 | 1000 novels everyone must readJanuary 26th, 2009 |
The Guardian picked “1000 novels everyone must read.”
I have read 183 of them. What’s your score?
I am annoyed that I get no credit for reading, apparently, the wrong Isherwood, wrong Stapledon, wrong Sayers… ah well.
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Hell, I didn’t even make it through the second subsection. I’d scored half a book by then.
The list is consolidated in one here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction
I went and immediately looked at my favorite author in Sci-Fi to see if he’d been listed. Sure enough, the guy that created Drizzt is not listed. R.A. Salvatore has something like 16 Drizzt books, many of them NY Times Best Sellers and somehow he doesn’t qualify in that list. That’s just his work for TSR. He has 5 additional non-Drizzt books for TSR and an entire series using his own IP. Lost me right there.
You can’t have a Sci-Fiction Fantasy list and not include him. It’s a gross oversight.
A lot of things about that list are a joke. I mean, really. Ian Fleming? Harry Potter?
My score, sticking only to books I’d actually read cover to cover, was 33. I was shocked by how many books on that list had turned into awesome movies, though.
“His Dark Materials” and “The Discworld Series” were both cheap shots. The first one is a trilogy, and the second is what is it now… 16 books?
In looking at the list, bear in mind that The Guardian is a smug, hand-wringing liberal newspaper, and that their choice of books reflects their readership’s self-image and aspirations. Some of the books listed are there because they’re a fun read, but others appear because they’re “important” for one reason or another. For some (particularly from the “family and self” section), the only way I personally am going to read them is at gunpoint.
I wonder, if we wait another 30 years, whether The Guardian is going to create a list of “1,001 games people must play”? If they did, what games around at the moment would make it?
(No, Candyman wouldn’t – we don’t have that in the UK!)
Richard
Michael Chui:
I mean, really. Ian Fleming? Harry Potter?
Ian Fleming: James Bond. One of the longest-lived franchises yet, major influence on the advancement of technology, one of President Kennedy’s favorite authors, etc.
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter. One of the most successful franchises yet, read/watched by millions, highly controversial, also made many millionaires (Rowling made a billionaire; Radcliffe once reported as richer than the Prince of England.)
Bucketload of honors and awards for both authors and their works.
A joke? I think not.
Raph:
What’s your score?
~4-5. 
What can I say, I mostly read nonfiction. I’ve read a lot of other fiction that probably wouldn’t make most lists: the undiscovered gems of literature. I’d recommend The Counterfeit Traitor by Alexander Klein which I didn’t see here.
Richard Bartle:
For some (particularly from the “family and self” section), the only way I personally am going to read them is at gunpoint.
Gone with the Wind and Dr. Zhivago are in the “family and self” section. Never read them, but I’ve read/heard lots about them.
Derek Licciardi:
many of them NY Times Best Sellers
These days, getting on the NYT Best Seller List is like getting in the phone book.
I’ve read almost exactly 10% of them and had a couple of “read the wrong book by the right author” incidents too.
I’ve read 23 of them. Does it help or hurt that I have seen every movie made from books on this list?
I wonder, if we wait another 30 years, whether The Guardian is going to create a list of “1,001 games people must play”? If they did, what games around at the moment would make it?
I suspect that if the readers of this blog were to compile such a list, the general public would wind up squinting at screens of text adventures and blocky arcade games, scratching their heads and wondering, “what the hell is this?”
As creators and/or seasoned players, our perspectives on what is important and influential may be markedly different from what the average player would be willing to play… even when (or especially when) we think we’ve got a finger on the pulse of that average player.
Similarly, the Guardian’s list is compiled by the review team and “expert judges”. Regardless of the political bent of the publication, such a panel is bound to omit things which seem significant, and include the trivial (“Day of the Triffids”? Really? Over, say, “Ender’s Game”?).
I note that they are accepting nominations for the list through February 4. If one were truly dismayed over a particular omission, it might warrant an e-mail.
Derek wrote:
I went and immediately looked at my favorite author in Sci-Fi to see if he’d been listed. Sure enough, the guy that created Drizzt is not listed. R.A. Salvatore has something like 16 Drizzt books, many of them NY Times Best Sellers and somehow he doesn’t qualify in that list. That’s just his work for TSR. He has 5 additional non-Drizzt books for TSR and an entire series using his own IP.
