Lit Crit

I've seen this list of "the greatest novels of all time" linked to from several places lately, most recently from A Voyage to Arcturus. I usually find these kinds of lists pointless, at best, but for some reason this one struck me as kind of interesting, and it was good to see that quite a few of the works listed were books that I'd not only read, but actually liked. I thought I'd go down the list and offer some thoughts and opinions on the ones I'm actually familiar with... I've copied the entire list here, but if I haven't made any comments on something, you can assume that it's because I haven't read it.

OK, let's see...


1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes

This one is on my to-read pile, and has been for quite some time. I keep thinking that I really ought to get around to it soon, but, then, there are a couple of hundred other books about which I keep thinking the exact same thing.

2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan

3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe

I've read this one. The most interesting thing about it, actually, isn't the survival on a desert island adventure stuff, but the social attitudes that are implicit in it, some of which are deeply weird and more than a little disturbing to modern sensibilities. It isn't about one guy surviving heroically on a desert island; it's actually about one guy setting himself up as lord and master of a not-quite-deserted island with everybody else subservient to him, because that's the natural way these things are done.

4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift

Brilliant satire, and still as fresh and enjoyable (and disturbingly relevant) now as the day it was written.

5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding

6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson

7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne

8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

I've seen one of the many movie versions of this and liked it quite a lot, but have never read the book.

9. Emma Jane Austen

Oh, man. I was forced to read this book in high school, and it put me off Austen for life. I loathed it. (And my attitude wasn't much helped by the fact that it was the English teacher's favorite book, either.) Visiting the world Emma lived in was, for me, like being trapped in my own personal hell, a place where the only subjects of conversation ever allowed are on dress designs and tactics for snagging a man. *Shudder*

10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

A classic. And a book which people who haven't actually read it often have entirely mistaken ideas about. The theme is generally assumed to be that there are Things Which Man Was Not Meant to Know, and that it's Wrong to Play God, and that the creations of our hubris will inevitably turn on us. It's not. It's about what happens when we don't take the responsibility for what we create. Which I think is a much more valid and important thing to focus on.

11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock

12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac

13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal

14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

Haven't read this one, but I ought to pick it up sometime. I read The Three Musketeers earlier this year and really enjoyed it.

15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli

16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens

I started reading this in a Reader's Digest condensed version when I was 10. (Not that I'd touch a Reader's Digest condensed book with a ten-foot pole now, but, hey, I was ten.) I remember enjoying it right up to the point where the main character grew up, and then rapidly losing interest. I probably ought to try giving it another go sometime, though. I actually do rather like Dickens.

17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Had exactly the same experience with this as with David Copperfield, actually, except that I have zero desire to go back and try this one again, mainly because I've got the Brontes mentally cataloged as being in the same awful category as Austen.

19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

Was forced to read this in high school and hated it. Mainly I remember page after page after page of boring descriptions of leaves.

21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville

Now, this is one that I'm quite sure I would have hated if they'd made me read it in school, but which I very much enjoyed reading on my own. Yeah, the long descriptions of whaling techniques get a little old after a while, but they're a hell of a lot more interesting than Jane Austen's discussions about dressmaking or whatever. And there really is a great story in there, as well as some extremely vivid and memorable characters.

22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll

Surreal and clever and loads of fun. I've read this multiple times since my first encounter with it as a kid.

25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott

I remember reading this as a child, but almost nothing about it. Doesn't seem like the sort of book that would appeal to me these days.

26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope

27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot

29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky

30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James

31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

I love Twain. He's tremendously funny, a great storyteller, and has a fine grasp of character and dialog. And of the books of his that I've read, Huckleberry Finn is easily the best. I enjoyed the heck out of this one despite being made to read it in English class.

32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson

Another one of those works, like Frankenstein, that everybody is familiar with and thinks they know all about, but which comparatively few people have actually read. Which is a pity, because it's very good. Though I still think that Stevenson's best story, at least of those I've read, is "The Bottle Imp."

33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome

I've never been entirely sure whether this was actually a novel, or a (probably considerably exaggerated) work of non-fiction. Either way, it's a lot of fun. I made a point of picking this one up after reading Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which was directly inspired by it, and was very glad I did.

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

Will it surprise anybody if I say that I decided to read this one mainly because there was an episode of Blake's 7 which was directly inspired by it? Science fiction connections aside, it's a really interesting book, featuring one of the most memorably twisted characters I've ever encountered (and, no, it's not Dorian), as well as a lot of philosophical/thematic stuff that, whether you agree with it or not, is guaranteed to get you thinking in disturbing new ways. It is a little frustrating to read, though, because there's clearly all kinds of stuff Wilde wanted to put in it that he couldn't talk about directly given the mores of the day, so there were many times when I found myself torn between wondering whether I was reading too much in, or whether I wasn't reading in enough.

