How Many of These Books Have you Read?

[JaneyGee]

I belong to an amazing book group. The members are great – no one shows off, or disagrees just for the sake of it, or tries to impress you with what they know. They all come just for the love of books. Anyway, one of the members is a retired university lecturer. She's published several books and can talk for hours on Chaucer, Milton, Blake, Keats, etc. We're all in awe of her (though she's very humble and sweet). Anyway, I asked her what she thought were the best novels in the English language. She emailed me her list (roughly in chronological order). Here they are. (I'm ashamed to admit I've only read three of them.)

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
Jonathan Swift: Gullivers Travels
Jane Austen: Persuasion
Dickens: Bleak House
Thackery: Vanity Fair
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Hermann Melville: Moby Dick
Henry James: Portrait of a Lady
Joseph Conrad: Nostromo
Kipling: Kim
Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
James Joyce: Ulysses
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love
Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End
Henry Green: Partygoing
Nabokov: Pale Fire
Nabokov: Lolita
Evelyn Waugh: Scoop
Aldous Huxley: Point Counter Point
Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
Anthony Powell: Dance to the Music of Time (considered as one novel)
Saul Bellow: Augie March
John Updike: The Rabbit novels (considered as one novel)
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian

16, but where are all the modern novels and Women writers;
Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, Majorie Blackman, Marge Pierson?

Can anyone explain why the chuff Ulysses is a “classic” which everyone should read? It’s the dullest load of tosh I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Yes, I read the whole thing. I wish I hadn’t wasted my bloody time!

Beats me. I suppose, at the time, it was a mix of new (stream of consciousness) and old (retelling the classics).
I suspect that those who have struggled through it want to build it up to be more than it is; they have to justify investing all that time and effort.
It may be clever but if it's unreadable then it has failed as a book. I know plenty of books which manage to be clever and readable.

I read Ulysses last year - I quite enjoyed most of it.

Nary a one, though I just finished watching the BBC series of Tom Jones for the umpteenth time!

Yes! Anyone who doesn’t class Villette as one of the greatest 19thc novels is deeply suspect.

I’ve read all of these (also an Eng Lit academic), and think it’s a weirdly unimaginative and short-sighted list. No Edith Wharton? Virtually nothing contemporary? One Irish novel? Nothing from outside the UK/UK/Ireland written in English? Massively male-skewed, and her choice of individual novels from prolific authors is very odd and rather box-ticky.

And what on earth is Henry Green’s Partygoing doing on a list of greatest ever novels in English???

Look, OP, as an academic in the same field, I’d be the first to say that it doesn’t necessarily make you well-read. This person might be a specialist in Milton, never teach outside her period, and for pleasure read nothing but crime fiction.

7

Yeah I’d say that’s a fairly dull list - like an English lit student trying to show off (and I was one).

Four but I don't agree with that list TBH. Hardy wrote better things than "Jude" for instance.

("The Return of the Native" and "Mayor of Casterbridge" in case you're wondering.)

16 but I’m quite old and my undergrad degree was History/Lit.

So old I’ve just realised I’ve already answered!

Two, but started some of the others and gave up as not my cup of tea.

What happened to Voltaire, Shakespeare, Victir Hugo?
I also quite like dystopia.

18. Although not sure if I finished Blood Meridian. Ditto Nostromo - that one was a real struggle. It felt like a letdown after The Secret Agent, which is just fantastic.

People are rubbishing the list but there's some great stuff on there. Bleak House is one of my favourite Dickenses, complex but relatable. Scoop is a good laugh, and Pale Fire is an absolute masterpiece.

I'm not an English Literature Uni grad but I did do A-Level English Literature many moons ago.

I've read none of them.

There are a lot of references and allusions in Ulysses that the typical modern, secular reader would not pick up. Catholic doctrine, Homer, Irish history, all kinds of other stuff. It's not enough just to read the words; you need the background knowledge. (At least that's how I justify my own failure to ever finish it, lol)

Yes. The more catholic members of my family raved about it and I didn’t make it past the first chapter.

I’ve read 5 of the original list (some during high school) but your list resonates much more with me as stuff I have willingly read as an adult. Love catch 22

All of them.

BA, MRes, and PhD in english literature!

8 - of the ones I havent read, none of them really appeal.

1. But I have read many others that could just as well be on the list.

People are so rude. And snobby. The op asked what she thought were the best novels in the English language.

She was asked for her opinion. She’s not telling others what to read and she’s not here to argue for her opinion.

Best
Favourite
Well written
Influential

are not all the same

I've read 13, but I think there are far better 20th century writers than John Updike and I don't think Nabokov deserves two books when there's only one Austen or Dickens or Eliot.
Didn't Nabokov write Lolita in Russian originally? (In which case you could have Tolstoy!)

Revisiting this thread as I’ve been thinking about the student protests and divesting and decolonising. The course all students take is described as a “range of perspectives across time and cultures that can enhance our understanding of the world” which is fair enough, it reflects that the influences on the world were male and European Lit Hum list

But as middle aged white English woman I find the larger core curriculum rather problematic.
https://english.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Fall%202024%20Draft%20Undergraduate%20Curriculum%20(04.16.24).pdf