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Stages of a Reading Life: The Unified Top 100 NovelsAugust 6, 2008 Who decides which novels are the best? Any list, of course, depends on its creator. NeilB decided to combine several English-speaking Best 100 Novel lists and see what rose to the top: "Interestingly, only one book appeared on every list: it’s in first place here."I am quite disturbed that I have read 99 novels on this list. I'm disturbed because the unified list has some very popular choices combined with some rather obscure choices (there aren't many esoteric choices, and there is a lot that should be on the list, IMHO, that isn't -- but that's another post for another time). After realizing I'd read all but one of these books, I started thinking about when and where I'd read them. (I'm not going to be ponderous and put every single book into one of these designations; the following titles are representative.) There are books of my early life: The Secret Garden; Anne of Green Gables; Little Women; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are books I remember less for their content than for the teachers who taught them: Great Expectations, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm. There are books that inspired impassioned college debates: Ulysses, On the Road, Invisible Man, Pale Fire, Atlas Shrugged. There are books that made grad school worthwhile: Midnight's Children, Heart of Darkness, Pride and Prejudice, Don Quixote, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There are books I "saved" to read after long periods of work, on vacation, as milestones: Possession, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, War and Peace, Perfume, The Handmaid's Tale. There are books I read because someone urged me to: The Da Vinci Code, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Stand, Beloved. There are books I consider among my personal Top 100: Persuasion, To the Lighthouse, Love in the Time of Cholera, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary. There is my favorite novel: Middlemarch. And then there is the 100th book, the one I have never opened: To Kill a Mockingbird. I'd better get reading. What are some of the books that have marked your own stages as a reader? Posted by Bethanne Patrick on August 6, 2008 | Comments (4)
August 6, 2008
In response to: Stages of a Reading Life: The Unified Top 100 Novels Christine commented: I read science fiction voraciously from fifth grade through college. Somehow, after the first couple of Dune books, I just stopped and haven't gone back.
August 6, 2008
In response to: Stages of a Reading Life: The Unified Top 100 Novels Gina commented: Any time you have "The Kite Runner" and "The Da Vinci Code" on the same list with "Lolita" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude", you know the list should be thrown into the trash heap of literary list-making. What's next? Combining "best novel" lists with personal shopping lists for Target?
August 6, 2008
In response to: Stages of a Reading Life: The Unified Top 100 Novels Bookfestival commented: How is it that you have never read TKAM? Not judging, just asking? The book is ubiquitous.
August 7, 2008
In response to: Stages of a Reading Life: The Unified Top 100 Novels Bethanne commented: Christine, the "different light" is key, and thank you for giving me an idea for a future post. Gina, I agree that this list isn't one that should be used to guide one's reading; remember, I said I was disturbed! Bookfestival, I am completely flummoxed as to how I've missed TKAM all these years. I definitely should have read it in place of several bad memoirs I've wasted time on over the years...
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