn't read it; 45, F & S, a great master, a spellbinder, remains ever fresh; 46, Kafka is oddly pfunny, but I am a died-in-the-wool Trollopian, nothing to it but work; 47, LOLITA, what can I say LO-lee-ta. I have crossed the country dozens of times by car, I absolutely love all the little motels, etc. that Nabokov did; 48, MD, the Stephen sisters took a long time to shake off the 'Victorian' upbringing, I admire Leslie Stephen's writings, but he must have been a turd, though it's probably unfair of me to say this, it's certain he didn't think he was turd; 49, no, he said in the manner of Michael Palin in the 'Cheese Shoppe' skit; 50, CLARRISA, an acquired taste, Richardson helped the Great Lexicographer out of a scrape or two, so if you call him a dog, I shall love him; 51, P, J.A. looked to Richardson, et al. for inspiration, her ears were attuned to the tintinnabulations of the Augustan style; 52, JE, old Patrick must have had his hands full; stands with the Swan of Avon; 54, have it have not read it but will this winter; 55, THINGS FALL APART, no.

Beloved/Morrison, Mrs. Dalloway/Woolf, Persuasion/Austen, Jane Eyre/Bronte, Things Fall Apart/Achebe

This list looks a bit like the canon when I was a student (with exceptions, of course); at any rate, I've read Lolita, Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa, Persuasion, Jane Eyre, and David Copperfield, either all as assigned reading or maybe all but Lolita were assigned. Persuasion is my favorite Austen or tied with P&P.

Weird that I never read The Scarlet Letter, though, but like A_musing, I feel as though I have by osmosis. I know enough to know the movie I haven't seen was a travesty.

I only recently read Scarlet Letter and it is good, Gothic and more sophisticated than I had been led, by osmosis, to believe. Hawthorne really is a good writer. There is an introductory section that probably kills off 50% of the students assigned to read it. But, they are stupid as I would probably have been, too. It is tremendous.

The Scarlet Letter -- oh Hester, Hester, let the guilt go!

Beloved -- in my mind, THE great American novel.

Nostromo -- I loved it in college, but don't remember much of it.

Lolita -- 1950s pedophilia -- meh

Mrs. Dalloway -- beautifully written

Persuasion -- Austen is wonderfully Austen

Jane Eyre -- layers and layers here.

David Copperfield -- never could get past dumb Dora

Things Fall Apart -- brilliant indictment of colonialism AND insularity

I wonder if he did the top 50 first, because this just seems like a huge jump in quality to me. The Scarlet Letter, Gravity's Rainbow, Nostromo, The Trial, Lolita, And Jane Eyre are all just about perfect. I think Jane is my favourite of the bunch, though I'm due for a Lolita reread.

so we are now in the top 50? I would agree with most of these choices, except the Chinese one, which is as boring as pfuck. Trust me, the (classical) Chinese have no idea how to write novels, poetry yes, but novels? forget it. No interiority, no psychology, no drama. hideously, hideously boring.

I would not put Scarlet Letter in the top 50, overrated. The House of 7 Gables is much better.

I also think Beloved is overrated and should not be in the top 50, but I know I will attract flung shoes for saying so.

Beloved by Toni Morrison - excellent
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - There was a study recently which documented college students' favorite books. Lolita was extremely popular amongst male students. Interesting stuff, but I can't seem to find the article now.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - a favorite, re-read every year or so
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - very good

Having not read Dreams, Murr, I can't argue on that one, but I will say that I've now read three different versions of Journey to the West, including the unabridged, 2400 page one, as well as Three Kingdoms, all to my 10 year old boy reading at night, and he has been enthralled throughout. Boring? Not at all. About the level of interiority as a Don Quixote - most of the conflicts and drama are situational and relate to broader social and religious issues rather than a stream of consciousness psychological focus. Though I would nominate Sun Wukong as the most interesting non-human character in all of literature.

I'd be happy to extend the debate, but would say, even if you think of these authors as I do Austen (uggh), it's not hard to see their incredible historical importance.

Again not doing so well on this round either. I have to say this list is giving me alot on my TBR pile. I did read Pride and Prejudice ealier in the year and well I will leave it at that. I havnt read Things Fall Apart but I did read Arrow of God by Achebe and it was an interesting read but really not my cup of Tea.

I do Have David Copperfield on the TBR pile and The Scarlet Letter.

Now we're talkin'!

Scarlet Letter - Haven't read since high school, but I remember listening to Billy Idol's Whiplash Smile and loving the book (which seemed go oddly well with the album), getting it done in a couple of sittings. The book horrified me of course and probably colored my views on a number of themes.

Beloved - This is the book that demonstrated, to me at least, that Toni Morrison's brain is a world treasure and unlike any other. I always tell people you have to read it twice to get it, and thrice to understand it, and there is probalby more that could be taken on subsequent readings. Also horrifying of course. tomcat, consider my lovely suede stiletto pflung in your direction. Better duck.

The Trial - check. Horrifying.

Lolita - if I had to name one favorite book, this would probably be it. Darling Vlad.

Jane Eyre - what's to say that hasn't been said? It's wonderful.

David Copperfield - Oh, what Dickens could do! Such a pleasure to read. Altho I agree with jane re dumb Dora.

Will definitely read Persuasion. Mrs. D and Things Fall Apart have been on my TBR for-ever.

The Scarlet Letter - not his best, but then Hawthorne on a bad day is better than most.

Beloved - read this in college. I agree with Murr on this one, but there may be a lot to what citygirl says, and should probably read it again.

Nostromo - read this many, many years ago when, as a very young man, I was on a Conrad kick. Don't remember too much about it.

Mrs. Dalloway - beautifully written and every bit as interesting and engaging as watching paint dry. I'm not really a Woolf fan.

David Copperfield - I read this one a year or so ago, and, as with all Dickens, loved it, but still don't think it matches Our Mutual Friend, but then what does?

Things Fall Apart - I read this about ten years ago and was intrigued, but not enough to search out more Achebe.

Persuasion is the only Jane Austen I have yet to read. Will Pride and Prejudice and Zombies do? Good. I haven't read that one, either. BTW, check out the author of PP&Z as listed in the touchstone. If I was Miss Austen's estate, I'd be preparing a law suit for slander.

I have never read anything by any of the Bronte siblings. I know this is a major, major hole in my education, but what can I say?

Like most of you I read Scarlet Letter for high school.

Persuasion would be my favorite Jane Austen if I had to choose one.

