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

Oh that reminds me bruisername- I just read a great chick lit type novel.
Interesting form too actually, based on days of Hanukkah. I am clearly a structure geek.

I loved Sara gibbs' first book Drama Queen, so when I saw she had written a novel I thought it would be worth a go, and it paid off - it was really entertaining and moving."Eight Bright Lights"

If I was to critique the list, I'm surprised that there's nothing more recent. And only 4 women is a bit....disappointing!

Only 5 and I have an English degree!

It's an incredibly boring list. If somebody really loved literature they'd come up with something better than that

Oh grief.
I'm always so glad that I don't have such hang ups on men or have been so brainwashed by feminism that I cannot enjoy a myriad of books, songs, poems etc, just because they were written by men.

Only 2 but I have seen about 7 others as film or TV. It reads like a list from my school days. Which is likely as she and I are both retired, I am heading for little old lady status.

I've read 7 of them

This is interesting: It’s definitely an old-fashioned ‘uni’ list in tone. I have read 12 of them, (some like Gulliver’s Travels only because it was on my uni course but I found it interesting partly because of the reason Swift wrote it), others on the list because I love 19th century novels. (Persuasion is my favourite ever novel -even ‘doing’ it for A level and then teaching it myself did not put me off!)

Imo Nabokov is vile - it’s a mystery to me why anyone would recommend Lolita - I don’t believe in book-banning, but I could make an exception for this one. (I am joking - sort of!) I read it years ago and it still haunts me/sickens me whenever I think about it.

I personally loathe Woolf and Joyce. I never got beyond page 16 or so of Ulysses, (although that didn’t stop me writing a university essay on it back in the day!) The umpteen pages on the passage of water through a tap finished me off🤣.

The OP’s friend probably genuinely loves these books and because she taught them/chose them, that also gives them special meaning.

It’s good to share ideas on what people enjoy reading - I wish I was in a book club!

Do always remember that taste is very important. Two of my most hated books of all time are in there. Moly Dick is boring and shit and Gulliver's Travels is misogynist. Hate them both!

All of them. But I don't agree with her list.

Funny, I read Kim last year and loved it. Such an underrated novel. All lists are subjective, of course, and I'm often surprised by other people's tastes. I hate Philip Roth, for example. I also struggled with Wolf Hall. On the other hand, I revere P. G. Wodehouse and couldn't believe it when John Cleese (who I also love) said he didn't like him.

As for her list, these are the best novels written in English (hence no Tolstoy or Proust or Kafka). She dashed the list off pretty quick (probably to keep me quiet!) so no doubt there are many she's forgotten. I find it bizarre that people describe the list as dull, however. There is this weird idea that the further back in time you go, the duller the art or literature becomes. C. S. Lewis called it "chronological snobbery."

In fact, no one today writes with the joy and energy of Chaucer or Blake or Dickens. Read the general prologue to The Canterbury Tales, for example. There is nothing like it.

Well, I must be a right light weight. I haven't read any of them but I do read A Christmas Carol every December - does that count?

2 and I read around 50 books a year

I have finished 9 of the list. There are also some DNF there (including Ulysses, of course).

I quite like the list. I am fed up of finding that so many modern prize-winning books are over-hyped and not to my taste that I tend to adopt a policy of 'if it's still topping must-read lists after a 100 years then there must be something there'. I like older, character-driven books; not modern, plot-driven books which bang on about ishoos.

Oh dear. Only 6 and I did an English degree

I've read 8.

I had to read and finish Moby Dick for me degree and happen to agree it's the most bloody awful book known to man.

I love Dickens @JaneyGee and Austen. Brontë’s Jane Eyre was my favourite novel when I was a child, (I was ten when I first read it). Blake is by far my favourite poet, but I only really discovered him when he popped up on the A Level syllabus years back.

A more recent novel, that I only discovered through teaching, (I would never have picked it up myself), but which I heartily recommend is ‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn.

Others of my all-time favourites are ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and ‘Rebecca’. The latter is massively underestimated as ‘romantic fiction’, in reality it is a complex psychological precursor to the ‘modern’ novel.

I wish I could still teach these, but sadly no longer on our syllabus 😢

I don't think it's dull because of when they were written. I think it's dull because, as others have said, it's heavy on old white men from the UK or US, to the exclusion of other perspectives; and it smacks of a list of books you used to do in English at school/college/uni.

My school, college and uni lists (back in the 80 and 90s) were more interesting – Margaret Atwood as well as Chaucer, Martin Amis as well as Charlotte Brontë. Derek Walcott was on there, too, and Art Spiegelman's Maus. I could go on.

I agree about the energy and joy of Chaucer; older by far than when her list starts and notably absent from it.
Although I'm not sure I'd say 'no one' has since written 'with the joy and energy of Chaucer or Blake or Dickens'. That's an absolutist POV.

3 but to me it’s a limited list. I hated Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby (did TGG for English Lit A level).

What makes a book a classic is an interesting question. Harold Bloom, the literary critic, had strong views on this. He thought you should be ruthless and judge a book purely on its aesthetic merits – its depth and beauty and originality. No box ticking, in other words. Books shouldn't be revered just because they were written by women, or gay people, or people whose politics you agree with, etc.

I pretty much ignore contemporary literature. I can no longer trust the judgment of the critics or publishers. They seem more interested in who wrote the work than in its quality. In any case, it's impossible to know what the great works are today. Many of the greatest writers were considered minor in their own day. Even Shakespeare wasn't revered in his own time.

Can't remember who it was, but a major American author once said that the novel peaked in the 19th-century, and that it has been downhill ever since.

I find it bizarre that people describe the list as dull, however. There is this weird idea that the further back in time you go, the duller the art or literature becomes. C. S. Lewis called it "chronological snobbery."
In fact, no one today writes with the joy and energy of Chaucer or Blake or Dickens. Read the general prologue to The Canterbury Tales, for example. There is nothing like it.
I agree. I find it bizarre that writers who wrote pre-Freud / pre-psychoanalysis / etc seemed to have a better understanding of the human condition than most of those writing now!

I've read 14 of those, but didn't enjoy all of them.

I've read 8.

I agree @MarkWithaC - Marge Piercy and Atwood were my uni’s nods to the 20th century. Both are wonderful writers. I would say that ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is probably my favourite late 20th century novel, (with ‘Rebecca’ my favourite pre WW2 one).

I think a lot of mid 20th century works are outstanding

I also think there is a lot of literature (in English) written outside the UK that is totally overlooked

i never read modern prize winners but will gladly browse the bookshops and find modern literature that piques my interest. Sure some are misses but I’ve found some real gems.

but as I said above, reading is subjective and there is nothing worse than being told you’re an idiot because you don’t like certain books

I don’t think people are saying that the content of the books themselves is dull but just that’s it’s a very safe, canonical list with no surprises.