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Recently my mother and sister and I looked up a few different "100 books to read before you die" lists and tallied up how many each of us had read. My mom and sister, being older and better read than myself, had about 35 each and I was a bit under 25.
We decided that these lists are pretty much BS, a good many of the books we had never even heard of, let alone read.
So I want to know what would be on your list. What are a few books that you consider both enjoyable and significant pieces of literature?
I know mine would include Ender's Game and A Clockwork Orange. What about yours?
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Good question!
There are many books that I've enjoyed tremendously, ones that I'd have been truly disappointed if I hadn't read them before I died. But I think your question goes deeper than that. I could tell you 100 books that I'm thrilled to have read, but they'd shift after I read another that needed to be added to the list.
I think this part of your question is the important part: "...both enjoyable and significant pieces of literature," with the italicized part being the breaking point on my list.
Like I said, I could tell you 100 books that I think that you should read, but it would be a changing, evolving list.
The only book, I think, that would always stay on that list is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
The one book that I think everyone should read and should be required to get a high school diploma is the Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. If everyone read that book we might not be experiencing the economic down turn we are now.
There are many books that I've enjoyed tremendously, ones that I'd have been truly disappointed if I hadn't read them before I died. But I think your question goes deeper than that. I could tell you 100 books that I'm thrilled to have read, but they'd shift after I read another that needed to be added to the list.
I think this part of your question is the important part: "...both enjoyable and significant pieces of literature," with the italicized part being the breaking point on my list......
I think even "enjoy" deserves some consideration. Some books are difficult to read, and so they are perhaps not enjoyable in the sense of being entertaining. Henry James comes to mind, but I would have been very sorry if I had missed The Ambassadors. I am about to embark up his The Portrait of a Lady; however, I am taking it along on a two-week plus medical incarceration, and expect to have plenty of time to pick it up and put it down several times a day.
In any event, my list too would be an evolving one
I would put the following on my list, at least on an American list:
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne............... Huckleberry Finn, Twain Sister Carrie, Dreiser............................ Look Homeward Angel, Wolfe Studs Lonigan, Farrell..................... ..... The Day of the Locust, West The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald............ .... Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos Passing, Larsen ............................ ......I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Weidman From Here to Eternity, Jones .................Man with a Golden Arm, Algren Continental Drift, Banks .......................Confederacy of Dunces, Toole Them (or maybe Garden of Earthly Delights), Oates What I Lived For, Oates .......................Great Jones Street, De Lillo Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe ...............The Ambassadors, James A Death in the Family, Agee
Some on the non-American part of the list:
The Forsyte Chronicals, Galsworthy............. The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell Return of the Native, Hardy........................ Brideshead Revisited, Waugh
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell.......................Wuthering Heights, Bronte Brave New World, Huxley ...........................Alice in Wonderland, Carroll Great Expectations, Dickens....................... Brighton Rock, Greene The Grass is Singing, Lessing .....................Too Late the Phalarope or Cry the Beloved Country, Patton Things Fall Apart, Achebe ..........................Tale of Genji, Murasaki Snow Country, Kawabata............................The Buddha Tree, Niwa Masks, Enchi.............................................The Makioka Sisters, Tanizaki All the Names, Saramago...........................Therese Desqueroux, Mauriac Nana, Zola.............................................. .A Remembrance of Times Past, Proust Daisy Bates in the Desert, Blackburn............Riders in the Chariot, White At-Swim Two Birds, O'Brien........................The Third Man, O'Brien Coming Through Slaughter, Ondaatje...........I Am a Cat, Soseki
I would definitely put on my list: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (my favorite book) Night by Elie Wiesel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque
I'm sure there are more classics I've forgotten or haven't read.
I also would put on my personal list the Harry Potter series and Just Kids by Patti Smith.
I would have a hard time identifying 100 titles. But I know authors on that list would include:
William Shakespeare
Chaucer
Charles Dickens (it isn't Christmas until I've re-read A Christmas Carol - my copy is held together with rubber bands and prayer)
Phillip K Dick
Isaac Asimov
Robert Heinlein
Frank Herbert
George Orwell
HG Wells
Ayn Rand
William Golding
Robert Lewis Stevenson
Aldous Huxley
Kurt Vonnegut
L Frank Baum
Titles would have to include:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Diary of Anne Frank
Watership Down
Lots and lots more that I'm not thinking of right now. Yes, my list skews to fantasy and 'speculative fiction', but books should make you THINK. Few genres do that the way these do.
I read a lot of science fiction as a kid, but I always avoided Ray Bradbury fearing his stories as staid and boring. Some movies that I saw based on his stories did not help my opinion of him as a storyteller. Decades later I read a compilation of his stories collected from his various anthologies, and I absolutely loved it. I am a notoriously slow reader, but I flew through these stories. I don't know what it was; maybe it was because I had a few years behind me allowing me to appreciate nostalgia more than I did as a kid.
I would recommend the Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and the Martian Chronicles as great reads.
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