I enjoyed those as a young person, but tried reading the first three recently – pulp is being kind.
–matt
124. Not terrible, really. What surprises me is that I read almost 3/4 of those before I was twenty, and there’s not a single book in the list I’ve read since I turned thirty.
Hell of a wake-up call. I don’t read enough anymore.
i’ve finished 22 books on the list, and abandoned 13 because they stunk.
Crime and Punishment held my attention during the “crime” part (first 20 pages or so), but when i realized the rest of the book was “punishment” – and moreover, internal anguish – i bailed.
Don Quixote was just painful. Nothing but poop, puke and fart jokes, and the hero being beaten within an inch of his life in every chapter. “Hilarious.”
It’s too bad the most interesting thing in Conrad’s The Secret Agent (apparently) happens in the last 10 pages. He could have saved himself 300 pages of writing.
And the Count of Monte Cristo is fun until he cuts his loyal assistant’s tongue out and starts killing people. i guess that’s the point of the book, but i hate revenge stories.
There! Next time you want me to proclaim judgment on your favourite literary classics, give me a call. i’m available for birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs.
@Matt:
His early stuff is difficult to read. The later books and his exploration into life, death, racism and other topics throughout the series is very good. He’s not going to be as critically acclaimed as To Kill a Mocking Bird or The Cather and the Rye but he’s certainly every bit as influential to the genre as Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling. Some don’t like his style of writing while others find the quickness and action of it to be entertaining. There’s a few Science-Fiction Fantasy characters that are universal. Gandalf, Raistlin, Bilbo… Drizzt is easily one of these. He’s easily as recognizable as Gandalf was pre Peter Jackson. Few writers in the Science-Fiction Fantasy genre make the NYT list contrary to Morgan’s generally correct statement. Most of them cannot break the bonds of DnD to become that mainstream. I thought Salvatore was an ommission from the Sci-Fi list considering his body of work.
I scored 44 read and 4 owned, but not yet read. Not surprisingly SciFi/Fantasy had the most (19) and I’m glad to see that I’ve read at least one from every category. I’m sadly lacking in many of the so-called classics.
When J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card don’t make the list it is not surprising Salvatore is missing.
Tolkein has both The Hobbit and LOTR on the list.
Woops Tolkien did not show up in this list http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-science-fiction-fantasy-part-three which I thought was an alphabetical list for the science fiction and fantasy part. Is in the concolidated list though.
My main gripe is that they credited fictional character Kilgore Trout with Venus on the Halfshell (actually written by Philip Jose Farmer). Maybe they did that on purpose, and it was a sweet gesture to a beloved shlemeil. But seems more likely, they just missed it in the rush to 1000.
-Cecil
You kind of have to wonder how many books on the list they actually read. And I was surprised to see a handful of “Graphic Novels”.
17. 11 of which are in the Science Fiction/Fantasy part.
Anyway, weird list. Since when did “The Discworld Series” become “a novel”, for instance? Or did I miss something and there actually is a book called “The Discworld Series”?
Actually, what was possibly weirder than including an entire series under one heading was the failure to do so consistently.
Why “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, but the other six books get tossed? Why not just “Northern Lights”, and no His Dark Materials? Why Hyperion, and no Endymion?
It doesn’t make sense.
Incidentally, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section only makes up 13/36 of my list. *pride*
@Morgan: I admit I’ve never actually read Fleming, being completely turned off by the whole concept (and Bond movies being more interesting for the gadgets + women than anything else; I said interesting), but I also made it a point to read the entire HP series and the only honest praise I can give it is that it engages people. I’ve liked Rowling ever since I watched her do the Harvard commencement last year, but I’m utterly unimpressed by the books.
I will just point to Richard Bartle’s comment. Michael Chui’s, too. I think I had 60-some, although I include the ones where I read the first 20% and said, “This is just a bad book. I’m not finishing this.” The list seems like a mixed bag: some I know to be good, some I know to be bad, some I intend to read, some as rather odd picks for an author’s only appearance on the list, and some that will be hard to find on this side of the Atlantic.
I scored 8. I also had read the wrong book by several authors who had works in the list. The list is good enough to include The Man Who Was Thursday, but suspect anyway because it does not include any Flannery O’Connor.
Although the list is as debatable as expected (no Ender’s Game means no cookie), make a note to read Starmaker. Then, again, I’m having a hard time enduring Rainbow’s End, so what do I know.
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