…book on the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century? (The Board’s list)
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
I’m working my way down the list…
…book on the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century? (The Board’s list)
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/novels.html
I’m working my way down the list…
No, I haven’t even come close. I admire you for trying to go for it, though. Good luck.
Read 6 on one list and 5 on another. Heard of most of them, though.
And no, I’m not going to list what I’ve read. It took me long enough reading the damned list!
I’ve read 43 on the Board’s list and 37 on the other list. Both lists are somewhat odd, if you ask me.
means school assignment
The Great Gatsby
Brave New World*
Ironweed* (well, actually, I never read it, I just saw the movie in class…)
To Kill a Mockingbird (I read this first in 8th grade and loved it, and then I read it for an assignment again in 10th grade…I also saw the movie…Gregory Peck is a GREAT actor and this was Robert Duvall’s debut!)
Gone with the Wind (four times!)
The Handmaid’s Tale (started to read it and lost interest…)
IT (Stephen King…my favorite King novel…it’s the greatest!)
I would add:
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
A Tree Grow in Brooklyn and Maggie Now by Betty Smith
The Body by Stephen King
Yeah the list is kinda weird; there are a lot missing and there are some strange picks. I’ve read 28 on the first list by the way…
I read 15 on the readers’ list side and 5 on the board’s list side. I noticed several that I tried to read in the past but couldn’t get into. I should try them again now that I’m older and my tastes have changed. However, I still prefer sci-fi to existentialist-y and angst-y stuff! Which of Heinlein’s is the best?
I’ve read 10 on the boards list, 22 on the readers.
I’ve seen the movie version of 15 on the boards list, and 20 on the readers.
Now what I want to know is:
Where was Pynchon (or any PoMo author) on the boards list? Heller was the closest I saw. Their list seemed pretty heavily weighted toward the 1st half of the century.
Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard get 7 of the top 10 on the readers poll?!?! Lets try this again with a fair voting system.
33 on the Board list, 34 on the readers’ – despite the fact that I’ve never read so much as a word by L. Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand in my life.
I think all the readers who voted on this were drunk, scientologists, or both. Good lord. And of course, there’s no sense in going into the actual list–BNW is far from Huxley’s best novel, just his most well known. ANd if you want to argue that with me, I’ll gut you like a fish (huxley addict here)
And FTR: 14 on the real list (not the drunk one)
Hmmmmm. Guess I got to about 20 on the official list. With another 30 or so still on my own list to be read…
I’d agree with the comments that the list is skewed toward the early part of the century. Hey, but at least James Baldwin got SOME recognition, and he’s usually passed over.
As for the reader poll, that list was clearly hijacked by Scientologists…
9 on the Board’s list, 18 on the readers’.
only 7 on the board’s list and 22 on the reader’s(mostly because I’m huge Heinlein fan)
Twenty on the board’s list, and nineteen on the readers’. I don’t think I’ve read anything on the board’s list since I took my last English class in college :o
9 on the board side, 15 on the reader side.
I don’t want to read the entire list.
I’ve read 8 of the first 10 (haven’t read Lolita or Darkness at Noon). Only two of those eight were any good (Gatsby, Grapes of Wrath) so I am not encouraged to try to read many of the others.
I had much better success with a similar non-fiction list published last year. I forget who published it was #1 was The Autobiography of Henry Adams. Actually read one through ten on that list last year and found each to be immensely satisfying.
Damn, I didn’t want to read the whole list but curiosity got the better of me. Two comments:
How could Finnegan’s Wake make the list? Even if it is only 77 that book is nothing more than a frickin’ novelty. Admittedly is incredibly complex nonsense, but it is not literature. Inclusion of this book proves the listmaker(s) was a pretentious boob.
Joseph Conrad is good, but don’t you think maybe the listmaker went a little overboard?
I’ve been wanting to read Lolita…only I’ve had the most incredible time actually FINDING it at a library.
My campus library has several books by Nabokov, but not Lolita…admitedly, it IS a Catholic college…but they’re pretty liberal…
I’ve read 9 on the first list (would have been 10 if I had finished Death Comes for the Archbishop, which bored the holy hell out of me) and 19 on the second.
I can’t believe that Fifth Business by Robertson Davies made the second list but not the first. That book edged out 1984 as the best assigned book I read in high school. Y’all do yourselves a favor and read it.
That second list HAD to be hijacked by scientologists. How many people have even attempted, much less finished, the entire 10-book Mission Earth series? And it’s number 10 on the list? My ass.