I read and enjoyed David Copperfield but agree with all who dislike Dora.

I read Things Fall Apart in college and it was very good, so very sad though. God so sad. I still remember that. Speaking of palm wine, Martini...

Beloved - I read this recently and it was haunting and sad as well. But to me the great American novel is and will ever be Sometimes a Great Notion which I don't expect is on this list though it should be, dammit.

I must be alone in disliking Jane Eyre. Just do not get into the character and I think one of the things i did wrong was reading it AFTER Wide Sargasso Sea so I was kinda indignant on behalf of the madwoman in the attic.

I read Fathers and Sons as a callow young person. Liked it, but must read it again now that I am a a grownup.

Lolita and Gravity are both on my TBR. I actually own Lolita, but have not gotten to it. Kafka's Trial is in my TBR too, actually. My boss in Egypt had recently re-read it and got me all excited about it (we worked on a judiciary project) and I was all set to read it, but got sidetracked.

#339 no I dont think so I am trying to listen to it now on a audio book at work and well I think it is just me and the whole victorian british lit stuff I just find it a bit too stuffy for my taste. So prime and proper etc. I dont know if it is just a phase Im in, I did get though Pride and Prejudice but couldnt for the life of me couldnt handle LittleWomen. So no you are not alone on this one.

Jane Eyre Dislikers Unite!

I'm in!

Scarlet Letter, just reread for one of my graduate classes - so good!
Beloved
Mrs. Dalloway in my mind should not be on any list - I absolutely loathed this book. And once wrote quite an excellent paper about how much.
Jane Eyre - classic
Clarissa
Persuasion
Things Fall Apart - read in undergrad and absolutely loved it.

Going back to an earlier bunch, I do hope there will be more Rushdie, although Midnight's Children is fantastic

I just bought Dream of the Red Chamber yesterday. I hope either that tomcat is wrong or that I don't get around to reading it. Even with a coupon it was not cheap.

Robert

I read a bit of one of those that told things from the point of view of a rock. If it is the same thing, I was intrigued.

You know how hard it's getting for me to not just blurt out the top 5? I can barely contain my excitement!

31 ... Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939) One of the worst books ever, considered one of the best. POPPYCOCK!!!

32 ... Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891)

33 ... Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901)

34 ... Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)

35 ... The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (1930-43)

36 ... A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916) Easily the greatest novel James Joyce ever wrote.

37 ... Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (1951-53)

38 ... The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (1959)

39 ... Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)

40 ... Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

Wuthering Heights belongs, if it belongs at all, with the honorable mentions.
Loved Tess (Jude is better), Invisible Man, Portrait of the Artist and P&P. I've looked at Molloy et al. and they can be had cheap but they just don't grab me. Buddenbrooks and Tin Drum I may read, but I may not. I don't think Joyce should get three books. Portrait and Ulysses are representative masterworks.

I can't take Finnegan's Wake seriously, but I do enjoy it in the way you'd enjoy poetry in a foreign language that maybe has a lot of cognates with English and you studied a long time ago in school--French, say. Tess is really good--don't know if it'd be top 100 for me, but. Been meaning to read the Musil forever--isn't it like nine billion pages? Wuthering Heights is a fave (maybe top 50?), Pride and Prejudice feels tedious and self-satisfied, and The Tin Drum is easily in my top 10. Sexy woodruff. The onion cellar. The Dusters. The athlete on the cross. His glass-shattering voice. Oskar's an enfant terrible, and the book's an ... enfant terlivre.

Oh, and my Hardy pick would be Far From the Madding Crowd.

Whoa, I think what's going to happen from here on in is my readings will become spottier and spottier as all the really important books I haven't read, come into play.

From this list I have:

Tess of the D'urbervilles - not my favorite Hardy. I think that has to go to The Return of the Native.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Certainly the most accessible work Joyce wrote that I've read.

Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable - I had a prof in college who was obsessed with Beckett. I spent a whole semester reading Beckett. I did enjoy playing Barrell, the Stationmaster in a college production of All that Fall. I wonder if Watt shows up later (earlier?) in the list.

Pride and Prejudice -I spent the better part of a year with Jane. I like Jane Austen for her look at the fading country English gentry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Idleness overtaken by industriousness. Manners in a time of energy. Themes both Dickens and James took up, more James than Dickens. Reading Austen we learn how this could happen, not because she tells us. I hardly think she was aware of it herself, but because of her detailed portrait of Manor life in the face of what was coming. Of course, just the FACT of Austen should have been a clue to the changes working their way into the world. Some 50 or so years later George Eliot nails that theme to the wall with Middlemarch, along with some other ideas of the time. But for my money, the groundwork started with Jane Austen.

31, FW, Everything and Everybody makes an appearance. Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker & Anna Livia Plurabelle and you; 32, TESS, Hardy loved Tess of all his creations; 33, Mann, still to look into; 34, INVIS. MN.. been a while, a keeper tho; 35, Musil, also back there a bit, will re-visit this winter; 36, PORTRAIT, joyce on his way to becoming JOYCE; 37, Beckett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8
B. could write alright; 38, Grass, TD was fine but FLOUNDER THE my favorite; 39, E.B., deservedly so; 40, J.A., Beckett over J.A., I think the whole things a bit silly, meeting adjourned forever.

Tim Finnegan lived on Walkin Street... fun, out and out fun, I read bits and bits, love the beginning/end, it's so unique I'm not sure it belongs in any ranking;

Tess - started, not finished, Buddenbrooks is on my short list, and utterly deserving of this placement, I love it. Ditto for Invisible Man, but what of the other Invisible Man, I enjoyed that, too.

I haven't read Musil. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ... the second best coming of age book ever, a definite top choice; Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable - 3 for the price of one, strong, but not quite Joyce?

The Tin Drum - I need to revisit it, but remember fondly and have enjoyed other Grass.

Wuthering Heights seems out of its league here and Pride and Prejudice is on my list of the worst reads I've experienced - why, oh, why, did I do it twice?

FW by Joyce and Buddenbrooks are great books but should not be listed in a top 50 together with their bigger brothers Ulysses and the Magic Mountain.

Doing alittle better with this list of 10. I can check off Invisible Man didnt hate the book but didnt love the book not sure if I would put it on a list of great reads but that is only my little mind.

And we all know how I feel like with Pride and Predjuice just alittle too Victorian, prim and proper for my taste.

So bring the next 10 one.

Tess - I loved it. Goes with The Scarlet Letter in informing my views, plus the sweet, sweet tragedy of it. It is the only Hardy I've ever read tho. I have at least one other hanging around, but it's pretty low down on TBR.

