This week, The Guardian brought out its list of "the 100 best novels of all time", representing "the greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide".

And I'm a moth to a flame...

I've read 58 of them (which I don't reckon is that good, given I'm such a books person...):

-- My Antonia
-- The Go-Between
-- The Road
-- The Return of the Native
-- Sentimental Education
-- Jacob's Room
-- Ragtime
-- The Line of Beauty
-- The Turn of the Screw (a re-read)
-- A Farewell to Arms
-- Buddenbrooks
-- Rebecca
-- A House for Mr Biswas
-- The Rainbow
-- Dracula (currently re-reading with Dracula Daily)
-- Jude the Obscure
-- Crime and Punishment
-- The Master and Margarita
-- The Good Soldier
-- Howards End
-- Never Let Me Go
-- Disgrace
-- Mansfield Park
-- Orlando
-- My Brilliant Friend (also see the post on the TV adaptation)
-- Wide Sargasso Sea
-- A Fine Balance
-- The Metamorphosis
-- Vanity Fair
-- Giovanni's Room
-- The Magic Mountain
-- Heart of Darkness
-- The Age of Innocence
-- Great Expectations
-- Wolf Hall
-- David Copperfield (the post is on my audio adaptation "re-read")
-- The God of Small Things
-- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
-- Frankenstein
-- The Trial (a re-read)
-- Midnight's Children
-- Things Fall Apart
-- The Portrait of a Lady
-- Wuthering Heights
-- Persuasion
-- Nineteen Eighty-Four (the post is on my audio adaptation "re-read")
-- Mrs Dalloway
-- Emma
-- Bleak House
-- The Great Gatsby (a re-read)
-- Madame Bovary
-- Pride and Prejudice (a re-read)
-- Jane Eyre
-- War and Peace (currently re-reading with Simon Haisell's book group)
-- Anna Karenina (a re-read)
-- To the Lighthouse
-- Beloved
-- Middlemarch

I'm also in the middle of reading another two:

-- Go Tell It on the Mountain
-- The Brothers Karamazov (currently reading with Henry Eliot's book group)


Memories of books past...

***

There were six on the list that I'd not even heard of:

-- Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
-- The Known World by Edward P. Jones
-- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
-- The Waves by Virginia Woolf (a bit embarrassed not to have heard of this one...)
-- The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
-- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

***

And then there are all the ones I've heard of, but not read (34 altogether):

First, those that are so on my TBR list that I even already have copies:

-- Nervous Conditions
-- Half of a Yellow Sun
-- The Golden Bowl
-- Life and Fate

Then the ones that have been chewing away at me for a while, and are on the "imminent" section of the list:

-- Invisible Cities
-- The Vegetarian
-- Their Eyes Were Watching God
-- Invisible Man
-- Lolita
-- One Hundred Years of Solitude

There are two where I've seen the film adaptation but not read the book:

-- The Remains of the Day
-- The Talented Mr Ripley

There are several of the enormo-books that I have seriously thought I should get round to, but haven't quite yet:

-- Moby-Dick
-- Ulysses
-- Don Quixote
-- In Search of Lost Time (again... I've tried and failed twice, in English and in French, but everything has been telling me recently to have another go...)

And then the rest, approximately in the order (most to least) in which I'm interested:

-- The End of the Affair
-- The Bluest Eye
-- Song of Solomon
-- The Sound and the Fury
-- Austerlitz
-- Our Mutual Friend
-- White Teeth
-- The Rings of Saturn
-- The Man Without Qualities
-- The Leopard
-- Kindred
-- The Color Purple
-- The Golden Notebook
-- The Handmaid's Tale
-- Pale Fire
-- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
-- Blood Meridian
-- Catch-22



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Of course, any such list generates disagreement. But that's the point. "Lists," says the covering article, "are designed to inspire and enrage..." The goal is to get people talking about books, at a time when, it is argued, such a discussion has never been more needed. (Seriously? "Half of adults in the UK say they never read..."????)

A couple of interesting things from that same article:

"The most striking difference between this list and its predecessors is an increase in female writers: 36 out of 100 compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003, with only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the top 10 of both previous lists. The number of women rises as the decades go by; half of the contemporary writers are female. This might not announce the decline of the great white male, but it does signal a much-needed reset...

"With five novels on the list, [Virginia Woolf] is the most voted for writer...

"As with all prize lists, the real fun is spotting who is out..."

Well, I for one find it inspiring. It goads me to get on with certain projects, and encourages me to branch out into pastures new. All good.