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

Your comment made me think what I would include as ‘modern classics’ - books published more recently that will stand the test of time.

I’d say Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt would be up there.

11

Pretty sure Nabokov did too…

Five. I tried to read Kim last year but gave up.

Lolita was written in English. Pretty easy to tell if you've read it.

I'm surprised at a few, id recommend others by same authors;

DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover (honestly not overly sexual, has wonderful politics)

George Elliot Silas Marner or Mill on the Floss

Conad - Heart of Darkness (film is Apocalypse now)

Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles is less depressing

Huxley - Brave New World is better

Skip James Joyce entirely, he writes in a weird first person continuous prose.

Waugh is deeply depressing.

My additional recommendations are

Ken Keysley One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Kashio Ishiguro - anything but Buried Giant is very good as is The Remains of the Day
EM Forster's A Room with a View is gorgeous
Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is wonderful but depressing
Love on the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garciaarquez is lovely
Persuasion by AS Byatt
Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina

Less classic-y recommendations

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Stand or Fairytale or The Green Mile by Stephen King (not horror)
Richard Adams' Shardik
Robert Harris's series on Cicero
The Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers

Earlier in his career, yes, but he spoke and wrote several languages IIRC, and he wrote Pale Fire and Lolita, among others, in English.

16 but did a lit degree

I've only read 6, I'm an avid reader, but this list is very limited

I haven't read these. I would definitely include: My Name is Asher Lev, The Hunger Games, Wolf Hall and The Sound and the Fury.

These lists are so individual though and I am wary of anything that puts people off reading a book, whatever age it is aimed at or genre it is written in.

My personal list would be composed of books that came alive in my mind and which stayed with me and made me think about different people's lives and beliefs after reading them.

I've only read 14 and I consider myself a total bookworm and even used to take a book with me when I went out clubbing and remember reading on the night bus home when I was still rolling, great days but I prefer to be tucked up in bed now to read!

Also - did Mayor of Casterbridge for A level, which put me off Hardy for years. Persuaded by a friend who was a big fan to give the rest of his output a chance and that changed my mind - loved it. However, whilst staying in Dorchester a couple of years ago I thought I’d give the Mayor of Casterbridge another go when we were there, with fresh eyes, more experience of life and literature. Nope - can still see why I loathed it then and didn’t change my mind !

A grand total of 1 (The Great Gatsby) and that's only because it was a GCSE book.

There are quite a few on that list that I've never even heard of!

Two. Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby. I've read others by authors on the list that I have enjoyed though. I wouldn't think myself poorly read for having not read more from the list. There's a wealth of wonderful thought provoking, insightful, moving modern literature that I have read. It's a bit dry and narrow but if that's her taste then fair enough but I wouldn't take it as a must read guide.

Fifteen, though I have started three or four of them and just given up. I agree with pp it’s an odd list : two Nabokov? And only one Dickens and Austen each. No 1984, probably the most quoted novel in this century?

Personally I would raté Pride & Prejudice, Little Dorrit, Mansfield Park, Our Mutual Friend way above Lolita.

I've just read To the Lighthouse and Ulysses.

I have a literature degree but not in English.
I refer to fiction a fair bit in my current work.

I love quite different books. I would have something by Salman Rushdie on my list, nervous conditions by tsitsi dangarembga,
The colour purple by Alice walker
Girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo
Something sci-fi- maybe joanna russ
Margaret Astwood definitely
Naomi mitchison
Probably the best I can think of that I've read recently is lost children archive.

Things that muck about with form, which is why I've read the two on your list that I have read.

I haven’t read: women in love (can’t bear DH Lawrence); Nostromo; Pale Fire; Parades End; Point Counter Point; and I read the first Anthony Powell, shan’t bother with the rest. Too much good stuff to re-read!

Ten. Started a couple of others but gave up., couldn't get on with Henry James at all. Loved Hardy since doing FFTMC at O level and have read'em all. But a v limited list.

15, but very odd list!

*Atwood but predictive text is quite insistent

They are mostly old classical authors.

I don't get the obsession with these in Britain. Yes, they are important and of course if you study literature you should read them....
But there are loads of contemporary authors that are equally important and worth reading.

(Disclaimer: I have read 4 from the list and when it comes to books I have read, Jane Air is probably one of my favourites- so I'm not a complete ignorant moron)

I've only read two but I've read different books by another seven of the authors if that counts?

This thread highlights how personal reading is. People read for a myriad of reasons - escapism, to be scared, to cry, to laugh, to learn about other cultures - list is endless

every person on this thread would give a different list and I would say all are valid. I am not a fan of the genre disparagingly called ‘chick-lit’ but I don’t judge those who are. Just as I wouldn’t judge them for not liking the books I love!

and in that way - book groups work where they acknowledge that difference and read books outside your personal comfort zone or where they are targeted around a certain type of book that all the group are interested in

2.5, I gave up on gullivers travels as the language was so dull. Its a very narrow list

All-except the Anthony Powell. I got bored after the first two. But I am very old-so I've had more time than most- and I used to have a long, pre internet commute.