Invisible Man - I read when I was too young to really appreciate. I'll get around to reading it again one day.

Portrait - I tried. I failed. And I haven't picked up a Joyce since.

Wuthering Heights - not sure why it's so high on the list, and definitely don't get why it's ahead of P&P. Well, on one hand Heathcliff has served as a template, but then again he's Byronic, isn't he? And why is it ahead of JE? No contest between those two, imo.

P&P - lovely. Due for a reread. I think this winter will be a good time. I'm just not going to argue with any Austen on this list, unless Northanger Abbey shows up.

I haven't managed Finnegans Wake yet, beyond the first few pages, but it's on my list of need-to-do.

I have read Tess of the D'urbervilles, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which is not as great as Ulysses, but is great; The Tin Drum; Wuthering Heights, a brilliant study of dysfunctional families, and Pride and Prejudice, maybe my least favorite of Austen's novels.

>355 citygirl: I think someone else already said this, but I prefer Far from the Madding Crowd to Tess. Tess is just so heartbreaking.

And I agree about P&P and Wuthering Heights. Now I'm wondering if there will be more Jane--I'd be shocked to find Sense and Sensibility higher on the list, and I didn't love Mansfield Park, but maybe Emma? She hasn't been on the list already, has she?

I've been a bit hurt by the slighting comments made about Austen in this thread, but one of my friends noted that Jane will probably continue to hold her own!

>335 A_musing: and 344:
my 10 year old boy reading at night, and he has been enthralled throughout

That's kind of my point: what a 10 year old might find gripping is not really enough for an adult mind which relishes more challenging material.

You're right about one thing, though, it did have a huge influence on Chinese culture. THere are hundreds of TV shows, songs, movies, comic books puppet shows and operas based on it, but among my Taiwanese friends and acquaintances, only those who were Chinese lit majors have actually read the thing.

I would be interested in giving it another go, but it's so damn long! Good luck Robert!

re the new lot, all are deserving of their place. the only one I have not read is the invisible man. Does one actually 'read' FW? I prefer to dip in and out of it, read a few pages, or paragraphs, and then that's enough, like reading poetry...

Jane Austen gets better and better as you get older.

Buddenbrooks. I tried, but it defeated me. What am I missing?

357: Persuasion was on the list, much farther down.

I have read P&P and agree it should be about this high. I have not read Tess but agree that Far from the Madding Crowd was my favorite. I liked Return of the Native as well.

Of course, I read Portrait of the Artist... with this very group. I agree that having all of Joyce on the list is a bit much. Have not read FW, feel intimidated by it, should have A_Musing's attitude and just read it as something fun or a puzzle.

There was a very haunting and freaky German movie made out of the Tin Drum that I saw, that gave me nightmares, and I decided i'd never read the book, which would creep me out.

Have not read any Mann. Plan to do so next year. My father has everything the guy wrote and is obsessed with him.

Wuthering Heights, like Jane Eyre, I just don't like. The only type of Gothic novels I like are the over the top silly ones, not the ones that take themselves seriously.

P&P
Wuthering Heights should be higher I think. One of my all-time favorites
Portrait...ugh. I can appreciate JJ as a literary innovator, but that doesn't mean I have to like his books. I refuse to even think about reading Finnegan
Invisible Man
Tess

Mann's Magic Mountain would make a fine Tome for 2011, trust me.

Yes we are already trusting you, Mac. You'll be leading us through The Magic Mountain in 2011; hadn't you heard? What months works best for you?

Ellison's Invisible Man is really ambitious. I'll admit that it doesn't always succeed, but sections of it are especially brilliant. It's got Dostoyevsky, Kafka, James Joyce, Dawn Powell and a few others all wrapped up in a unique package.

Whoooppeee!!! Magic Mountain, here we come!! Thanks, Mac!

TomCat, for historical importance, I'd also note that a huge amount of what kids watch on Saturday morning television in the US comes from the Great Classic Novels of China these days. Cultures start coming together and interacting in all kinds of interesting ways.

Re: 10 year old boy, most men have one of them in us, too! I try not to hold the accessibility of the stories against these books. I've found the two classics I've read over the last couple of years entralling and satisfying, though more in the way of Beowulf, for example, than a Ulysses. There is a lot going on from a religious and philosophical and historical perspective, even if they are not as full of the literary devices and symbolism and inner psychological turmoil of Western works over the last couple hundred years. Different, very different, but still great.

Do you read them in Chinese or translation? One thing I've noticed in reading multiple translations, is that different elements and emphases come out in each, and I'm often wondering whether these were there in the original.

Re: Buddenbrooks: what I love about this one is the way Mann packs a sort of European and German history of the 19th Century inside a story about a family and its relations, suggesting but not actually completing an intricate network of allegories and symbols as the small stage reflects what happens on the big stage. He's fascinated both by the interpersonal conflicts, struggles between the practical and the artistic, the spirtual and the worldly, and by the intersocial conflicts of classes and nations, but he plays all of them out in insightful individual interactions. I find some not insignificant parallels here to Dostoevsky, though Mann is somewhat more restrained and less expressive (fewer !!s) than Fyodor.

Re: Austen, her prominence and strong fan base is part of her problem - we all read her, even those of us who aren't drawn to her, the result being that she's probably one of the authors most heavily read by her detractors. If people don't like Joyce, they stop after Portrait.

>365 A_musing: That's an excellent point. Very few of us haven't been assigned Austen and Dickens at some point, but many others here listed were less likely to be encountered unless one sought them out or took more specialized English lit classes.

I read Portrait and The Dubliners but have only been tempted to try Ulysses as a challenge to myself, not because I thought I'd love it.

Aren't we ready for another list? This is getting interesting!!

I'm with slick on Invisible Man. I liked it a lot. I do wonder, in retrospect, whether my reaction was colored by my political upbringing, the communist ideals, and later the political people I came across in college and afterward whose rhetorical certainty made me cringe, and whose opportunism Ellison captured so well.

Ellison's The Invisible Man is the great American novel of the 20th century.

So Ellison over Faulkner?

I think this one is for Thunderdome.

A Mann read in march 2011 ?
then we have a decent time for the bros. K the next months and that WW1 around new year

367: Yes. The Brotherhood section is the part I characterized as a bit Dawn Powell.
368: You could make a very good case for it. Though, in a seeming contradiction, I imagine it is not a frequent "favorite" or "best" of the century.

