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

8 and agree it is a narrow list.

I have no English literature qualification i just like reading.

Very unimaginative list!

Twelve. And I tried to read Ulysees and failed.

none

It's the sort of list you'd compile of books you feel you ought to have read not that you would actually enjoy reading

Twelve of them

All except Nostromo, and I haven't read all of the Updike or Powell series. I only have a MA in English but am a lifelong voracious reader, so most of these were read for pleasure rather than studied. As PP have noted, the list is very dated and I disagree more strongly with her later picks, most of which have really not aged well.

8, almost all from the pre-20th century end of the list. I'd say they're all worth reading, (but am baffled that anyone who wasn't a journalist would pick Scoop as their favourite Waugh).

DH swears by Moby Dick and Ulysses, and the bits I've read/listened to of them are really rich and rewarding so I'd disagree with the PP who says they're passé.

She obviously has a particular feeling for what she classes as "Great" and that's fine, other opinions may vary, and she didn't claim omniscience.

Personally I have no time for macho American 20th century non-genre fiction, but when I was randomly forced to read Saul Bellow I had to admit that it was Proper Literature (just not my taste).

none!

I’m going to make a start now though. Thank you.

I've read 6

not including Hermann Melville: Moby Dick, because i didn't finish it - it was the most dull book in the English Language (sorry)

I have to say it reads a bit like a list of A level/first year of an English degree texts; it's pretty unimaginative and shallow

Agree that it does. Most of them were on my reading list for English Lit degree. Outside UK. Probably why I've read ten of them.

None - and I read a lot. Obviously not the right kind of reading though!

None! I have watched the TV adaptation of Bleak House though😁

I’ve read 9.

I agree it’s a dated and unimaginative list. I do concur about Scoop over other Waugh though - it is the best. And Point Counter Point.

But where is Tolstoy? (far better and more relevant than Nabokov IMO). Where are the other Hardy novels that are infinitely better than Jude? Where’s North and South? Where are the French writers like Camus and Colette?

It’s just dull.

6 at least but only 2 were worth a reread ( that's why I'm vague - I may have read a few of the others but I was unimpressed)

Yes!

Toni Morrison and Barbara Kingsolver would definitely have made my list as well.

I've read 10 of them. It is very Victorian / early 20th century heavy and some of them don't really stand up very well now. For example, I have read Dance to the Music of Time, but a large part of the point of that book seems to be who the characters are based on, mostly now unknown. IMO it is not a patch on Midnight's Children, or Americanah.

I’ve read one of them 😊

None...I suddenly feel very uncultured.

I have, however, read the 3 Fifty Shades books (please don't judge!) and the majority of Kelley Armstrong's "Women of the Otherworld" series.

Oh, I've also read Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Murakami should also be on there, or maybe that's just my current obsession with his work talking...

I've read 6, and 3 of those are among my very favourite books.

I don't think anyone would be worse off or less knowledgeable for reading these books, for sure.

12, but I did an English Lit degree.
As PPs have said, it’s an odd list, particularly in terms of more modern stuff. Looks more like a personal favourites list, which is interesting but not any sort of absolute. I think all such lists are a bit like that though. It’s so subjective.
Edit: I think I know what’s odd. It’s very low on female writers post 19th century - this is weird as there are so many more of them to choose from than there were in the 18th/19th centuries. Where are Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Barbara Kingsolver etc etc. ?

One and a bit (the "bit" is Gulliver's Travels. I think I read it years ago but can't remember if I ever finished it). This is a very old-fashioned list.