Time just put out a "100 Best English-Language Novels 1923 - Present" so I checked it out, formulated various opinions, and counted how many I had read: 21. I thought that was pathetic, but a well-read friend said that 21 seemed good. Mmm-hmm. She was being nice to me, because I know that sucks.
I will say that, of the others, I have serious intentions to read 8. Watchmen (very interesting to see on the list) is in the house but not something I planned to read; I may have to reconsider. I must also admit that I have never heard of 29 others. Yikes. I feel so "out of it."
Under the "What??" category, we have Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. This book and other Blume novels did impress me at a formative time, but the top 100? Neuromancer was also an interesting pick, along with Naked Lunch. Both I've read but didn't expect to see on the list. I'm happy about the former and scared by the latter. Three months ago I tried to pass on The Day of the Locusts to various used bookstores, but they didn't even want it, so what does that say?? Ugh, that book! [No, I didn't throw it out. It's still sitting here.] And Deliverance was used in a lit class as an example of a not-so-good piece of literature, and that it is.
Here's a different parameter and better list to check out. I've read 28 of those, so I feel more able to admit I majored in English. AND it has Calvino. Woo-hoo!
1 Comments:
At Wed Oct 26, 10:52:00 PM,
Schizohedron said…
I scored 21 from Time's list and 26 from The Observer's. Some points:
• Do read The Watchmen.
• I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish class. ¡Ay, Diós mio!
• In that same Spanish class, the teacher threatened to force us to read Don Quixote in Spanish, which would have required negotiating obsolete verb forms that surely would have killed all but the native speakers in the class.
• I hated, hated, hated, hated Tristam Shandy. I took a writing course in college in which we had to read this, and the professor insisted this was not only his favorite book, it was also ours. He later wrote a novel that reads much like Tristam Shandy. Only my belief in karma keeps me from butchering it on Amazon.
• I read Moby Dick without being assigned it by a teacher, because of Star Trek II.
• Jude the Obscure makes The Bell Jar look like Go, Dog, Go.
• Trivia tidbit: The ship on which the film Alien takes place is named after Conrad's Nostromo.
• Ballsy of the Brits to pick L.A. Confidential. One of my absolute favorite novels. Ellroy's American Tabloid is another, along with Neuromancer.
• Never read The Big Sleep, but I did read Red Harvest. Reads better as the films Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars.
I'll shut up now. :P
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