21 ... To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

22 ... Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)

23 ... The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)

24 ... Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1847-48) Reese looks dazzling on the bookcover.

25 ... Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (1842)

26 ... La Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)

27 ... The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)

28 ... Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence (1920)

Burt/Brent: "unquestionably one of the groundbreaking masterpieces of the 20th century, {regardless of what tomcatMurr or any salonista says about it.}"

29 ... The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830)

30 ... Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1760-67)

Only Shandy and Vanity in that bunch, although I mean to read all the others. Love Shandy, deserves top 25 or better. Like VF, but I would not rank it so high.

28. Unquestionably. and this is coming from a man who put Roddy Doyle and Zoa Neal Thurston in the top 150. HAHAHA.

Where is that suede stilletto city girl flung at me?.....

>365 A_musing:

Well argued A_musing. I guess it's simply a matter of taste. I did not read it in Chinese (I read the Penguin Classics version from the library) I will be very interested to hear what Robert says when he reads it.

Regarding Mann, I still have hopes that I shall be bowled over by Mann. I"m looking forward to a group read of Magic Mountain next year led by our very own Captain Mac.

To the Lighthouse -- I've decided to read/reread all of Woolf's novels in the coming year; as of this time, this one's my favorite.

Crime and Punishment -- didn't much like it when I had to read it in HS, but I'm venturing forth on BK

The Sound and the Fury -- brilliant

Vanity Fair -- I'm not sure whether I read this or not, but I did see Reese

Dead Souls -- utterly confused by this one in HS -- haven't gone back since.

La Pere Goriot -- I've not read any Balzac -- yet another hole in my self-education.

The Portrait of a Lady -- gorgeous

Women in Love -- I agree.

Burt/Brent: "unquestionably one of the groundbreaking masterpieces of the 20th century, {regardless of what tomcatMurr or any salonista says about it.}"

The Red and the Black -- another lacuna

Tristram Shandy -- I tried to read this when I was prepping for PhD exams, but couldn't get past the first 20 pages -- maybe it was the timing.

374 -- Murr, if I had a suede stilletto, I'd fling another at you, but all I have are sandals -- consider one flung for Morrison and another for Zora!

I think my stats are improving; six of ten this batch. The one that makes me think, wow, yes, I remember being blown away by that is The Sound and the Fury.

30, TS, Thomas Jefferson had TS at his bedside, saw it with my own eyes;
29, R&B, many years ago, many years ago; 28, WinL, that's a 10/4 good buddy; 27, Portrait of a Lady, if you've read Lodge's AUTHOR AUTHOR you can't help but like James, even though he could be a wanker on occasion; 26, as Balzac would say there goes a . . .; 25, DEAD SOULS, Gogol's mother was out of her mind, he had to be at least a little whacky, no?; 24, VF, WMT was a great Master, period; 23, S&F, one of the top 5 American novels; 22, 'Dusty' as PW & EF call him, Edward Garnett was one of the first Dostoyevsky fanciers; 21, TthLH, Thomas Wolfe (the one from Ashville, NC), said he would have liked to write something like the middle section of LIGHTHOUSE, for my money he should be in the top 50.

I read the Balzac in college, taught by a phenomenal Prof., Dr. Mark Axelrod, who demonstrated to me/us just how exacting and detail-minded Balzac was -- it took us a good two weeks putting the microscope to just the first ten pages -- which is incredible considering how damn fast the man had to write (incredibly long hours everyday non-stop) just to make ends meet during certain points in his career.

>369 A_musing: A_musing,

Yes! Ellison over Faulkner.

>380 absurdeist: The sheer amount of writing Balzac did is amazing. I am currently reading Balzac: A Biography by Graham Robb. In his intro, Robb notes that he read in French everything Balzac wrote at least twice before writing the biography. Of course he read many of the works more than that.

Hard to argue with most of these.... almost all books that virtually demand multiple reads.... yet I'm not through them all yet

To the Lighthouse, my recollection, albeit fog-bound at this point, is of many interconnected small bits of perfection, though I don't think I ever actually finished it; Jane, a rebel read of Lighthouse may be in order some time - maybe spring or summer.

Crime and Punishment is perfection on a grander scale, a recent audiobook experience for me, somehow overlooked previously, and truly wonderful and filling.

The Sound and the Fury. Let's say it again. The Sound and The Fury. Yes, also perfection, on just as grand a scale as C&P.

I have no idea what Vanity Fair is doing here, but appreciate the dazzling cover. Dead Souls ... also wonderful. La Pere Goriot, an early and influential read that I must revisit.

I have to confess to sleeping through most of The Portrait of a Lady. Someday I should revisit, but it didn't get an traction on my soul the first time. Women in Love ... read one balmy summer ... a good, fun summer... I remember the summer and associate the book, but don't remember the book alone. Somehow, this seems right.

The Red and the Black - I finally read a few years ago and loved it. Took a bit of stop and go, as it was a big book, but the characters are wonderfully deep (and silly) and vivid. The humor has a sharp edge. Tristram Shandy ... I haven't read yet.

I'm not ready to concede Ellison over Faulkner, though it's one hell of a match up.

TomCat, I'm not sure Mann bowls one over. He sneaks up on you, and invades your mind after you've read, and makes you keep thinking, pondering, smiling as you realize, yes, he also meant THAT, and may mean THIS OTHER THING, TOO, but it's not Joyce or Faulkner where you read a few pages and just say, woah!

For 31-40, only Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. Been awhile since I read WH. Would be interested in taking another look at it.

For 21-30:

To the Lighthouse--Just finished reading this for the first time. Brilliant. Will read it again soon. Has Mrs. Dalloway made the list yet?

La Pere Goriot--Boy, them Parisians weren't much fun. Have some other books from La Comédie humaine waiting for me on my shelves.

Women in Love--Sigh. I read this in college during a Lawrence binge. It was my favorite--but I doubt I'd read it again.

I've read other books by most of the authors on the last two lists, but I obviously have some reading to do.

I'd post more of Burt's rationalization (a fetish?) for 'ol D.H., but I'm not interested in possibly contributing to the rupture of aortic arteries! To instant death, in other words. Therefore, since Halloween will be crazy insane scary, why not another 10 in the middle of the night. Middle of the day for the Euro's and Taiwanese among us. Shouldn't they be given some first consideration first in responding to the lunacy of this brilliant list? I say yes, yes they should ...

11 ... Emma by Jane Austen (1816) Never read her. Suspect I never will. Though I respect so many of the young damsels among us, who have heretofore remained silent as the Austen bashers barrage the salon with plain-Jane-blows!

