I’m afraid Mr. Crichton, whom I thought very highly of as a person if not necessarily as a writer, has passed on to that big writing desk in the sky. Link
Wasn’t Crichton an active global-warming denier? I’m not aware of anything particularly worth praising about him as a person.
His intelligence, his humility, his kindness to aspiring writers, his honesty, his accomplishments in the fields of computer software and movie making, and his very full, rich and interesting life. Read Travels sometime for a glimpse.
Or are you saying a person can’t be worthwhile if they doubt/disbelieve in global warming?
I was just saying that was all I knew about his personal life.
I read the wiki article afterward, and saw that someone who responded negatively to his political publications ended up as a character in one of his books who raped children and had a tiny penis. Not sure I’m willing to call the guy a class act, but as I said, I don’t actually know much about him.
Absolutely. While perhaps Book 2’s Catalogue of the Ships isn’t enthralling, the story of Achilles and Agammemnon’s feud is a great one; it inspires thought and reflection, and can spur conversations that last a lifetime.
While I read and enjoyed many of the books on the OP’s list, I don’t think the Hitchhiker’s Guide is one that I can mull over, pick apart, and enjoy in the same fashion. It’s a funny, fast, easy read. The characters are well-developed, and the asides in the book make a decent commentary on modern life. But Adams’ page-long footnotes about depressed elevators aren’t nearly as intriguing a commentary on man’s emotional state as the character of Achilles is.
If you took the top 150 brewmasters from all over the world, and asked them to rattle off their top 10 favorite beers, you’re unlikely to get a lot of votes for Bud Light on there, even if a popular vote would easily put it at number one. Jack Daniels is a lot smoother going down than a 25 year old Islay malt.
Similarly, ease of reading and mass popularity does not make great literature.
There is an interesting little feature at the moment on Barnes & Nobles site - Guest Books where lots of celebrities, including well known authors, nominate their favourite 3 books. Some of your typical top 100 but a huge array of stuff.
It’s all in how you look at it. I doubt I agreed with him much politically (just assuming because of his AGW stance), but that right there is hilarious.
I like your definition of greatness, but I think most mainstream lists hold greatness to be the total influence and power they have over their entire readership, instead of the per reader influence and power. Thus, books with tiny audiences rarely get considered, even if they had managed to change every single reader’s life in a major way, while books like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 always seem to get put forward because they are both powerful and widely read, which puts the total power product somewhere really high.
My top 10 list would be somewhat similar to those of the magazines, probably because I’m not particularly well read but have read enough of the super-classics that some manage to really stand out to me. If I read more obscure great works, I’d probably be singing a different tune.
That said, some of those I’d put on my own top 10 list are just pure pulp fiction (e.g. Stephen King’s The Stand), but I take some solace knowing that Shakespeare was essentially a pulp playwright, too, and look where he stands in the pantheon of the written word now.
Let’s see, my favorite fiction books:
Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov (in what universe is this unreadable??? Joyce, I could see, but Nabakov? The guy wrote the most beautiful English prose.)
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (wonder if I still would like this one today)
Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
1984 - George Orwell
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry[
It really is utterly subjective, so I’ll add mine in no particular order
- Underground Man - Dostoevsky
- The Trial - Kafka
- The Stranger - Camus
- Homage to Catalonia - Orwell (non-fiction thrown in because it’s my favourite Orwell)
- Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut
- Brave New World - Huxley
- Heart of Darkness - Conrad
- A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
- I, Claudius/Claudius the God - Graves
- Ghormenghast - Peake (first two books)