Hmm but over forty of these texts were not originally written in English. I do like the word Anglosphere. It has an atmospheric sound to it. I guess we here are orbiting in the Anglosphere. Anyway ( to be colloquial about it) I believe Desolation is to be congratulated. It is just a list after all and anyone could have voted. The Internet and life in general likes lists. People have tastes and opinions and we can all make lists. Why don't you JBI make a list of interesting Chinese literature and tell us why you would put each item on it.
Agreed. I think we should have a list that incorporates the best Asian literature. Or maybe even World Literature.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
> 1. The Bible
I think this list is showing a US bias.
> 4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I rest my case.
> 9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Surely this should be competing with Hamlet for first position?
> 19. Essays by Montaigne
Surely this should be higher?
> 38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
... and this.
> 72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The first Dickens at 72, and far from his best novel?
I think this list reflects what young adults in the USA might produce, a collection of (mostly US) school books, and "trendy" nihilism. Really great authors like Hardy, Dickens and Tolstoy therefore appear much lower than in lists from people who are older, not American, and far more widely read.
Given that you live in the United Kingdom (yes?), I'm failing to see how your suggestion that Hardy and Dickens should be higher doesn't reflect a UK bias. Pardon my further skepticism, but I doubt that had you actually voted on this list your top 10 would've been full of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Authors reflecting how widely read you supposedly are in comparison to the American readers on this site.
Wow, 91 out of 100 is really impressive. What are the 9 books you haven't read on the list?
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 12-31-2012 at 08:01 PM.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
I have a question - which version of the Bible has been voted no. 1? There are big variations between the different versions.
The one's I've read are in bold.
1. The Bible
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. Don Quixote by Cervantes
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. Paradise Lost by John Milton
14. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
16. Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire
17. The Illiad by Homer
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
19. Essays by Montaigne
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus (known as The Outsider in UK)
21. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
22. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
62. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
63. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
64. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
65. Othello by William Shakespeare
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
67. Vanity Fair by William Thackerey
68. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
69. Voss by Patrick White
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
71. Manfred by Lord Byron
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
73. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
75. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
76. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
77. 1984 by George Orwell
78. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
81. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
82. Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
83. The Tree of Man by Patrick White
84. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
85. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
27/100
Last edited by TheFifthElement; 12-31-2012 at 12:01 PM.
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
It may show some "US bias" but that's because it is mainly Americans who post here. I cannot see how the placing of a Group of North African Hebrew texts transmitted to the West via Aramaic and Greek demonstrates US bias really . I'm pretty sure that if it was Nigerians, Ghanians or Ethiopians (a country which had Christianity long before any part of Europe) who were mainly posting here then they too would place The Bible high up on the list. I find this list more interesting the more I look at it.
Wow, I've read only 6 from this list (except for the Bible but I was raised Christian so that doesn't really count) and there isn't even one that I enjoyed till Emma and even that I only read because it was assigned reading in my high school literature class.
What's comforting is that almost all the books I'm planning on reading next are on this list.
Here are the ones I have read:
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Hated it
27. Emma by Jane Austen Interesting though not exciting
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin Loved it, espicially the POV he uses
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
77. 1984 by George Orwell Best prose I've ever read
I was comparing this list to other lists, including American critics like Harold Bloom and Clifford Fadiman, not just to my own list based on the novels I've read. Can you name one major critic who would put Gatsby ahead of Dickens' major novels? I think I've read all his major novels, and can probably list ten that I prefer to Gatsby, here's four I'd recommend to Gatsby fans for starters: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby. Challenge: read one of these "back to back" with Gatsby, and ask yourself, honestly, which is the better experience.
Just keeping to the other side of the pond, I can't see why Gatsby is ahead of Moby Dick or Huck Finn, two novels fit to stand near Dickens, although still obviously inferior, to me, and other top critics
Sure, I could see some critics ranking Bleak House, Copperfield, and Expectations higher than Gatsby, but I doubt many "top critics" (by which you really seem to mean popular ones) would rank Nicholas Nickleby or Oliver Twist or 10 of Dickens novels higher than Gatsby.
I've read all those novels you mentioned and the only Dickens novel that made it into my top 10 was Bleak House. I rank The Great Gatsby higher than any of those works.
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 01-02-2013 at 09:30 PM.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Is there a link to the previous list?
I'm curious to see the differences.
Last edited by FenwickS; 01-03-2013 at 10:39 AM.
"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."- George Bernard Shaw
1. The Bible
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. Don Quixote by Cervantes
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. Paradise Lost by John Milton
14. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
16. Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire
17. The Illiad by Homer
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
19. Essays by Montaigne
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus
21. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
22. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
62. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
63. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
64. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
65. Othello by William Shakespeare
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
67. Vanity Fair by William Thackerey
68. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
69. Voss by Patrick White
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
71. Manfred by Lord Byron
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
73. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
75. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
76. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
77. 1984 by George Orwell
78. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
81. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
82. Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
83. The Tree of Man by Patrick White
84. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
85. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
A decent list of books... a great many that I have certainly read and would have no problem deeming as "great" reading. Perhaps I'll offer a few alternatives later... but I'm on my way to my studio. Got to get to work on my latest painting.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Yes, a decent list, from what I've read.
1. The Bible
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. Don Quixote by Cervantes
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. Paradise Lost by John Milton
14. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
16. Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire
17. The Illiad by Homer
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
19. Essays by Montaigne
20. The Stranger by Albert Camus
21. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
22. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
24. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. Emma by Jane Austen
28. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
29. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
30. Eugene Onegin by Pushkin
31. Watership Down by Richard Adams
32. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
33. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
34. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
35. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
36. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
38. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
39. The Trial by Franz Kafka
40. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
41. Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
42. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
43. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
44. Fictions by J.L. Borges
45. El Aleph by J.L. Borges
46. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
47. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. The Magus by John Fowles
49. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
50. Testament by R.C. Hutchinson
51. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
52. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
53. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
55. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
58. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
59. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
60. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
61. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
62. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
63. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
64. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
65. Othello by William Shakespeare
66. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
67. Vanity Fair by William Thackerey
68. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
69. Voss by Patrick White
70. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
71. Manfred by Lord Byron
72. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
73. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
74. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
75. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
76. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
77. 1984 by George Orwell
78. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
79. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago
80. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
81. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
82. Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
83. The Tree of Man by Patrick White
84. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
85. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin
86. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
87. 2666 by Robert Bolano
88. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
89. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
90. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
91. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
92. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
93. The Castle by Franz Kafka
94. I Canti by Giacomo Leopardi
95. Man’s Fate by André Malraux
96. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
97. Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
98. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
99. Confessions by Rousseau
100. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
61/100