12 ... Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1852-53) His greatest social commentary of the injustice of an unjust judicial system gone corrupt? If not, which one of his is more incisive, indicting, and persuasive in its assessments? Screw that Burt for the moment, this be Brent talkin'.

13 ... Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877) I'd switch this one with at least four (4!!!!) of Burt's top ten picks. Damn right I would. And I'd be right.

14 ... Adventures of Huckleberry Finn bu Mark Twain (1884) Easily the greatest American Novel of the 19th century, no offense, Dick! I love it, actually. Earlier brouhaha was just to play the foil. (Somebody has to!)

15 ... Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749) I don't know about this pick. I don't feel like quoting Burt at the moment, mostly because he makes some most salient arguments pro.

16 ... Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860-61) I love it. Dickens can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. So what if he's sentimental sometimes. As if sentimentalism were synonymous with satanism amongst the esteemed literati; (so precious, those illeterati!)

17 ... Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936) Ain't read it. Defer ...

18 ... The Ambassadors by Henry James (1903) No go either. What's the best book to begin w/James?

19 ... One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967) The Magical Realists have just never intrigued me much before. What am I missing? If anything?

20 ... The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) In high school. Prob'ly need to take another look eventually.

Ah, ha! I suspected Emma would make an appearance. I've read about half of these; Great Expectations one of the few Dickens I haven't; Bleak House one of my favorites (along with Dombey and Sons); really need to read more Faulkner, might give the James a go, not a big fan of the magical realism either. Gatsby belongs here.

god, the suspense is killing me. Would someone please empty my litter tray.

Bleak House should be in the top ten. Portrait of a Lady should be too. best place to start with James is the shorter tales, especially, the Aspern Papers, the Turn of the Screw, and What Daisy Knew, the Beast in the Jungle.

GG Marquez, sorry, but I think that book is meretricious.

Just a couple brief thoughts: Another list with which it's hard to quibble(1), though there are three here that rise above the others in my esteem: Absalom, Absalom; Huck Finn(2); and Anna Karenina. I would apply the meretricious term(3), however, most strongly to Gatsby rather than 100 years. Gatsby just always seemed rather puerile.(4) Both the man and the book.

(1) Subject to prior comments re Austen, which need not be rehashed here. Really, I think 8 of the 10 belong on this list, with only the relative positions at issue.
(2) I'll concede that this may be a bit of a personal and perhaps even a nativist bias on my part. I make no such concession in regards to Mr. Faulkner.
(3) I very much appreciate the addition of this term to my vocabulary. To put it in the vernacular, "fool's gold".
(4) Note, I say this as a defender of the reading habits of 10 year old boys. I would not read this to my 10 year old boy unless, perhaps, as an alternative to telling some of the always raucusly popular "poopsie" jokes. It's inclusion bespeaks an indefensible nativist bias (as opposed, of course, to my utterly defensible one).

I don't believe I've seen Laxness on the list. I trust Independent People will thus make a showing on the top 10. I would have put it in the second or third ten myself, and sprinkled a couple of his others further down.

It's been a very Franco-Anglo-American list with a few German sprinkles.

Emma was Austen's last and favorite book -- it used to be my favorite, but I think I've taught it too many times.

Cannot argue with Anna Karenina, Huck Finn, or Tom Jones.

Way too much Dickens; Gatsby belongs on the list, but not in the top 20. Haven't read Absalom, Absalom! but should and will, sometime. I don't remember The Ambassadors very much -- Portrait of a Lady made much more of an impression.

Magical Realism is essential to understanding the post-colonial world, and it is utterly delicious. Garcia-Marquez, Rushdie, and Morrison belong in my top 10.

A vote here for Gadsby, which I thought was great, Huck Finn, and to say that if Death on the Installment Plan doesn't appear in the final ten, and thus on the list (unless I missed it in the flow of things), I will be pissed off. Ditto for The Idiot.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – very good.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – read in high school when I was too idealistic to get as much out of it as I probably could now.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – wonderful.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – also wonderful, very sleepy feel to it.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner – not my favorite Faulkner, but the most important I think, reread recently.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce – I read this one a few years back, but I think it will take another couple reads.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte – another high school read, this one I hated at the time.

To the Lighthouse - Not Woolf fan. Read this in college.
Crime and Punishment - Did Dostoyevski, like Dickens ever write something that wasn't the cat's meow?
The Sound and the Fury - As someone above said, "Whoa". Just whoa!
Pere Goriot - Read this a couple of years ago. Not very flattering of its subjects. Not even the old man.
Portrait of a Lady - Freeque, this is where I would start with James. Good enough to make you come back for more, and from there you can work in either direction. I would read this before his shorter fiction. His short fiction is all excellent but one must learn to unpack James first.
Emma - Read this in college. Emma, I think, must be the genesis of the "dumb blond". The Picnic at Box Hill stands out.
Bleak House - Did Dickens, like Dostoyevski, ever write something that wasn't the cat's meow? I liked this better than David Copperfield
Huckleberry Finn - You all should know my opinion of this by now. No point in rehashing it here, other than to say highly overrated in my view, but then one can say that about all of Twain, can't they.
Great Expectations - See comment for Bleak House. Pip, the boy "raised by hand". One of my favorite lines in all of literature. So much meaning in just three words. Talk about economy of language, and how many people think of Dickens as yester-year's Stephan King. Stephan King couldn't put so much meaning into three simple words if his life depended on it.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Why I don't read magical realism. It was a good read, just not my thing.
The Great Gatsby - I read this when I was twelve, could probably stand to read it again.

I've started Tristram Shandy a couple of times, don't know why I put it down. Definitely want to try it again. Did you get that FL?

Not having read Anna Karenina I may have to hang up my salon shoes, Obviously, a tremendous hole in my reading.

How The Ambassadors has escaped me this long is a mystery. Same with Absalom, Absalom!

Bleak, Finn, Absalom and Expectations.
Not read any Fitzgerald! Yet.
Solitude is one of the very very few books I started and did not finish. I think something came up and I never got back to it. I did not dislike it.

Yes, Independent People by Halldor Laxness another glaring omission, that I've yet read, but whose reputation and A_Musing's & Mr. Durick's oft-positive appraisals seem to me to make it worthy of at least an hon. mention, along with Burgess, Burroughs, Barth, Georges Perec (apologies, Piero!), Koestler, maybe some of those Chinese greats (arguably?) and what of the Central/Eastern Europeans? Where's Josef Škvorecký? (are you lurking and care to comment on that one, polutropos?)

