The Guardian recently published their list of 100 Best Novels As people have been commenting all over, the list is very weird. They took 172 authors, critics, academics, had each give a top ten list, and then compiled them into a single list, taking into account the weightings of the individual lists. I suppose it's inevitable that a list made this way will have some strangeness to it. It's absurd, for instance, for The Handmaid's Tale to be on a list of 100 best novels ever published in English, and even if it were, it is certainly not a better book than The Left Hand of Darkness. Charles Dickens doesn't even make the top 10, which is already a sign that the list can't be taken seriously. There are also some novelistic powerhouses that seem very underrepresented: if I haven't missed anything, Japan and Norway don't show up, France is represented entirely by Flaubert and Proust, and Germany seems to be represented entirely by Thomas Mann. The author that I'm most disappointed not to see on a list like this is Alessandro Manzoni.
Still, it's been a while since I've done booklist around here. Bolded I have definitely read. I have linked to the ones that I've done as Fortnightly Books.
Looking at the ones I haven't read, I don't have a particular interest in reading most of them (which is not say that I wouldn't do so if the opportunity happened to arise).
I find to my complete and utter astonishment that while I've discussed them occasionally, I've never done Emma, Middlemarch, or Jane Eyre for the Fortnightly Book, which I could have sworn that I had. That will have to be rectified at some point. Vanity Fair, too, perhaps. The Great Gatsby is already on my list to do as Fortnightly Book sometime this year, and I have had Sentimental Education for years, intending to do it but always forgetting, so maybe I should actually get on that sometime.
100 My Ántonia
99 The Go-Between
98 The Road
97 Catch-22
96 Pedro Páramo
95 The Return of the Native
94 The Known World
93 Invisible Cities
92 Sentimental Education
91 Life and Fate
90 Jacob's Room
89 The Left Hand of Darkness
88 Ragtime
87 The Line of Beauty
86 The Turn of the Screw
85 The Vegetarian
84 The Talented Mr Ripley
83 A Farewell to Arms
82 The End of the Affair
81 Buddenbrooks
80 Rebecca
79 Go Tell It on the Mountain
78 A House for Mr Biswas
77 The Rainbow
76 Dracula
75 The Bluest Eye
74 Nervous Conditions
73 Austerlitz
72 Our Mutual Friend
71 Kindred
70 Jude the Obscure
69 Crime and Punishment
68 Blood Meridian
67 The Man Without Qualities
66 The Master and Margarita
65 The Color Purple
64 The Good Soldier
63 White Teeth
62 Half of a Yellow Sun
61 The Rings of Saturn
60 Howards End
59 Never Let Me Go
58 Disgrace
57 The Sound and the Fury
56 Mansfield Park
55 The Waves
54 Orlando
53 The Transit of Venus
52 The Golden Bowl
51 My Brilliant Friend
50 Wide Sargasso Sea
49 A Fine Balance
48 The Metamorphosis
47 Vanity Fair
46 The Leopard
45 The Golden Notebook
44 Giovanni's Room
43 Housekeeping
42 The Magic Mountain
41 Heart of Darkness
40 Song of Solomon
39 Their Eyes Were Watching God
38 The Age of Innocence
37 Invisible Man
36 The Handmaid's Tale
35 Great Expectations
34 Wolf Hall
33 David Copperfield
32 The God of Small Things
31 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
30 Frankenstein
29 Pale Fire
28 The Brothers Karamazov
27 The Trial
26 Don Quixote
25 Lolita
24 The Remains of the Day
23 Midnight's Children
22 Things Fall Apart
21 The Portrait of a Lady
20 Wuthering Heights
19 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
18 Persuasion
17 One Hundred Years of Solitude
16 Nineteen Eighty-Four
15 Moby-Dick
14 Mrs Dalloway
13 Emma
12 Bleak House
11 The Great Gatsby
10 Madame Bovary
9 Pride and Prejudice
8 Jane Eyre
7 War and Peace
6 Anna Karenina
5 In Search of Lost Time
4 To the Lighthouse
3 Ulysses
2 Beloved
1 Middlemarch
