Can't Resist a List: Update on the Guardian 1000

A while back I stated my intention to try to complete reading the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. I figured that if I have (optimistically) 25 years of reading left, I could finish the books I hadn't already read by reading 40 of the books on the list each year -- leaving up to 160 books a year for "free reading." How am I doing?

My reading in general has fallen off this year, partly because I was working as an address canvasser for the Census Bureau for a couple of weeks. I fear that Facebook and other computer time-suckers are also partly to blame. I just finished the 75th book yesterday, so if I want to make it to 200 I'll need to step up the pace. Of the 75, 16 have been novels from the Guardian's list. Here they are, in alphabetical order with category:

Eric Ambler, Journey into Fear -- Crime

Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader -- Comedy

E. C. Bentley, Trent's Last Case -- Crime

W. E. Bowman, The Ascent of Rum Doodle -- Comedy

Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest -- Crime

Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck -- Love

David Lodge, Changing Places -- Comedy

Jack London, The Call of the Wild -- Travel and War

Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

Terry Pratchett, Mort -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

Terry Pratchett, The Truth -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

Ruth Rendell, A Dark-Adapted Eye -- Crime

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea -- Love

Carol Shields, Unless -- Family and Self

I've posted reviews of all of these on Goodreads as Auntie Knickers, so I won't describe them here. This is as good a time as any to remark that the grand total of the 1000 Novels comes out to 1070 by my count. The Guardian reviewers had an annoying tendency to count a whole series as one novel, for example Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I did not even attempt to count all of Balzac's La Comedie Humaine, which consists of 95 works, not all novels; I think if I make it through Old Goriot and Cousin Bette, which were listed separately, I'll be doing well.

I haven't challenged myself very much with the first 16 books, except for the Jean Rhys and Carol Shields titles. Although some took me longer to get through than others, I haven't yet felt that any was a waste of time nor have I found any unreadable. We'll see if that continues. I haven't yet read any of the books from the most intriguing category, State of the Nation, but I'm remedying that as I've just begun reading Nadine Gordimer's July's People.

So how am I getting hold of all these books? I bought The Uncommon Reader on a trip to Louise Erdrich's bookstore in Minneapolis, and already owned the London and Hammett titles in Library of America editions. I borrowed most of the Pratchetts from Temple Truck Woman, and bought The Ascent of Rum Doodle new, as it was unavailable in my library system. All the rest I've either borrowed from the library or bought at used book sales.

This project has added the thrill of the hunt to my forays into the many local used book sales. Nearly every library and non-profit around here seems to have a book sale at least once a year, and the selection is generally very good. Private garage sales and church bazaars usually have some books too. In most cases the prices range from 25 cents to a dollar, so for a small outlay I've added a shelf and a half or so of books from the list to those I already owned. And the really big book sale at our own local library is still to come at the end of the month! (They hold it in the junior high school gymnasium, and it's big.) I've bought books from the list, ranging from a nearly-100-year-old leatherette bound edition of Lorna Doone, to a battered mass market paperback of The Bourne Identity. After inadvertently buying a second copy of Middlesex, though, I now carry a list of the books I'm still looking for with me.

Speaking of the library, though, I won't need to purchase everything. I've done some catalog searching and have found the vast majority of the books available either at my local library or within Minerva, which includes town libraries and some smaller college libraries in Maine. Many of those not found in either of those catalogs are available through MaineCat, which includes our three most prestigious private colleges, the University of Maine, and the Portland and Bangor libraries. Many books I had thought to be quite obscure were readily available.

So, that's where I am with my list so far. If you've read any of the books listed above or are also plugging along with the Guardian's list, let me know in comments.

Ten Top Crime Novels

I'm continuing my list for Sisterfilms (and anyone else who wants a list) with ten crime novels.
Before anyone asks why I didn't include Baby Shark, may I remind you that my ten books had to be selected from among the books in the Crime category of the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. Some of these books are firmly in the mystery and detective genre, others are considered "serious literature," but all have a crime at the heart of the plot. Once again I'll list them in chronological order by publication date.

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
Raskolnikov is one of the great characters in Russian, or any other literature. The punishment he suffers is his own remorse at his actions. There's no "whodunnit" in this book, and Raskolnikov makes a rather refreshing contrast to the soulless perpetrator who is common in today's crime novels.



2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet.
Far-fetched the plot may be, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone who could read this book and not be drawn in to the world of 221B Baker Street, in the London of pea-soup fogs and street urchins. Mormons might not like it much, though.






3. Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The first appearance of M. Hercule Poirot and his "little grey cells," his egg-shaped head, his moustaches, his tisanes....An excellent example of the English country-house murder mystery.






4. Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise.
Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover as an advertising copywriter to solve the mysterious death of a young man. Although the book was published in 1933, it has a bit more of a 20s feel to me, especially in the scenes involving the Bright Young Thing Dian de Momerie. This is my favorite of the Wimsey novels, showing Wimsey's ability to move in circles not his own -- I very much enjoy the bits where he comes up with advertising slogans.



5. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
Heartbreaking Depression-era tragedy of two men for whom things just aren't ever going to turn out right




6. Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time.
Tey wrote only eight mystery novels, but they are all excellent. Five of the novels have the same sleuth, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard. In this book, Grant is in hospital for a lengthy period and is going slowly bonkers until he decides to research whether Richard III really did kill the Princes in the Tower. Since he can't get out of bed, he has his friends research under his direction, and comes to a surprising but well-reasoned solution.


7. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.
It's hard to believe that there can be a living person who hasn't read this book or at least seen the movie, given that it was a best-seller on publication, a frequent school assignment, and most recently has been the "Community Read" for a number of towns and cities. It's a portrait of a time not so long ago when life for African-Americans was very different; that time should not be forgotten.

8. John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
I had actually not read this myself until just last year, when it came up as part of my project to read all the Best Novel winners in the Edgar Awards. Of course, the Berlin setting was of interest to me, but the writing, the deviousness of the characters, and the characterization made it one of the best books I read all year.



9. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, The Laughing Policeman.
Getting toward the end of the list, a lot of tough choices had to be made. I chose this book partly because it was neither British nor American in origin (if you hadn't guessed, it's set in Stockholm). It's a good example of a police procedural, one of my favorite kinds of detective novel. It was also an Edgar winner for Best Novel. If you have seen the movie with Walter Matthau, this book has almost nothing in common with it except a couple of plot points; I didn't care for the film at all even though I usually like Matthau.

10. Mario Puzo, The Godfather.
Sure, you've seen the movie(s) many times, but you really should read the book too. I suppose there were novels about the Mafia before, but nothing like this.

A Little List of Love Stories

Sisterfilms requested a shorter list of ten novels per genre so that she could begin without feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of 1000 novels ahead. She also requested that they be drawn from a larger list, so I am using the Guardian's 1000 Novels. I'm only recommending books I've read myself, your results may differ. All but one (as far as I know) of these novels have been filmed at least once, but remember, seeing the movie is not the same as reading the book. The first category the Guardian has is Love, so here are 10 books dealing more or less with love. I'm listing them in chronological order by publication date.

1. Jane Austen, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Really, any of Austen's books would be fine, but this is my sentimental favorite because it's the first one I read. Sisterfilms and I are partial to the older BBC version with Colin Firth.

2. Charlotte Bronte, JANE EYRE. Quite different from Austen, much more melodramatic, but I think the story will grip you. Personally, I would not care to reread this periodically as I do Jane Austen, but I know there are many people who do. The book brings up many issues to think about.

3. Lev Tolstoy, ANNA KARENINA. Now we're getting to the bad girls. Non-Russian speakers may need to make a little chart to keep the characters straight, but it will be worth it.

4. Willa Cather, MY ANTONIA. A very American story set in Nebraska. Antonia is one of my favorite characters.

5. F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY. Like all the books here really, this isn't just about love; love is always taking place in the context of society.

6. Ernest Hemingway, A FAREWELL TO ARMS. A love story as well as a World War I story. Interesting to contrast the writing styles of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

7. Daphne DuMaurier, REBECCA. This could equally well have been put in the Crime section, perhaps; although some might not class it with the foregoing "great works of literature," it's a story well told.

8. Boris Pasternak, DR. ZHIVAGO. A story of love and the Russian Revolution told by a poet. The love story ties it all together, but you will learn quite a bit of history by the way.

9. Kazuo Ishiguro, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY. I wouldn't actually have classed this with the love stories, but I can see why it's there, and it's an excellent book.

10. Ahdaf Soueif, THE MAP OF LOVE. This is the one book listed here that has not been filmed, and I can't imagine why not unless it is the Egyptian setting. One of the best books I've read in the last 10 years. It might be a good one to start with, especially for Sisterfilms, who's read a bunch of other books about Middle Eastern women.

More anon! Feel free to argue with or add to my recommendations in comments.

Can't Resist a List, Part Three: List Resistance -- Or Not

     Why can't I resist a list, and why are some people so militantly resistant to them?

