Page 6 | How Many of These Books Have you Read?

JaneyGee · 2023-10-04T12:49:14+00:00

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^

TheFirstStraw · 04/10/2023 15:45

Ohhbaby · 04/10/2023 15:15

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.

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None of that is relevant to what I said, but ok.

clary · 04/10/2023 15:47

MarkWithaC · 04/10/2023 15:39

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.

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Yes agree here.

Dull - not bc of all being written 50+ years ago, that’s a shame bc of all the amazing books omitted. Austen is one of my very very fave authors. Some other books on the list I also love. (Gatsby for example).

Dull bc it is a list typical of all the “books you must read” lists. Not necessarily “books I have read”. Ulysses is often on these lists but have ppl really read it? I have seen this list so so so many times before. It suggests nothing new to me. That’s why it’s dull.

egowise · 04/10/2023 15:49

Barely any and I have a degree in English lit and I'm doing my master's now. I am glad my uni doesn't subscribe to 'classic is better'

Off the top of my head I have studied Alan Moore, Orhan Pamuk, Jeanette Winterson etc. that I wouldn't have otherwise read.

Alstroemeria123 · 04/10/2023 15:52

12, plus several attempts at Ulysses but never got past about page 50.

Like others have said, it’s a weird list. Very worthy, but not much reading pleasure. Everything on there that I’ve read, I’ve read because I felt I “should” (or had to for school).

Almahart · 04/10/2023 15:54

12, but it is not a very joyful list

senua · 04/10/2023 15:56

I have seen this list so so so many times before. It suggests nothing new to me. That’s why it’s dull.
If I asked MN their favourite cake, they would come out with Victoria sandwich, chocolate cake, lemon drizzle, etc. It's dull the same every time but it doesn't mean the cakes themselves are dull!
OP didn't ask for a 'new, non-dull' list, she asked for 'best'. It's really not surprising that the same books tend to crop up again and again.

NonMiDispiace · 04/10/2023 15:57

3 and a half, never finished Gulliver’s Travels.
I have to say that very few of the so-called classics appealed to me.

FortunataTagnips · 04/10/2023 15:59

17 - not including the ones I started but didn’t get through, like Gulliver’s Travels, Moby-Dick and Ulysses.

Squiblet · 04/10/2023 15:59

I've read 17.

Good to see Henry Green get a shout out - his stuff may be a bit dated now, but it's still worthwhile. More so than Powell, I reckon, who was writing for a very specific audience out of his own very specific experience.

And Pale Fire is terrific! It's nothing like Lolita.

I did really struggle with Nostromo, though. So disappointing because Conrad's The Secret Agent is so good. And couldn't get through Moby-Dick, Ulysses or any Woolf at all.

starfleet · 04/10/2023 15:59

20 - I can't say I enjoyed all of them.

If I start a book I do try and finish it, the exception being Ulysses. I have tried over the years but have never read past the first few pages.

Jude the Obscure was one of my A Level Eng Lit texts. I fell asleep countless times reading it. I'm not a Hardy fan.

DoIlooklikemotheroftherbride · 04/10/2023 16:01

9

Original poster

JaneyGee · 04/10/2023 16:03

MarkWithaC · 04/10/2023 15:39

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.

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But she compiled a list of what she thinks are the best novels written in English – the best works of art, if you like. I didn't ask her to list the books she thinks offer the widest perspective. An 'inclusive' list would have been different.

I totally agree with Harold Bloom on this. Critics should be ruthlessly honest when judging works of art. They shouldn't pretend that a novel or poetry collection is a masterpiece just because of who wrote it. And they shouldn't pretend it's no good because they don't like the author. Philip Larkin was a horrible man – a pervert and misogynist – but he was technically one of the greatest poets in the English language. Evelyn Waugh was a sadistic snob, but he was also a superb writer.

People are now starting to question the canon. But they're not being honest. They're not questioning it on aesthetic grounds. They want it replaced because they don't like the authors, not because they think their works are overrated. The best minds of each generation have agreed that Homer and Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton were geniuses. To chuck that all away is not only insane it's also staggeringly arrogant. New voices should be added to the canon, but they should get there on merit.

OP posts:

JustWhatWeDontNeed · 04/10/2023 16:04

1 I think. Jane Eyre, or maybe it was Emma i read instead. I've no memory of it and whether or not I finished it. I was going through a knobby "let's attempt classics" phase. I didn't endure at all.

I rarely read these days but I like a stabby James Patterson type affair, personally. Admittedly, I doubt anyone is awestruck by my existence.

In my commuting days I used to read a lot. The ones I remember enjoying are the J. Patts; Dragon Tattoo trilogy (once you fight your way past the first 100 pages); The Book Thief; Striped Pyjamas; The Hobbit; The Bell Jar; Golden Compass... In my teens I read a lot of Point Horror. Also partial to trashy beach books.

I'm not very high brow. I like my books to have an engaging plot and not feel like a punishment. I generally want to dip into another world and escape, not challenge my intellect.

I reckon I haven't read a book for about 10 years though. It's not something I seem to settle into these days - I while away my time on the internet.

StellaOlivetti · 04/10/2023 16:06

12, I did English Lit at university. I can’t in all honesty say I enjoyed them all, or got very much out of them … Moby Dick and Gulliver’s Travels. Perhaps they’re wasted on 19 year olds? Have tried several times to read Ulysses, but I’ve admitted defeat now.

callmej · 04/10/2023 16:06

JaneyGee · 04/10/2023 15:41

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.

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Agree with most of this, although I'm not sure I'd say the 19 century, I think the modernists were very important even if not always the easiest to read! I also adore Waugh, though that's possibly personal taste... I would also argue there were many superb and important works in the middle of the 20th century century, it's only really the last half century I'd say there's been a really desperate decline - and the determination to publish any old crap so long as it ticks a box or is 'worthy' is likely a strong contributory factor. But, as several comments on this thread demonstrate, that's the current market.

