Going around Facebook is the BBC list of 100 Great Books everyone should read. You're supposed to copy the list, paste it in a note, and make bold all the titles you've read. If you've read more than six, you're ahead of most. I've read about 30, which is downright shameful for English majors. Sigh. I do not love Jane Austin the way that the BBC loves Jane Austin. Nope, not even a fraction of the way the BBC loves her.
I have a little contempt for this list anyway because anything that puts The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as separate entries is a little suspect to me. Last time I checked LWW was the first book published in the Chronicles. They also listed the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Hamlet as separate works. It's been a long time since grad school, but as I recall, Hamlet was an essential title in completing the works of Shakespeare. Perhaps it was THE essential title.
So I decided to come up with my own list of great books I have read that I think most everyone else should read. I like getting 100% on quizzes and such.
1. The Bible
2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
3. The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis) - There are seven books in the series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and His Boy; The Magician's Nephew; and The Last Battle.
OK, after these three, the rest of the list is random. Only #1 -#3 are ranked in their order of greatness.
4. 1984 (Orwell)
5. The Iliad (Homer)
6. The Odyssey (Homer)
7. Le Morte D'Arthur (Mallory)
8. The Giver (Lowery)
9. Beloved (Morrison)
10. Hamlet (Shakespeare)
11. Othello (Shakespeare)
12. Macbeth (Shakespeare)
13. King Lear (Shakespeare)
14. Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
15. Medea (Euripides)
16. The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
17. Beowulf
18. The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
19. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
20. The Great Divorce (Lewis)
21. Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
22. The Prince (Machiavelli)
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston)
24. The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)
25. As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
26. Native Son (Wright)
27. Black Boy (Wright)
28. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; and The Return of the King)
29. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
30. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
31. Invisible Man (Ellison)
32. Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin)
33. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
34. Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
35. The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
36. Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
37. Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks
38. Poetry of E.E. Cummings
39. Poetry of T.S. Eliot
40. Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
41. Poetry of Langston Hughes
42. Poetry of William Shakespeare
43. Poetry of William Butler Yeats
44. Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
45. Poetry of John Donne
46. Poetry of John Keates
47. Poetry of Emily Dickinson
48. Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, Jay)
49. Writings of Thomas Paine (esp. Common Sense, Rights of Man, Crisis)
50. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
51. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
52. Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand)
53. Treasure Island (Stevenson)
54. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
55. Frankenstein (Shelley)
56. The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan)
57. Walden (Thoreau)
58. Time Quartet (L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet; and Many Waters)
59. Selected Essays (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
60. Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville - We're going with this as a novella.)
61. Ulysses (Joyce)
62. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
63. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
64. The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
65. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri)
66. Fairy Tales and Stories (Hans Christian Andersen)
67. Grimm's Fairy Tales
68. Faust (Goethe)
69. Dr. Faustus (Marlowe)
70. The Epic of Gilgamesh
71. Leaves of Grass (Whitman)
72. Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
73. Metamorphosis (Ovid)
74. The Metamorphosis (Kafka)
75. Paradise Lost (Milton)
76. Siddhartha (Hesse)
77. The Jungle Book (Kipling)
78. The Thousand and One Nights
79. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
80. Pere Goriot (Balzac)
81. Poetry of Shel Silverstein
82. The Portrait of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
83. Dracula (Stoker)
84. Death of a Salesman (Miller)
85. A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry)
86. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
87. Night (Weisel)
88. Cane (Toomer)
89. A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams)
90. Our Town (Wilder)
91. Poetics (Aristotle)
92. Republic (Plato)
93. Mythology (Hamilton)
94. Origin of Species (Darwin)
95. The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
96. Democracy in America (de Tocqueville)
97. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Johnson)
98. The Color Purple (Walker)
99. Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)
100. All's Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare)
101. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe)
I do not agree with every word in every one of these works, but they are all great works because of their impact on the world; and educated Americans need exposure to a good number of these books/essays/collections. So, as my good friend Melinda says, take what you need and leave the rest.
What do you think?
How many of these books have you read?
What are the books I left off this list that you believe are great works?
4 comments:
Well, I like your list better than the "official" one, because I've read 54 of the books on your list and only 31 of the books on the other list. (56 if you count Lord of the Rings as 3... which, considering their length, I think is appropriate). But then, I would have included them in the top three and bumped To Kill a Mockingbird down into the lumped together works.
I've read almost half of your list, and I like it better than BBC's. I did a project in high school on Nikki Giovanni and have loved her ever since. And I would have put Lord of the Flies in the top group. And I <3 that you included Shel.
Now I have a to-read-once-my-Master's-is-done list (except I probably won't read LOTR because I've tried many times to no avail). Here are the ones I haven't read:
7. Le Morte D'Arthur (Mallory)
9. Beloved (Morrison)
18. The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
19. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
20. The Great Divorce (Lewis)
21. Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
24. The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)
25. As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
26. Native Son (Wright)
27. Black Boy (Wright)
28. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; and The Return of the King)
29. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
31. Invisible Man (Ellison)
32. Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin)
35. The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
37. Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks
48. Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, Jay)
50. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
51. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
53. Treasure Island (Stevenson)
54. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
55. Frankenstein (Shelley)
56. The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan)
57. Walden (Thoreau)
58. Time Quartet (L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet; and Many Waters)
60. Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville - We're going with this as a novella.)
62. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
68. Faust (Goethe)
69. Dr. Faustus (Marlowe)
70. The Epic of Gilgamesh
72. Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
73. Metamorphosis (Ovid)
74. The Metamorphosis (Kafka)
76. Siddhartha (Hesse)
77. The Jungle Book (Kipling)
78. The Thousand and One Nights
80. Pere Goriot (Balzac)
82. The Portrait of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
83. Dracula (Stoker)
84. Death of a Salesman (Miller)
85. A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry)
86. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
87. Night (Weisel)
88. Cane (Toomer)
89. A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams)
90. Our Town (Wilder)
91. Poetics (Aristotle)
92. Republic (Plato)
93. Mythology (Hamilton)
94. Origin of Species (Darwin)
95. The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
96. Democracy in America (de Tocqueville)
97. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Johnson)
98. The Color Purple (Walker)
101. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe)
I would add:
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Love your list! I have some reading to do!
I love your list. I agree that it was strange that the other list separated out LWW and Hamlet.
You have many that I haven't read, so I will keep this list handy.
I love your top three, and I would add "Night" to the must-reads. I am always surprised at how many people haven't read it. I mean, the book is so short, there's really no excuse.
I totally hear you on the Jane Austin. I've read her books, and frankly, they kind of make me feel dumb. I hate having to read sentences over and over again to make them make sense. Give me the movie versions any day...
We already have a sitter booked for Friday night to go see Dawn Treader. That is my favorite of all the books. But I hope they make at least one more movie for The Silver Chair and the Last Battle. They have to do The Last Battle, right?
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