Miss Snark cites an article at Wordwing Editors, Read It Before You Die, which lists 30 titles that a poll of British librarians determined every adult should read before relinquishing this mortal coil.
In order, they are:- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Bible (by God!) [sic]
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien
- 1984 by George Orwell
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
- His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
- Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- Winnie-the-Pooh by AA Milne
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Evidently the librarians are better at literature than math, because the two trilogies bring the volume count to 34, not 30. But if we accept each trilogy as a single title, then I have read half the ones on the list. (However, I think I should get extra credit for having read the entire Pullman trilogy aloud to the Boy Wonder.)
Shame-faced confession: I've never read (or seen) To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll do it this summer, honest! But I sure as hell won't read Gone with the Wind anytime soon--if ever.
I read the Tolkien at 13 and had such horrible nightmares about the Ring Wraiths that I never went near his books again. I didn't see the movies either. I read Tess after seeing the Polanski movie, and that put me off Hardy for good.
I'd never heard of two titles: Birdsong and Master and Margarita. I've read parts of the Old Testament (known to my crowd as "the Torah.")
I loved The Lovely Bones, but think that Love in the Time of Cholera is infinitely more essential. Couldn't get past page 10 of Time Traveler's Wife, nor page 5 of anything by Coelho. And why list them instead of, say, Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby?
I love Dickens, but why three of his works and not Madame Bovary--or any French titles? Oh, wait...it's a British list. No wonder. (Reminds me of my honeymoon with Husband #1. We were at a restaurant in a fishing village in Cornwall, where many of the exterior walls were embedded with oyster shells. We eagerly ordered oysters, but were told they'd all died of "a French disease."*)
Most of all, why are all the books, with the exception of The Prophet (puh-leeze!), by whites from Europe or the U.S.?
*an archaic term for syphilis
5 comments:
I'm a lit barbarian too, I guess. Everyone touts The Lovely Bones as being so fantastic, but it did the unforgivable to me: it bored me. I'll take shock, pain, sorrow, joy, cheap laughs, anything so long as it doesn't make me wonder whether my oven is dirty. I agree 100% on Love in the Time of Cholera but then I'm a big Marquez fan.
You should try The Hummingbird's Daughter; I bet you'd like it.
I've read 24, plus some of the Bible and Lord of the Rings.
Most fantastic:
Pride & Prejudice
David Copperfield
Middlemarch
Suckiest:
The Lovely Bones (sorry, Bella)
The Alchemist
Does this mean I can die sooner than you?
Mara
Fine with me!
The Lovely Bones also left me flat. Seemed to me to be written by committee.
A book you might add to your list, Herb's First 1oo Years by Randy Perkins
hmmm.. i thought the lovely bones was alright :)..
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