This list of the hundred greatest novels of all time (ever! really!) was posted by the Observer late in 2003.
Of them, I have read twenty-seven.
(If you're interested, by "read" I mean completed them, not just bought them second-hand and left them on the shelf; not started and left with a bookmark about thirty pages in, never to be touched again)
(if you're further interested, the twenty-seven I have read are: 8, 9, 10, 16, 22, 23, 24, 34, 40, 43, 48, 56, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 72, 73, 74, 76, 85, 87, 88, 96, 98)
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I have read only 17, 25, 40, 45, 56, 59, 63, 64, 69 (everyone must read this, it's unbelievable), 74, 88, 93 (I thought this book was far too fragmented to be any good) and 98.
I hang my head in shame! I also blame TV - if they didn't produce so many great dramatisations of classic novels I would have had to have read them. Damn those big costume drama budgets!
I agree, 69 is utterly glorious. As I read it I could not believe how much I was enjoying it - that I could take such joy from reading a book.
93 is one of those that I have on my shelf, and have not yet read. Nonetheless, I have read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which will never be the same after a Friends sketch you may recall...
One of my problems with this list is that I think it chose the wrong books by certain authors, perhaps to be perverse (the Jane Austen choice, for example) or just through oversight (for me, Our Mutual Friend remains vastly superior to David Copperfield, despite the brilliance of the first half of the latter).
Pah.
Let's see here...
1, 4, 9, 10, 17, 18, 20, 21 (holy crap, can you believe that?), 23, 24, 31, 38 (when I was, like, ten), 40 (!!!!!), 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 61, 63, (I read the first one of 64, seriously that should count), 69 (beautiful, beautiful book), 82 (I love love love this one), 88, 92, 98.
That makes 25. WTF am I doing getting this doctorate? Oh, right: my period doesn't have any novels.
I'd definitely add Invisible Man, and perhaps Sign of the Four (actually, scratch whatever number Woman in White was; I've read The Moonstone, which really is an excellent novel), as well as more contemporary stuff like Norwegian Wood and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (which won a Pulizter...).
And culture club? Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon...
Chloe, I am SERIOUSLY impressed.
Do we think the American modern novel is under-represented here? I am thinking about Ken Kesey (I love love love Sometimes a Great Notion, it's utterly beautiful, and tried to start One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest but left it at someone's house and lost momentum), any John Irving, things like that?
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