Listmania
Not to be confused with Lisztomania, Ken Russell's 1975 movie about Franz Liszt, starring Roger Daltrey.
No, I'm talking about lists. What are we so obsessed with making lists? Is it our desire for order? Or our urge for social ranking? Whatever, I love 'em. Sometimes.
I got a book out of the library, called The Top Ten, writers pick their favorite books. Edited by J. Peder Zane. This book asks "What are the ten greatest works of literature of all time?" Now, what immediately struck me about this book was its ludicrous claim. No one can even begin to rank the world's greatest works because no one has read them all. Therefore, all rankings and lists are by definition fatally flawed. Furthermore, they only ask current writers, 125 of them. No critics or academics, or people from the street.
The authors don't seem too aware of the limitations of the concept, saying that this is "the most authoritative guide yet to the world's most extraordinary books." Hardly. They then go on to make sublists from the main rankings, e.g the top ten works by American authors, or the tope ten mysteries, even though this method must be suspect statistically, since this is not what the people were asked to rank.
That does not mean it wouldn't be interesting to see what people think.... But unfortunately the lists seems as obvious and cliched as a Britney Spears joke. Here are their top ten:
1. Anna Karenina
2. Madame Bovary
3. War and Peace
4. Lolita
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. Hamlet
7. The Great Gatsby
8. In Search of Lost Time
9. The stories of Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch
I will admit right away that I have only read 5, 6, 7, and 10. But really, is Anna Karenina really the best novel EVER written? How many people read it today? Does it move them? Do they cry, or send copies to all their friend, imploring them to read it?
They then go on to describe all 544 books mentioned by any one writer, stating that all these books are worthy of reading. But from looking at the descriptions of many of them, I am not inclined to pick up many of them. Oh sure, I should read Faulker, I'll try Chekhov, and give the Madame Bovary one more try. But in general, their great books did not seem great to me. Maybe I should pick five at random and read them and then decide.
Here is my list, more than ten, in no order, and not all novels. I am sure I am forgetting many, many books.
The novels of Raymond Chandler
Gain by Richard Powers
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Eye of the Heart (collection of short stories by Latin American writers)
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The novels of Charles Dickens, all of them
The Odyssey by Homer
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
The novels of Jane Austen, all of them
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The works of Italo Calvino
Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
The novels of Barbara Pym
The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
The autobiographical works of Simone de Beauvoir especially La jeune fille rangee
Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice
L'Ecume des Jours by Boris Vian
The poems of Paul Verlaine
The Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Lorax and The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
The Betsy, Tacy and Tib novels by Maud Hart
Oh and many more. I suppose it would be hard to narrow it down to ten. My absolute favorite, Life: A User's Manual, was a book I recommended to just one person, and they did not even like it.
What would you have on your list?
No, I'm talking about lists. What are we so obsessed with making lists? Is it our desire for order? Or our urge for social ranking? Whatever, I love 'em. Sometimes.
I got a book out of the library, called The Top Ten, writers pick their favorite books. Edited by J. Peder Zane. This book asks "What are the ten greatest works of literature of all time?" Now, what immediately struck me about this book was its ludicrous claim. No one can even begin to rank the world's greatest works because no one has read them all. Therefore, all rankings and lists are by definition fatally flawed. Furthermore, they only ask current writers, 125 of them. No critics or academics, or people from the street.
The authors don't seem too aware of the limitations of the concept, saying that this is "the most authoritative guide yet to the world's most extraordinary books." Hardly. They then go on to make sublists from the main rankings, e.g the top ten works by American authors, or the tope ten mysteries, even though this method must be suspect statistically, since this is not what the people were asked to rank.
That does not mean it wouldn't be interesting to see what people think.... But unfortunately the lists seems as obvious and cliched as a Britney Spears joke. Here are their top ten:
1. Anna Karenina
2. Madame Bovary
3. War and Peace
4. Lolita
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. Hamlet
7. The Great Gatsby
8. In Search of Lost Time
9. The stories of Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch
I will admit right away that I have only read 5, 6, 7, and 10. But really, is Anna Karenina really the best novel EVER written? How many people read it today? Does it move them? Do they cry, or send copies to all their friend, imploring them to read it?
They then go on to describe all 544 books mentioned by any one writer, stating that all these books are worthy of reading. But from looking at the descriptions of many of them, I am not inclined to pick up many of them. Oh sure, I should read Faulker, I'll try Chekhov, and give the Madame Bovary one more try. But in general, their great books did not seem great to me. Maybe I should pick five at random and read them and then decide.
Here is my list, more than ten, in no order, and not all novels. I am sure I am forgetting many, many books.
The novels of Raymond Chandler
Gain by Richard Powers
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Eye of the Heart (collection of short stories by Latin American writers)
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The novels of Charles Dickens, all of them
The Odyssey by Homer
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
The novels of Jane Austen, all of them
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The works of Italo Calvino
Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
The novels of Barbara Pym
The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
The autobiographical works of Simone de Beauvoir especially La jeune fille rangee
Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice
L'Ecume des Jours by Boris Vian
The poems of Paul Verlaine
The Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Lorax and The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
The Betsy, Tacy and Tib novels by Maud Hart
Oh and many more. I suppose it would be hard to narrow it down to ten. My absolute favorite, Life: A User's Manual, was a book I recommended to just one person, and they did not even like it.
What would you have on your list?
posted by Shelly at 3:49 PM
5 Comments:
I would argue that the title is not correct then - "favorite" is not the same as "greatest".
I'll have to think aboout my list. I actually had the Betsy tacy and tib books pop into my head before i even got to them on your list. Definitely not the Narnia books.
Yeah you are right, my list is favorite, or most meaningful. Although one person in the book did have The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on their list of Great Books.
Are you asking me to think? A list will take some time. I see you have Calvino - one of my faves would be La luna e i falo' - notice I said faves, not greatest.
I also really enjoyed A Confederacy of Dunces (not deep, I know) and a number of Latin American plays. My childhood favorites were a few Golden Books (The Little Pond in the Woods, and one about going to a circus or something that started with "the sky was pale pink and pale...") and Heidi.
I never liked Heidi. For some reason, it is creepy to me. Thank you for not naming me Heidi, or was that Mo?
It was you. Guess I'll have to reread it - I thought it sounded divine - all those goats and cheese.
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