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Sep. 15th, 2019 at 2:34 AM
Thanks! I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with :)
~~
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (not all of them but a fair number)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (tried to read it, didn't like it)
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (charming book, just like most of his)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
101. Pere Goriot--Balzac
102. Eugenie Grande--Balzac
103. Rouge et Noir--Stendahl
104. Tartuffe--Moliere
105. Eugene Onegin--Pushkin
106. The Divine Comedy--Dante
107. The Trojan Damsels--Euripides
108. The Iliad and The Odyssey--Homer
109. Faust--Goethe
110. Fathers and Sons--Turgenev
111. Collected short stories--Isaac Asimov
112. The Foundation Trilogy--Isaac Asimov
113. Collected short stories--Jack London
114. Brave New World--Aldous Huxley
114. Brave New World--Aldous Huxley
Comments
Aarne is the "A" in the ATU index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%93Uther_Index), an enormous catalog of types of tales. In theory every folk story told anywhere is one of the ATU types, e. g. Sleeping Beauty is 410. The fact that folk stories all over are similar enough to be so classified blew my mind at an early age and continues to do so. That was a joke, really - ATU index makes for very dry reading, somewhere between the Yellow Pages and tables of integrals. But it does include every story ever told (almost) :)
I see re: ATU index, thanks for the info!
Frankl is non-fiction, and this is a fiction list. Let's make a parallel non-fiction one and add him there, right next to Obedience to Authority and The Microbe Hunters. That list may prove even more fun :)
The Microbe Hunters...now that was a special book. Have you, by any chance, re-read it as an adult?
P.S. And no, I don't know the joke, do tell!
Edited 2019-09-17 08:43 am (UTC)
Joke:
An ork, a hobbit, and a human meet in a forest, and the hobbit asks: "who are you guys?
-I'm an elf
-I'm also an elf, what about yourself?
-Oh me? I'm an elf.
-Waaaait, why are the three of us so different?
-We're from different translations.
The remark I've always liked, about translations, is
Перевод с иностранного языка--как переход через линию фронта: без потерь не бывает!
;)
Re: Microbe Hunters--I'd bought it for my niece before, and then for my kids, and re-read it myself.
It is very good...but a trifle spoiled by the author's...unfelicitious attitude, as the editor puts it. No doubt you noticed it too
http://languagehat.com/stopwatch-novels/ - isn't it funny that neither of us thought of Mrs. Dalloway? I must read it sometime.
...I mean, it reflects the time when it was written, no more and no less, and the book is an excellent book...yet reading it now, one cannot but notice.
Ah yes, Mrs. Dalloway. Not read it either, and yes, I must sometime.
Here's something that popped up in my FB feed earlier today:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/30/writers-top-ten-favorite-books/
...What d'you think?
What I cannot understand is why does Lolita always show up on these lists. If you understand why, please explain it to me? ;)
Lolita always shows up because it's a great novel. I don't like it, but I don't like anything by Dostoyevsky either. Or any horror movies. It's perfectly built and very convincing. A poem apropos:
Мимо тещиного шкафа
Я без шуток не хожу -
То Лимонова подсуну,
То Виана подложу.
Both of these, btw, tried something similar to Nabokov and, to my mind, failed. Although, of course, I haven't tried Vian in French.
If one asks furniture-makers about their favorite chairs one should expect a list of most inventive and well-made chairs, not the most comfortable ones. If one asks writers about their favorite books, well... many of these will not be the books I'd love re-reading.
A great novel? How? Nabokov was a talented writer, and his command of both Russian and English languages is indeed impressive; I'd liked his other works--but Lolita? I found the protagonist disgusting.
I actually like some of Dostoevsky's works (such as Poor People and White Nights)--and some others ("The Meek One") are interesting psychological studies...
LOL re: poem
I'd read a bit of Limonov and liked his chef d'oeuvres even less than I read Lolita, I think I quit 10 pages in, whereas Lolita, I finished
Not heard of Vian, I regret to say
I'm sure you're right re: chairs and book recs ;)
"A great novel? How? ... Lolita? I found the protagonist disgusting."
Yes, he is. As intended. Nabokov literally said Humbert was hateful. Hundreds of great paintings have disgusting subjects, why not a great novel? To me a great literary work is one that influences a culture, embeds in it a character or situation that will become a long-term reference and spawn remakes. Lolita and Humbert are characters like that. Others are Faust (who is also disgusting), Macbeths (ditto for both), Hamlet (I don't like him but am aware that there are other opinions), Peter Pan (I'd hate him, but he's a dead baby so I can't) and many more likable ones. What is your definition of a great literary work?
"Not heard of Vian, I regret to say" There's nothing to regret, I assure you :)
I see...I don't know.
I can understand Faust, or Hamlet, or even the Macbeths, more than I can Humbert. Peter Pan was very flighty, was he not? Is that why you dislike him? I don't think I'd actually read the book.
Definition of a great literary work. Well, it's hard to define, isn't it? And as you say, it will vary from person to person. The same in the arts--Picasso is considered a genius painter--but I can't say I like many of his works, simply because I don't care for cubism.
In literature too--perhaps not everyone will agree they are great works, but I think they are very good and they are considered classics. I like several of Dickens' novels, "Hard Times", for example, or "David Copperfield." "Jane Eyre", and, less so, (because one wants to hit several of the characters upside the head), "Wuthering Heights", "Eugene Onegin" is amazing, and Byron's "Don Juan" is quite good. Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace", etc. etc.
And yes, there are other novels which show up on the lists that I don't like either--I suppose because I can't relate to the protagonist--such as "Madame Bovary", or "Catcher in the Rye".
I see re: Vian, I don't suppose I'll read his stuff then. "A lively author", eh, along the lines of Petronius, or worse?
(no, not read Petronius, but Lord Peter mentions him ;))
Marguerite was probably not that much older than Dolores, and much less experienced and worldly-wise. How is it that you understand Faust more? I myself see the Macbeths as being the most sympathetic of the group, and can understand them best (these two things are probably connected). But "I don't understand his motivations" (and really, Humbert's motivations are quite simple, he wants sex and does not care about others) is not the same as "the book is bad".
"Peter Pan was very flighty, was he not? " :DDDDD LOL :DDD Seriously, great pun, but that's not why I dislike him. It's more his casual attitude towards murder and despair. Although, if one sees him as a personification of death rather than a person it gets a bit better. Only a little bit.
Examples of great books won't help us, because we disagree :) Start with my definition - do you disagree with any parts? Which?
Vian's characters are not nearly as nice as Petronius'. They are much meaner.
No, not that "I don't understand his motivation" but "he's a nasty person." As you say, the motivation is simple enough...
And yes, an unintended pun, I assure you. Re: "casual attitude towards murder and despair"--interesting...I'll have to read the book.
I'm sure your definition is true--and I suppose what it comes down to is, that whether a book is "great" or not, will vary, depending on whom you ask.
I see; I'll stay away from Vian then and read Petronius sometime :P
Tristan und Isolde - Gottfried from Strausbourg
Parsifal _ Gottfried von Eschenbach
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Mahābhārata
Njal's Saga
The Volsung Saga
The Nibelungenlied
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall _ Anne Bronte
Grimm's Fairy Tales