The Telegraph's Perfect Library

A recent article in the Telegraph (link below) provides a list of the 100 books which make up "the perfect library". Definitely worth a read.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/06/nosplit/sv_class...

I set up an LT library to compare with my own:

http://www.librarything.com/profile.php?view=telegraph100

Apparently I only own eighteen (outside of stuff in anthologies etc). For shame!

When I compare with your list it says I only own 10, but it didn't recognize Harry Potter 1-7 or the Lord of the Rings because they are boxed sets. so I guess I own a dozen (if you count each boxed set as one book) and have read at least 25 more.

I own and/or have read 23 of them. Some of the rest on my tbr list, but mostly I'm not interested. I always find these "best of" lists odd and fairly pretentious...

Interesting list - I'm liking these kinds of ways of showing "lists" more than in a Series-Like way. More interesting, the highest number of books shared in the library is 59 by any one user...

If you ever get compulsive, you might e-mail the writer of the article and ask for permission to cut n' paste the paragraphs into the comments section of the books for the library. That way, people can see why they were on the list.

;-)

A very insular selection with some glaring omissions even in English (no Nabokov, grrr), a high element of fake impression management (Das Kapital, L'Encyclopédie, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Chaucer, Wordsworth - who reads those for joy?) and a terrible taste in bestsellers (seriously, Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Wolf and Simon Schama make the list? Why not Dan Brown?).

The whole enterprise is doomed from the start by the weak, overlapping and not fully thought through categories (ie Austen is filed under "classics", while "romantic fiction" includes Master and Commander?).

I couldn't resist seeing what LT would 'suggest' for telegraph100 -- using the 'Special Sauce' Recommendations for fiction, telegraph100 got:

#1 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
#2 Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
#3 Count Zero by William Gibson
#4 A Guide to Middle Earth by Robert Foster
#5 Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
etc (with quite a few more either William Gibson or Tolkien-related books in the top 20)

So is that really what the 'perfect library owner' should be reading next? Inquiring minds want to know! :-)

Edited to fix a typo & wrestle with ornery touchstones...

The original list gives 10 books in each of the following 11 catagories. I thought some counts by section might be interesting.
6/10 CLASSICS
4/10 POETRY
2/10 LITERARY FICTION
3/10 ROMANTIC FICTION
7/10 CHILDREN'S BOOKS
10/10 SCI-FI
3/10 CRIME
0/10 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
1/10 BOOKS THAT CHANGED YOUR WORLD
2/10 HISTORY
0/10 LIVES
the total of 38 doesn't match my count because of series issues. I have counted HP though I have only 6 of the seven books (waiting for the paperback).

edited: found 2 more and took one out.

Two small points, mimsy_jess.

The Telegraph list is of 110 books (not 100) and your telegraph100 library only contains 109 books.

Thank you, pythagoras! I did realize afterwards that the list is 110, but it was too late. Also, I believe the Telegraph's list combines The Iliad and The Odyssey into one volume in the detail, but count them as two in the summary to 110.

Also, I did a more detailed comparison to include books in anthologies, collections, etc. and the new total is 35. Whew!

I can't access the telegraph site at the moment but I think the missing book is The Social Contract
Only one author has been allowed more than one book - Robert Graves!

The selection of 11 catagories and then selecting 10 books from each I think is not a good method to get 110 books. The perfect library must include an atlas and a dictionary but there was nowhere to put them. Science and mathematics got left out almost completely (Darwin made it).

I have no problem with the inclusion of Chaucer, it is worth reading, and of course massively influential. Das Kapital could be replaced by the more reader friendly Conditions of the English Working Class or The Communist Manifesto, both of which are probably less impressive. I have read neither The Prelude, or L'Encycolpedie, but can't really imagine wanting them in my library any time soon.

The weirdest inclusion, for me, is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I own a copy of this, and have found it useful from an academic point of view, but I cannot imagine why it would be interesting to a non - specialist. It would have made much more sense to include Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Asser's Life of Alfred; even the Whitby Life of Gregory the Great or the Two lives of St Cuthbert would have been better inclusions.

For the score I own, or have read all or some significant part, of 41 of those books, which is better than I usually fair in such lists.