     

     Lists or "reading plans" seemed to be quite popular from at least 1909 until around the mid-1950s.  One of the first was the Harvard Classics (1909). Charles Eliot, President of Harvard, opined that a good education could be had in this "Five-Foot Shelf" of books. Five feet of shelf space, made into a three-shelf bookcase, doesn't take up much room. I know this because, when my parents bought the Harvard Classics, the bookshelf was included.  Probably someone in the family has it to this day; I have the books, complete with two volumes on how to use them. One is a normal-size book with a plan for reading the whole set (50 volumes) in some sort of logical order; the other, a slim volume, appealed to me as a 10-year-old because it directed you to a brief reading for each day of the year. Sadly, I never got very far into January before other things (or other books, most likely) drew me away. Thus we see how list-lust and list-loathing can coexist in one person.  I did very much enjoy the poetry volumes as well as the Journals of Ambroise Pare (an early surgeon); the Classics cover various disciplines, so if I ever want to read Harvey on the circulation of the blood I know where to find it. One of the charming idiosyncrasies of the Classics is that, while Donne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, the Brownings, Whitman, Longfellow et al. are jumbled together in a three-volume anthology of poetry in English, Robert Burns gets a volume all to himself. The only other poet so honored is John Milton. Scotland for aye!

     The Five-Foot Shelf could fit easily into the studio apartments that striving young people could afford. Its later competitor, the Great Books of the Western World (Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins were among its compilers) always seemed to take up a bit more space when I saw it in other people's homes or in libraries. And indeed it has more and larger volumes. There is quite a bit of overlap with the Harvard Classics, but Adler and Co. were completists -- rather than choosing, say, a couple of plays by Euripides, they included all they could find. The Great Books have been revised at least once, removing a few items and adding others; they have formed the basis for "Great Books" curricula at several colleges and universities, and there is still a Great Books Foundation which encourages the formation of reading and discussion groups.

     Somewhat later came Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan.  I was afraid even to look at that one for fear my remaining lifetime would not be long enough, but, at least in its most recent (1997) version, it wins a lot of points for diversity, beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh (hey! I've read that!) and ending with Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (and that too!) and including a great deal more literature from around the world than either of the previous lists. Fadiman and his collaborator John Major (not, as far as I know, ever Prime Minister of Great Britain) were only trying to sell one book, the Plan itself, and the ambitious reader could acquire the books however s/he might.

     All these sets and plans** were most popular at a time when relatively few people had the opportunity to go to college or even, in some cases, to finish high school. In my generation, most people who wanted to could graduate from high school, and more people than ever before could go on to college. Thus we were familiar early on with Required Reading, Summer Reading Lists, Core Curricula and General Education classes. At my own alma mater, it was entirely possible for a luckless student to spend the first two years, plus one more course, just fulfilling the General Education requirements. Add to this our generally rebellious nature, and it's easy to understand the numerous comments along the lines of "Who are you to tell me what to read?" that all such lists of "Best Books" seem to inspire whenever they are published or posted.

**For a much more complete list of lists, go here.

     And yet, I think many of us, confronted by the amazing proliferation of books and other reading matter, want some guidance on what to read, as well as a chance to discuss what we've read, and to urge our favorites on our friends and acquaintances.  The continuing popularity of book groups, now on television and the Internet as well as in homes and libraries, owes much to these needs. And although it is always certain that literary critics love to make lists of the best or most important books, it is also certain that editors wouldn't publish such lists if they didn't think readers were interested.

     So if anybody's reading this, what do you think about literary lists?  Love them or loathe them? Do you check off the titles you've read, and complain about what's been left off? Do you make a vague mental note that you might like to sample some of the books? Or do you pass them by without a second thought? Let me know in comments, and elaborate if you choose.

Can't Resist a List, Part Two: Can I Do It?

     The Guardian, Britain's left-leaning newspaper (terrific on-line arts sections, by the way), recently came up with a list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read.   What makes this list more interesting than some others is that, first, it is divided into categories: Love, Comedy, Family and Self, Crime, State of the Nation, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Travel and War.  Second, the selections are annotated, and most of the annotations give one a reason for reading the book. (The ones on Thomas Hardy's books, however, are duds. Nothing but spoilers.) Third, although the list includes many unfamiliar British writers, it also has at least a few books from countries we don't normally hear much from unless we're on the Nobel Prize selection committee.

     But -- a thousand books! That's a lot! And, when I copied the list, I counted individual titles of multi-volume works and came up with at least 1070.  After all, it doesn't seem fair to give Alan Bennett's An Uncommon Reader, delightful as it is, equal weight with the twelve volumes of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time.  (Even though I've read the former, and not the latter.)  Then when I counted the books I had read from this list, I came up with a pitiful 205 (and that included Little Women, Ballet Shoes, and several Agatha Christie mysteries, so don't go feeling all inferior here.)