If Calvino made it, why not Eco? The Name of the Rose is a guaranteed classic 100 years from now, and maybe Foucault's Pendulum too. Too contemporary, maybe? But DFW and Roddy Doyle and Zadie Smith made it!

If you're going to put two novels by Philip Roth on this list and give nary a nod to his contemporary Doctorow's Ragtime, I'm going to take exception to that. I'd of liked this list better had Burt limited his picks to mostly one per author (and at the most two, for the real icons like Dostoy & Tolstoy & Dickens) that would've created another dozen slots or so and thereby made a more inclusive list so that a Halldor Laxness, etc., would've found a home.

And what about Gertrude Stein (yeah, low on the list, but deserving) and Vidal? Did Burt really put Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead, so passe, predictable, immature) on this and not the mature novelistic and intellectual superiority of a Gore Vidal, say (not to mention a superior stylist) compared to the rectilinear, workmanlike "prose" of Normie? (Whom I actually like, but let's get serious, this is ALL TIME greatest, not SMALL TIME greatest novels).

How many of these novels greatness lies in the hyped-mythology of their so-called "greatness" perpetuated generation after generation by conversative curriculums and critics personally invested in keeping the old guard alive in the forefront rather than adventuring into new literary terrain?

I liken this tendency to radio programmers of classic-rock radio stations playing the same old tired shit over and over and over again; with their concrete-formats that refuse to play anything new because the old classic stuff is so emotionally ingrained in the psyches of the generation that grew up with it. Am I making any sense at all?

I'm speaking mostly, with the last ten, to The Great Gatsby here, a book I have fond memories of (don't get me wrong) yet nevertheless in hearing it labeled "perfect" with "not one misplaced word," can't help but chafe at. Is there really such a thing as a "perfect novel," whether its The Great Gatsby or Madame Bovary? Am I off base in my resistance to such a thought, the grandiose idea that a novel can be "perfect"?

Something is going wrong with me and this list. From the 21-30 batch, I've read Pere Goriot, which I would issue to all budding novelists as the most masterful short novel in existence; Women in Love, which I enjoyed moderately in a sort of transfatty way; and Sound and the Fury, which I would have enjoyed moderately if not for the huge weight of disappointed expectations. Can anyone explain Faulkner to me? I've only read this one, As I Lay Dying, and a book of short stories that I can't remember the name of or much about, and I liked As I Lay Dying, but so much of the time his stream-of-consciousness thing seems so facile and pedantic like he thinks he's actually representing the way people think, and not lush and skyrockety like Joyce's. I've kind of approached a few friends whose opinions I respect and been like "so, Faulkner? what am I missing?" and they've expressed similar let-down sentiments. Someone illuminate his words!

Of the 11-20s, I have not read Bleak House but would put forward Hard Times as at least a contended in the, well, hard-times sweeps; I have read Huck Finn, which is great and all but I dunno, doesn't turn my world inside-out--for a long time I thought I was underrating American literature, but thinking about it there are a lot of American writers that rank among my very very bestest--Emerson, Poe, Melville, Fitzy, Hemingway, Runyon, Pynchon, Wallace, maybe even Steinbeck or Salinger or, sorry, Richard Price--but a few canontoppers that get paid a kind of consensus obeisance who I don't understand the appeal of really--besides Faulkner and Twain (whom I truly love; I just don't see how he's that consequential and wonder whether his legend drives some of the love), there's e.g. Thoreau: "My rake was fourteen cents! You're all a bunch of bourgeois squares! My mommy pays the bills!" I dunno.

Oh, and Henry James definitely belongs on that list. Any James-likers/haters discussion here probably beats the dead horse at this point, so I'll just say bleeeehhhh.

One Hundred Years of Solitude I love, but I don't know if it's top 50 material. Five stars, but a low five. Gatsby is a perfect jewel of a book and in my mind Infinite Jest's only competition for best 20th-century American novel. I love too how Fitzy and Wallace come to the same despairy, rockbottomy place as a result of such very different concerns and in such stylistically different ways. So I've read seven of the last 20 and would agree with the inclusion of 2.

>395 MeditationesMartini: ha ha, and here I juuuust used the word perfect to describe it. It's all rhetoric, right? I don't think anyone means perfect in this not-one-word-could-be-replaced-without-destroying-its-magic sense, do they? Just that its spell is so compelling that you are left completely satisfied, sans criticisms, and feeling like you can't imagine how it could possibly have been better. You meaning me, of course.

And really, Gore Vidal "mature"? I haven't read any of his books, but isn't he more of a ... pissy gadfly? Like,

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2009/05/19/gore-vidal-turns-off-the-lights-on-th...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiVjpbFzdeE

It's a persona i like and respect, and certainly I like his politics and despise Buckley's (in the video there), but he seems less mature and more just serenely arrogant.

Yeah, I saw that you sniper Martini! with "perfect". Funny. No, with Vidal, I meant his novels are more "mature" than Mailers. Though I would, if called to do so, argue that Vidal likewise usurps Mailer when it comes to "maturity" in the personal-life realm. I'm reading Peter Manso's, Mailer: His Life and Times and my oh my, I knew that Mailer was a wretched piece of work at times, but the magnitude of it, I was clueless about. It's an oral-biography and I can't, for the life of me, put the thing down.

heh, well, yeah, compared to Norman Mailer my li'l niece is mature, and she calls me "uncle poopy".

GG deserves its place; GGM, Couldn't finish it; James of course is James; ABSOLOM & I thought I pfell, good but not this high; GE, Pip's a gentleman, consult Trabb's boy; Fielding was a great Master, though The Great Cham of Literature liked him not much; on the road with Huck & co; hard to argue with L.T., an acute observer of Nature; the beginning of BLEAK HOUSE is marvelous, longueurs doubtless, the 'Sparkler' had a lot of bills to pay; EMMA, I read as recently as this past summer, it belongs somewhere in the top 25 - it has that 'pull aside the curtain quality', certainly.

I would agree with Gatsby's spot and will take my "reread" of the novel here, in a few weeks: http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/theater/reviews/07gatz.html At almost 7 hours I hope it's really worth it.

Hey.

I'm saving my remaining suede stiletto for some forthcoming objectionable comment.

Balzac: I was the only one in this French lit class that liked him. I got an A on the paper. He's such a superb analyst, so of course I got a, um...I was going to say something that might be considered crude, so let's say I find superb analysts very exciting.