PurpleChrayne · 04/10/2023 16:09

I've read them all.

I'm an academic specialising in English lit.

easylikeasundaymorn · 04/10/2023 16:09

PepeLePew · 04/10/2023 13:53

12 but I'd take issue with her list of "best". She's entitled to her view but it's a very heavily canon-leaning list that misses most of what has been published in the last few decades and skews very heavily towards dead white men.

Agree with this. I also did an eng lit degree. Very weird list. Only one woman has written anything good enough in the last 150 years, and none in the last century?

A lot of them are incredibly sexist too -I mean yes they are of their time but I'd struggle to put

I suppose "best" is a hard characterisation though because it's so vague. I could easily do a list of my favourites or most influential or best written or best characters/plot or best representation of their time period but just a general "best" is hard.

easylikeasundaymorn · 04/10/2023 16:10

Cut off half way -I'd struggle to class some of these as my personal best despite the technically adept writing because they are so misogynistic

RichardArmitagesWife · 04/10/2023 16:11

God, what a dull, male list! I've read 9 fully, read part of 4 more and abandonned them as very much not for me.

I do read novels by men, but my education was replete with them and I prefer to chose stories by and about women more of the time.

Alstroemeria123 · 04/10/2023 16:13

The thing is tastes change and language and culture evolves. Having a list almost entirely populated by old books written by dead white men makes literature seem static, but it isn’t. I’m thinking of Dickens in particular here, but his books are likely to have read very differently to a contemporary audience than they do now. Nothing ever seems to come off the classics list, and perhaps it should as things are reevaluated.

Perhaps it’s just me, but this does not make me want to read further - and surely, making a reader want to actually read the thing should be one of the criteria? (First 2 paragraphs of Bleak House)

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.

This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

PerfectMatch · 04/10/2023 16:13

I agree with the final sentence of your last post OP, that new voices should be added to the canon, but only on merit. I think the point that lots of posters are making is that there are no modern books at all on this list. Has there really been nothing worth adding to the canon in recent decades?

I'm on 9 by the way (including Ulysses - now that was a slog).

GunboatDiplomacy · 04/10/2023 16:15

MarkWithaC · 04/10/2023 14:53

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

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It's almost embarrassing that Conrad and Nabokov from this list were writing in their second or third languages.

English is technically Salman Rushdie's second language too, although he went to an English medium school from a very young age, and a lot of people would put Midnight's Children on their Best Novels ever list.

easylikeasundaymorn · 04/10/2023 16:18

JaneyGee · 04/10/2023 15:26

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.

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Really? nobody today writes with as much joy and energy? Bit of an overarching statement. And dickens is an odd choice to demonstrate this joy and energy of writing, he is a great storyteller but not only are the majority of his novels very bleak (albeit with some humorous characterisations) but you can absolutely tell he was being paid by the word for several of his novels, and the prose and plots reflects this...

MarkWithaC · 04/10/2023 16:19

JaneyGee · 04/10/2023 16:03

But she compiled a list of what she thinks are the best novels written in English – the best works of art, if you like. I didn't ask her to list the books she thinks offer the widest perspective. An 'inclusive' list would have been different.

I totally agree with Harold Bloom on this. Critics should be ruthlessly honest when judging works of art. They shouldn't pretend that a novel or poetry collection is a masterpiece just because of who wrote it. And they shouldn't pretend it's no good because they don't like the author. Philip Larkin was a horrible man – a pervert and misogynist – but he was technically one of the greatest poets in the English language. Evelyn Waugh was a sadistic snob, but he was also a superb writer.

People are now starting to question the canon. But they're not being honest. They're not questioning it on aesthetic grounds. They want it replaced because they don't like the authors, not because they think their works are overrated. The best minds of each generation have agreed that Homer and Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton were geniuses. To chuck that all away is not only insane it's also staggeringly arrogant. New voices should be added to the canon, but they should get there on merit.

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I'm not sure why you put 'inclusive' in quote marks. Are they sneer quotes?
I don't mean that a list should include books that offer the widest perspective but that her list, unless she has considered Morrison, Atwood, other Waugh titles, Pamuk, Winterson etc and decided that they are not as good, draws from a very narrow one.
Saying that the list is heavy on old white men isn't a criticism of those men's lives/actions/characters, but it is worth remembering that white men have historically been much more likely to be able to write (the pram in the hall, despite Cyril Connolly's complaining about it, has been/is much more of an impediment to women) and to be both published and acclaimed than other groups.

No one has suggested chucking writers out, either, just that we can afford to add other ones.

It's interesting that, again, the writers you use to support your argument ('Homer and Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton') don't appear in this woman's list.

GunboatDiplomacy · 04/10/2023 16:20

Alstroemeria123 · 04/10/2023 16:13

The thing is tastes change and language and culture evolves. Having a list almost entirely populated by old books written by dead white men makes literature seem static, but it isn’t. I’m thinking of Dickens in particular here, but his books are likely to have read very differently to a contemporary audience than they do now. Nothing ever seems to come off the classics list, and perhaps it should as things are reevaluated.

Perhaps it’s just me, but this does not make me want to read further - and surely, making a reader want to actually read the thing should be one of the criteria? (First 2 paragraphs of Bleak House)

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.

This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

Edited

Definitely makes me want to read it. It's taken me thirty years to recover from the horrors of reading Hard Times for O Level to want to give Dickens a go, but I think I might finally be ready to try Bleak House and Great Expectations. Maybe it can be my 2024 resolution, along with Moby Dick, which would make DH happy.

How Many of These Books Have you Read?

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