The 100 best novels of all time
www.theguardian.com
The top 100 novels of all time published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. How many have you read?

I’ve only read two books on the list - “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (#39) and Hexbear’s favorite “1984” (#16!)

No Grapes of Wrath 😞 Any omissions you feel should’ve been included or works that are too high/low on the list?

At the bottom of the list is a “see all votes” list of the authors and other people asked to make a top 10.

I’ve read some? of The Metamorphosis recently, not sure how I got sidetracked or even if I finished it. Got a few pages into Catch-22 back in high school but I didn’t connect with it.

Not even sure where to begin in filling in the holes in my classics and modern gems of reading. The classic Black writings of Walker, Baldwin, and Morrison maybe? Jump right into Moby Dick? Maybe some female writers?

I also struggle to read books like I used to as a voracious bookworm teenager; with phones, Hexbear, YouTube, and streaming taking up much of my free time when I’m not working or parenting. I’m currently past the halfway mark in East of Eden but I’ve been working on that for a couple of months now.

  • MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    8 days ago

    I’ve read like 30 of these 100 I think, just from finding lists somewhere or references from articles which made me interested. Only a few held up to my expectations, though. Like Dostoevsky (don’t kill me, it’s just that his writing style gets me sometimes, even though hes reactionary), Bronte, Austen, Catch-22, the old children’s stories (Dracula, frankenstein), and a few about American Racism. Of the 30 or so, I’d only include like 5 on the top 100 though.

    I guess its unclear what sort of criteria they expected the polled people to use, so it evens out to a mush.

    I think that our problem of illiteracy is so bad that we’d be 100x better if everyone read like 20 of these at random. So for that, I’m fine with this. Even reading anything might get some brains working in a way which makes the malleable to learning and get us out of this western sinkhole. I’d prefer a different list for myself, and think a different one would be much more effective (read What is to be Done, both of em). But it’s the guardian