Bleak House. I've been waiting all year for the weather to get cold enough to read this. Love CD.

Anna K. Gorgeous, if you ignore all that farm politics talk.

Huck Finn. It's hard to match this for sheer energy and life (do you know how hard it is to italicize on an iPad?)

Great Exp. Genius. Miss Havisham? Where did he come up with that stuff?

100 Years. Brilliant. I'vebeen reading it slowly for some time. GGM gives one so much to ponder.

Gatsby. It's cool, but I think lovely Scott did better stuff.

Top Ten! Top Ten!!

"Top Ten! Top Ten!" (402)
Did I hear a request?

My "Top Ten" add up to Twelve (?!) Oh, well, math never was my best subject. It is somewhere between a '10 FAVORITES" and an (attempted) Ten GREATEST

Moby Dick (though i personally preferred
his little-known Mardi

War and Peace

Auf den Marmorklippen / On the marble Cliffs

Huckleberry Finn

Nothing to Pay

End as a Man

Jonathan Wild

Middlemarch

The Palm Wine Drinkard

The Embezzlers

Vanity Fair

David Copperfield

Let's hear it for Caradoc Evans.

YEA, Caradoc!! YEA Evand!
YEA, YEA!!! Caradoc Evans!!!*

*Cheer borowed from U.S. high school football of the 1940s, not from Wales's rugby.

Grand Finale

10 ... The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (11th century)
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9 .... The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924)
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8 .... Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-72)
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7 .... Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
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6 .... Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
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5 .... The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski (1880)
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4 .... In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913-27)
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3 .... Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
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2 .... War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
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1 .... Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605, 1615)

Finally! It's over.

It's all yours, tomcat. Brothers Karamazov, take us away from this list forever!

Ha! Called it.

I have not read Genji or Middlemarch, would not put Proust (of which I've only read the first two books, mind) or Ulysses in the top 10 (or probably 50), and Don Q, while it would be very, very high, would not be my #1. I think from this list it'd be Magic Mountain, which along with Bovary, Brothers K, and Moby-Dick would certainly be in an alltime top 20. He really pulled it together at the end.

champagne !

I read 5,5 of the top ten
I did not read Cervantes, nor Tolstoy nor Eliot and am still struggling with Poust

And the brothers.... we start now

!0, wha; 9, MM.no quarrel with this one; 8, M, no surprise; 7, MB, he earned it, certainly; 6, MD, policemen watch your caps; 5, BK, F.D. thou art revenged; 4, Proust, the baker's bills have been worth it; 3, ULYSSES, how about some love for Stan, already; 2, WAR & PEACE, maybe Leo can borrow one of Shaw's wool suits for the awards ceremony;
1, Don Quixote,
Ite, missa est.
Now the Brother's K. must prove their lofty ranking.

I've read 7, 5, and 2; I have in the Mount TBR 10, 8, and 1. Unless they got lost in the flood. At least there are none in this group that I've never heard of, that's a relief of sorts.

I think one thing that dazzles me is that the greatest novel of all time may not have been written yet. Of course, if that's true, I might not live to read it, either.

There was a flood?

No quibble with the list, except that I favor Brothers K over War & Peace in the great Russian Thunderdome, and would have reversed positions (and then swapped W&P with Crime and Punishment, but that's another story...), and except that Madame Bovary really doesn't belong higher than the second fifty and, in all events, should be below the Red & the Black, which preceded it by a generation and tackled much of the same territory with more humor and engagement.

I think Madama Bovary gets its high position by essentially rewriting The Red and the Black to emphasize the major themes of a 10th grade English class in Burt's 1970s America. Not enough on art? Let's throw in a little opera. Not enough on the anti-hick front? Let's make it clear you don't get opera on the farm. Not quite feminist enough - let's hit them over the head with it. Flaubert does a good job of trivialization, and you do have to admire his ability to anticipate the major themes of a 1970s American boy's adolescence, but, otherwise, his masterwork ought to be recognized as the slapstick classic, Bouvard and Pecuchet, which he wrote about the process of writing Bovary. What I can't figure out is whether Burt is Bouvard or Pecuchet.

OK, City Girl, have I earned the Suade Stiletto award?

Tale of Genji -- yes -- it would go in my top 5
The Magic Mountain -- haven't read it -- I've not been able to finish any of Mann's tomes though I appreciate the shorter works.
Middlemarch -- oh yes
Madame Bovary -- way too high
Moby Dick -- yes
The Brothers Karamazov -- I'm 100 pages in, so I'm reserving judgement
In Search of Lost Time -- maybe when I have lots of time
War and Peace -- yes
Don Quixote -- yes, but I'd put Genji ahead of DQ.

>413 copyedit52: Yes, in 2006. Still mourning the books and not sure what all got lost. Several boxes on the floor and the bottom shelf of each bookcase.

Only Ulysses and Don Quixote for me, though I'm starting Brothers Karamazov today.

405: I was moved to check out Caradoc Evans and found you gave the book a three star rating!

Bovary, Dick, Ulysses, Quixote, Brothers, Lost Time. Intend to get to the others, even Tolstoy.

414 A_musing, sorry, but while Mme B was a pretty good book, I'm just not that into it. It kinda tries too hard.

416> perhaps a bibliophile's worst nightmare! After fire. My condolences.

Well, coming to a salon near you sometime in the Spring of 2011: Daniel S. Burt's companion volume, The Literary 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time (revised ed.).

All 225 of them! Woohoo! There is indeed a future for lists to look forward to in the Salon!

Always a problem as to how to define literary. And Author. And Influential.

A quick short list for my top ten choices, in no particular order:

(1) Moses - top Biblical honors based on his authorship of the Mosaic books; some later books may reach greater literary heights, such as Job, but he's got 5 books and they provide a foundation for everything else.
(2) John - my preference among the NT writers; there's a point for Paul, with all those letters, and Matthew's pretty good, but I just love John's opening
(3) Confucius - how many literary figures give birth to thousands of years and billions of people of bureaucracy?
(4) Muhammed - he recited rather than authored, but let's give it to him as a conduit
(5) Vyasa - he may be real, he may be mythical, but the "authorship" of the Bharata is deserving
(6) Homer - the Greek Vyasa; epics deserve a second on the list given their foundational status
(7) Aeschylus - father of Greek Theatre; Kalidasa is on his tail in the theatre business, followed by his Greek Brethern and then the Shakespeare guy (I don't know much about Eastern drama, I'm afraid) - this cluster of greats is as tightly matched as the new testament gang
(8) Murasaki Shikibu - mother of the novel
(9) Tu Fu - the big guy in Chinese poetry
(10) Dante - launches the early Modern era in the West through his wholesale theft of Classical and Islamic themes and recasting of them into Christian guise
(11) St. Augustine - the greatest of Latin writers (I know, world's tallest midget) and Latin was the language of the West for 1500 years, the City of God is the most fascinating writing in the west at any time between the Greek playwrights and Dante (yes, testaments included)

But -predication- Burt's top 10 will be 50% english speaking and weighted to the 19th century.