35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith

36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy

37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers

38. The Call of the Wild Jack London

I may have read, or at least started reading this when I was very young, but if so, I don't remember it.

39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad

40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

Did read this one as a kid. Remember liking it, but not a whole lot else about it.

41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust

42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence

43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford

44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan

45. Ulysses James Joyce

Ugh. I was forced to read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in school, and developed almost as big a loathing for Joyce as I have for Austen. I am convinced, whether rationally or otherwise, that the only reason anybody ever reads Ulysses is for sheer snob value. No thanks.

46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf

47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster

48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another one I had to read in English class. As I recall, pretty much everybody but me liked it. I think a large part of my problem with it was exactly the same sort of problem I had with Emma, or with Douglas Coupland's Generation X, or with William Gibson's Neuromancer, to tie in examples from a variety of genres. I can't stand shallow people whose biggest desire in life is to impress other with how rich or cool or hip they are, and I hate hanging around with them, even when they're fictional.

49. The Trial Franz Kafka

50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway

51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine

52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner

53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley

An SF classic, and much more readable than your average depressing dystopian novel. What I find interesting about it is that Huxley's imagined world is simultaneously horrible and, well, actually kind of appealing.

54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh

55. USA John Dos Passos

56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler

Hmm, I really ought to read some Chandler some time. I love hard-boiled detective stories when they're blended in with some other genre, but I've actually read very few of the real and original thing.

57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford

58. The Plague Albert Camus

59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

Yeah, it's an Important and Influential book, there's no doubt about it, but it was actually kind of tedious to read. And depressing, of course, but, then, it's supposed to be.

60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett

61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

I think the vast majority of Americans were forced to read this in high school, but somehow I never was. Which is just fine by me. What little I know about it leads me to conclude that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. Teenage angst, unlike most other forms of angst, holds very little appeal for me.

62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor

63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White

A childhood favorite of mine. I used to watch the movie every time it came on TV (which was about once a year). My first encounter with the book was when our teacher read it out loud to us in the third grade. She read us Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, too. Some fond memories there.

64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien

You can quibble about Tolkien's writing style, and I won't be too inclined to argue, but I nevertheless regard Lord of the Rings as being possibly the great story of our time.

65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis

66. Lord of the Flies William Golding

Another one that everybody but me seems to have read in school. One of these days, I really ought to get around to reading it, if only because I keep encountering so many references to it.

67. The Quiet American Graham Greene

68. On the Road Jack Kerouac

I took an "America in the 60's" literature class in college, in which we read Kesey and all kinds of other stuff in which there was much discussion of Kerouac... But we didn't actually read Kerouac himself. Maybe I should correct that oversight some day, but I'm not feeling in any hurry about it.

69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass

71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark

73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee

74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller

I think this book actually helped me develop my current sense of appreciation for black comedy. it's simultaneously depressing as hell and very, very, funny, which is a great combination if you can carry it off.

75. Herzog Saul Bellow

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor

78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre

79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison

80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge

81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer

82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino

A book that totally shouldn't work -- what with the second person, and the fact that it never actually finishes any of the stories it starts -- but nevertheless somehow does. I gather that it was mainly written as a deliberate response to various lit-snob theories about "the nature of the novel" and what supposedly makes a good novel, but you don't have to be a literary academic to appreciate the points it has to make about the nature of stories and the experience of reading. And Calvino has a marvelous way with words.

83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul

84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee

85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson

86. Lanark Alasdair Gray

87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster

88. The BFG Roald Dahl

I think I read this one, way back in the depths of my childhood. Don't remember much of anything about it, specifically, but I adored Dahl as a child, and still do as an adult.

89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi

90. Money Martin Amis

91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro

92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera

94. Haroun and the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie

Ought to check this one out sometime. I've heard it's extremely good, but I can't help but wonder how much of the hype has more to do with the author than the story.

95. La Confidential James Ellroy

96. Wise Children Angela Carter

97. Atonement Ian McEwan

98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman

This was released under the title The Golden Compass in the US, the first volume of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. I enjoyed reading these books, but I did have some serious philosophical and narrative quibbles with the series as a whole. The first book, though, was in my view probably the best.

99. American Pastoral Philip Roth

100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald


Hmm, that's about 20 out of 100 read. Seems like kind of a poor showing, but then, I never claimed to be a connoisseur of Great Literature, anyway...