     Maybe it's the annotations, maybe it's the variety, but I feel much more inclined to tackle this list than I did the much shorter one from TIME.  So, do I have time to read the remaining 865 books?

     In the last three years I've averaged 194 books read per year. To read 865 books in 25 years, would take only 34.6 books per year, leaving me plenty of time to read mysteries, non-fiction, poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare.  Moreover, there are quite a few books on the list I was intending to read anyway, including Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. In fact, right now I'm reading his The Colour of Magic as well as E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case -- both on the list.  Also, because Onkel Hankie Pants was an English major, and because I've often been guilty of buying books and then not reading them, we actually already own about 30 of the books on the list that I haven't read.  So I guess I'm going to give it a try. I reserve the right to give up on a book if, somewhere between 50 and 100 pages in, I just can't stand it. After all, as my grandmother used to say, "Life is too short." I might substitute something from one of the more specialized lists I found, which I'll report on another time.

     I'm making a "shelf" on Goodreads for "Guardian-1000-Novels" and will track and review my reading there. As time permits, I'll also try to add the 205 books I've read in the past, but don't expect any very trenchant comments on books I read 40 years ago! I may also post some updates on the blog now and again.

     Now back to Trent's Last Case, which I'm reading for the DorothyL Book Discussion Group (we read and discuss "classic," pre-1970 mystery novels) and which is proving very enjoyable.

Can't Resist a List (Part one of an occasional series)

     Not long ago, two well-known publications came out with Best Novel lists and some bloggers counted up how many of the listed books they had read. Time Magazine had a list of the All-Time 100 Novels, and The Guardian newspaper in Britain went all-out with a multi-part, annotated series on The 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (chosen by book section staff and other literary critics). 

     I can't resist measuring myself against lists like these, so for even more fun (I can hear my kids saying, "Mommy, you're such a dork!") I searched out some other book lists both general and specific. I'll be reporting my scores and thoughts from time to time, starting today. If you know of some lists I don't mention, let me know about them. I'm especially interested in finding lists of regional books; I located Western lists of fiction and non-fiction from the San Francisco Chronicle, and a fine list of Southern books from Agee Films, but I haven't found a Midwestern, Great Plains, New England or Texas list yet.  At some point I may discuss mystery and detective fiction lists, but since I own a whole book full of these and read a lot of this genre, that may be a bit too much.

     TIME's All-Time 100 Novels were selected by their critics, Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo. Right away the designation "All-Time" becomes suspect when the subhead makes clear that the 100 are selected from English-language books published since 1923 (the year TIME made its debut).  Some, though by no means all, of the books were reviewed in TIME when they were published, and links to the reviews are helpfully provided.

     I've read only 30 out of the 100 books. (By the way, I think it's really more like 113 books, since Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Anthony Powell's 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time are counted as one book each - that would up my score to 32).  I found this list somewhat idiosyncratic, as one might expect given the small number of selectors. The seven authors represented by more than one book (two each) are Saul Bellow, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, V.S. Pynchon, Philip Roth, Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf. Wondering what these authors had in common, I came up with: except for Orwell and Waugh, they are authors I've read relatively little of and have not much interest in pursuing.  I don't know what that says about me or the list.

     There were several authors with whom I was not familiar, who appear to be science fiction or graphic novelists. There are two books written for children in the list. I wouldn't quibble with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but really -- are they saying that Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret is a better novel than E. B. White's Charlotte's Web or Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter?

          I figure that with luck and the availability of audio books in case my eyesight goes, I have about 25 more years of reading time left to me. There are several books on the TIME list that I would certainly consider spending some of that time on, and quite a few others that I don't even care to dip into, especially the ones which are depressing or extremely experimental in literary form. If I count up authors rather than specific books, my score goes up to 42, and I doubt that it will ever top 50 from this list.  However, if I were younger and had more time, I will say that one would get a fairly good picture of 20th (and a bit of 21st) century fiction and life in the U.S. and Britain by reading all these books, even though some are set in the past and some in the future. I was surprised, though, by the apparent dearth of books dealing with the Second World War. As best I could tell from the titles with which I was familiar, Catch-22, Atonement, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Painted Bird, and perhaps The Sheltering Sky were the only ones that dealt with those very important years.

     A note on how I count books I've read: I have to have finished the book, not just started reading it and put it aside. I have to recall clearly that I've read the book (for example, I'm not counting Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust because I can't recall for certain that I've read it and not just read about it). And seeing the movie or a television production or play doesn't count! Unfortunately, I only started really keeping track of the books I read a couple of years ago, so before that I have to rely on memory.

      Next time, you can read my thoughts and "score" on the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. Or must they? I hope readers will check out the lists and let me know their thoughts, scores and disagreements.