Just to fi nish up

Middlemarch
Moby Dick
The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Don Quixote

Half of the last ten. Not bad.

>421 A_musing: But no Shakespeare? Even though his plots were derivative, his language would qualify him for a top ten list, I'd argue.

I'm sure you're right about what Burt's list will be like, and it would probably a lot less controversial if he just went all out and called it a list of the best English-language (original or in translation) poets, novelists, and playwrights. It's extremely unlikely he'll really cover the world.

A_musing, you really should compose your own ranking. I do believe you've got the chops.

But -predication- Burt's top 10 will be 50% english speaking and weighted to the 19th century.

Burt's not quite as predictable as we might think.

40% english speaking in top 10, and only 2 of the 10 come from the 19th century; but, after his novel ranking, easy to see why you'd predict that way.

I should mention that Keri Hulme's, The Bone People got an honorable mention in his 2004 ed., but was the only book that got cut, as far I can tell, comparing the two editions, from 2010s.

Neither of Hermann Broch's novels appeared in the 2004 version.

The top 24 of both editions were identical.

Invisible Man ranked 25th in 2004, up considerably from 2010s, like the following:
Finnegans Wake, 26th
The Man Without Qualities, 27th
Gravity's Rainbow, 28th
An American Tragedy, 46th (way too high)
The Golden Notebook, 48th
Gone with the Wind, 100th

>423 ejj1955: My list generally needs some younger blood. Dante is the most recent author on the whole list. But I'm like a deer in the headlights figuring out who to replace to get a few kids from the last 700 or so years on and who belongs.

So on Burt's list, what books are missing completely that belong? I've mentioned them both above, but for me, Independent People and The Journey to the West come to mind.

I got a lot of reading to do before I can do a list. Really, the whole project is pretty impressive and must have been a lot of fun.

I've only read maybe 20 from the entire 225, but this is a most entertaining conversation. So many contradictory absolute yes's and no's...in adjacent posts.

According to the top 10, the time to write a novel was 1850-1927 (well, maybe 1924, since Proust wasn't alive in 1927). That time period covers 8 of the top 10 (14of20/18or30) (If we expand to say 1800-1940 we get:25 of the top 30!!)

Really? Did the novel peak so long ago? Is the Golden Age gone? Is it time to quit the form?

>426 dchaikin: good remark, stuff to think over

Never read War and Peace. I guess I should, huh? Though my daughter thinks I'd prefer Anna Karenina; obviously I haven't read that either. Nor Proust. I've done Madame Bovary, but in French, so I missed every third or so word; Moby Dick, the Brothers, Ulysses, and Don Quixote. Did The Idiot appear anywhere on this guy's list? If not, why not? And like I said before, Death on the Installment Plan goes with Journey to the End of Night; makes no sense to include one without the other.

Speaking of the don:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/101135#2280052

I've only read 17, six only in high school

Eleven read after highschool:
13 ... Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877) => only OK for me
22 ... Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866) => absolutely belongs on any list
40 ... Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813) => loved it
88 ... Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) => loved it
97 ... Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1862) => read a year ago, and found it only OK
113 ... American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997) => bleh
114 ... The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) => enjoyed it, not sure if it belongs here
131 ~ The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (1945) => enjoyed it, but I don't understand why it belongs here
185 ~ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) => loved it!
198 ~ Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948) => Loved it!
220 ~ Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996) => a modern masterpiece
221 ~ All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946) => powerful stuff, partially because I read it during an intense jealous sickness phase in college.

Six from High School only
14 ... Adventures of Huckleberry Finn bu Mark Twain (1884) => Didn't like it then.
20 ... The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) => it was interesting.
52 ... Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) => don't remember much
58 ... The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895) => don't remember much (but liked what I remember)
91 ... 1984 by George Orwell (1949) => life changing experience. 1st book that really got to me.
107 ... The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1840) => enjoyed it a lot

I've recently read the first two volumes of ISOLT, and I think it also belongs on any list.
I've tried Brother K before and found it too intense... 8) ...trying again. I started the introduction this am.
I've read part of an abbreviated Great Expectations in high school. It was entertaining enough.

Of the others: I haven't heard of 114 of these books (51%; highest is The Ambassadors by HJames, #18), and nor the author of 72 of the books (the highest is #29 Stendhal). So, regardless of methods or justification, a fascinating list for me.

>426 dchaikin: "Really? Did the novel peak so long ago? Is the Golden Age gone? Is it time to quit the form?"

I would answer "yes" to all these questions.

I have more problems with the 1850 start date for the big hump in the bell curve than the 1920s end date, which, at most, perhaps should go through the 40s or 50s to accomodate Faulkner, Laxness, Mahfouz and a few others.

Graphing all books out by year (I don't know how to post that): The 1st kick up begins in 1813, gets steepest from 1913 to 1939, kinks flatter after 1975, with gaps from 1975-1979 and from 1987-1996(!). The last book is from 2000 (White Teeth). There is also an interesting gap from 1905 to 1913...and from 1869-1876.

The steep curve up are the Modernists !

This is interesting stuff. Has there been any studies about this ? The different canons of western literature set on a time graph. Did the novel follow urbanization or the technological revolution ?

I have read quite a lot from the list because since my twenties I have focused on the Western Canon. Only about 5 % of the titels were unknown to me.

It's more accurate to say it's steepest from 1924-1939 and that trends continues post war from 1945 - 1948/9-ish, then begins to tilt a bit flatter again.

If someone wants to figure out how to post, I'd be happy to e-mail the data on an excel sheet. Private message me your e-mail address.

The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (1945) => enjoyed it, but I don't understand why it belongs here

Why wouldn't it belong? It's often the only novel by a non-Western European Nobelist any Anglo is likely to have read. Coincidentally, it happens to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Let us give thanks for tokenism, occasionally.

I think I shall take up to copying that French book again, I can't stand this Anglo chauvinism--bring on the French variety. Where's Meddy? I'll do the musical books for her next.