My ‘Best’ Lists…
I’d be useless on Desert Island Discs – one book along with the Bible and Shakespeare? So here are some of my lists of ‘bests’ for anyone who’s interested; ask me about any that intrigue you.
Disclaimer: the lists are a work in progress. I may change my mind at any time! Also, I’ve deliberately limited myself to ten in each category. I can’t guarantee that I will stick by the rank order tomorrow, either…
World Fiction
1 Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
2 Grass: The Tin Drum
3 Eco: The Name of the Rose
4 Dostoevsky: Crime & Punishment
5 Lampedusa: The Leopard
6 Hasek: The Good Soldier Svejk
7 Grossman: Life & Fate
8 Roth: The Radetzky March
9 Wiechert: The Simple Life
10 Maalouf: Samarkand
English Literature
1 Austen: Mansfield Park
2 Conrad: Nostromo
3 Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
4 Sterne: Tristram Shandy
5 C Bronte: Villette
6 Austen: Persuasion
7 Fielding: Tom Jones
8 Joyce: Ulysses
9 Faulks: Birdsong
10 Pullman: Northern Lights Trilogy
American Literature
1 Twain: Huckleberry Finn
2 Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
3 Kerouac: On The Road
4 Heller: Catch-22
5 Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces
Science Fiction
1 Wright: Islandia
2 Clarke: The City & The Stars
3 Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz
4 Shelley: The Last Man
5 Wright: A Scientific Romance
6 Dick: The Man in the High Castle
7 Stapledon: Last & First Men
8 Gibson/ Sterling: The Difference Engine
9 LeGuin: The Dispossessed
10 Mieville: The City & The City
LIT.GAZ. 
December 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm
I absolutely adore The Last Man but Ulysses is something I really don’t see the appeal of – I read it in its entirety for uni and only enjoyed a few short passages of it. Nostromo and Persuasion are musts, and I’m glad that so many years of teaching To Kill a Mockingbird didn’t put you off it! If you haven’t read the Harry Potter books yet then please pick them up sometime soon! (and read to at least book three as they get progressively more for adults as they go along). Nice list; I’ll refer back to it when I’m stuck for reading material.
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June 7, 2015 at 8:27 pm
[…] My ‘Best’ Lists… […]
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October 10, 2019 at 8:40 am
Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a classic novella which you must have read? It is on my Top Ten List!
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October 10, 2019 at 9:56 am
I’ve read it and liked it, but if I were choosing a Tolstoy novella, I think I’d go for Hadji Murat. Compiling ‘best’ lists is always hard…
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October 10, 2019 at 1:35 pm
Talking of Russian writers have you read Dostoyevsky’s The Crocodile? If anyone thinks old Fyodor doesn’t have a sense of humour they shd read this. It’s hilarious!
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