What could I read tonight? by blu blue at Flickr
The Guardian has a thought provoking series this week on
1000 novels everyone must read. The list is very UK flavored, not surprising for a UK paper, but it has a lot of good stuff in it and doesn’t miss out much I would have added in the categories I have read the most in like
Science Fiction and
War and Travel. The category selection itself is very telling, showing how English intellectuals view certain genres. Sadly the search at the Guardian is appalling, so quick checking authors to see where they got placed is tricky, but if you have a few minutes and like books this series is great fun to skim through either to agree or to howl at who was left out.
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January 24th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Wow, that was depressing. Scanning through, I think I’ve read about 75? of these books (didn’t count ones I can’t remember well enough or ones I didn’t like enough to finish, but still). I’d told Chris last month to get me some fiction because lately all I’ve been interested in reading has been nonfiction – which has been good stuff, don’t get me wrong, but perhaps a bit out of balance. On the plus side, the poverty of my reading was nicely spread out between the categories, and I can say that I’ve at least read works not on the list but by included authors.
January 24th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I wouldn’t worry too much, you might do better on an equivalent US list. The US and UK are pretty close, but I find there are a lot of things that never make it from one side of the pond to another.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Well, in the world of “that’s not really progress,” I now have several novels I haven’t read scattered around the house, not being read. Any chance you’ve found a US list to make me feel better?