To be quite cross that my new 100 epic reads scratch off poster has FIVE freaking Dickens on it but no Vanity Fair or Middlemarch?

[Stoechas]

And that fucking whale is on there too but no Becky Sharp FFS.

Don’t get me started on The Fault in Our Stars making the cut

I love Middlemarch. I recently read The Mill on the Floss and loved it.

Why so down on Dickens?

I hated the Phantom Tollbooth.

I also don't enjoy anything descibed as a 'great American novel', such as anything by Steinbeck, the Great Gatsby, the Catcher in the Rye, Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn etc. Just not for me.

YANBU at all

What do they mean buy "epic reads"? Are they going for length or quality?

I would highly recommend War & Peace. 100% worth the effort.

The Book Thief? Eh, nope.

And they have Tom Sawyer but no Huckleberry Finn?

I can't seem to zoom in on it very well does it have some Wilkie Collins on it, preferably The Woman in White? Why does Dickens get all the Victorian glory? Pah.

There can be no good reason to read Middlemarch.

Huckleberry Finn is there too.

Yes Dickens does indeed get all the Victorian glory. I don’t mind him, but five is a vulgar excess.

Any list that includes The Da Vinci Code and excludes Becky loses my respect, and I say that as someone who has read it (in desperation on holiday abroad).

A quick Google shows that a company called ‘been there, done that’ compiled the list as follows (I quote from their website):

Our proprietary software has scoured the internet and taken inspiration from GoodReads, BBC, TIME, Amazon and Book Sales to curate a list of the 100 Epic Reads of a Lifetime.

‘Proprietary software’ probably means someone has copied and pasted various lists from the internet and used the ‘remove duplicates’ function in excel to thin it out.

You’re permitted to read other books as well as the ones on your poster, too, you know! Sometimes when revisiting books you’ve previously hated, you find yourself enjoying them a second or even third time around…

I've just started it!