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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Here is the list, which is biased toward the present. Here is information about the book offering the list.
Here is a good NYT article on the new fall book season. Here is a (surprising) list of the top ebooks in recent times.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 21, 2006 at 10:55 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
WHAT? NO Ellison, Sowell, Moholy=Nagy, or me? RK
Posted by: richard kostelanetz at Oct 21, 2006 11:37:23 AM
I think my reply to that is "Sez you."
Posted by: Sandy Smith at Oct 21, 2006 11:49:02 AM
Almost all of it is "literature" to be read because it is literature, with little entertainment value. I found a non-trivial number of books I have read, but also every book I ever tried reading and abandoned partway thru.
Posted by: triticale at Oct 21, 2006 11:54:38 AM
The list reminds me of a story Princeton Professor John Fleming tells about going to a cocktail party where a woman came up to him and asked him if he had read a recent acclaimed novel. When he said no, she said "What? It's been out for six months!" He replied "Have you read Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy? It's been out for 800 years."
So I think I'll start from 1001 and work backwards, thanks. But I doubt I can make it past 3 Tobias Smollet novels, one is really plenty for me.
Posted by: DK at Oct 21, 2006 12:40:42 PM
The list seems a little too biased towards recent years. Did anyone else notice that Shakespeare isn't on there once or do books with plays in them not count?
Posted by: John Hall at Oct 21, 2006 1:48:58 PM
The "top ebooks" was exclusive to Project Gutenberg, which may still be surprising, but not quite as surprising as if it were actually a list of "top ebooks" from all sources.
Posted by: bob mcmanus at Oct 21, 2006 2:13:36 PM
I've actually read 54 on the list, but concentrated toward the older books. There probably aren't more than 25 of the 947 I haven't read that are on my list of "books I should maybe read to some point." Triticale's ocmment is heartily seconded.
Posted by: Tom at Oct 21, 2006 2:42:55 PM
I've read 112 of these books, but there are a few things worth noting:
- I was an English major in undergrad
- I'm working on reading the Guardian's list of the top 100 books of all time (I've read 52 so far) which has a lot of overlap.
- Some of my favorite authors are well-represented (Graham Greene and Dickens both have a large portion of their oeuvres on the list). Perhaps once I've finished the Guardian top 100, I'll tackle this list of 1001.
And yes, my percentages were much higher in the older books (the list is sort-of chronological, but not always). The first 100 I'd read 4, the next 100 I'd read 3, but then once I got past the 400 mark, my overall percentage started shooting up. Being conversant with contemporary literature, though, is a much better thing than I thought it was when I was a young turk and repeatedly expressed disdain for 20th century american lit.
Posted by: don Hosek at Oct 21, 2006 4:15:26 PM
No Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Hobbes, de Tocqueville, Adam Smith,
St. Augustine, or Tacitus, but Chuck Palahniuk and
"Memoirs of a Geisha" make the cut? This
guy is horribly ignorant.
Posted by: Bristlecone at Oct 21, 2006 6:56:30 PM
What's up with David Copperfield being on there? Even Atlas Shrugged is better than David Copperfield.
Posted by: Keith at Oct 21, 2006 7:23:43 PM
The Bible's omission is inexcusable.
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Oct 21, 2006 7:49:43 PM
Keith,
I hope you are being facetious.
Posted by: vkri at Oct 21, 2006 8:15:54 PM
This belongs on my list of 1001 lists I never wish to see again before I die. Nor after.
Posted by: ghost at Oct 21, 2006 10:09:25 PM
I dunno, seven Philip Roth and only four Faulkner, no Orhan Pamuk and no Shakespeare...but four Elmore Leonard, three of Updike's boring Rabbit books. Wel, it is a list.
Posted by: grackel at Oct 22, 2006 1:24:43 AM
Ykri, nope. Atlas is better than Copperfield. Say what you will about Rand, but she beats Dickens solid. Admittedly, that's not saying much.
One of my pet peeves is the degree to which the academy will sneer at Rand, while forgiving all other authors for worse sins. I have no problem with disliking Rand, but the Fountainhead is no worse than the Grapes of Wrath, and David Copperfield is worse than Atlas. I'd say Atlas and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle are about equal in quality.
Posted by: Keith at Oct 22, 2006 2:03:44 AM
Keith, The Jungle! Yes. It carries a nice message still important today. The fact that Rand is not on the list...well, I hold Margaret Atwood accountable. Six books from MA?! Bizarre.
Posted by: true dough at Oct 22, 2006 7:20:49 AM
Strange list. The biggest problem isn't that it's biased towards the present. It's that it leaves practically nothing out by his favorite authors--Coetzee, McEwan, Murakami, DeLillo, Perec, others. I admire Coetzee tremendously, but missing Elizabeth Costello wouldn't have been among my deathbed regrets. And the recent stuff is mostly heavily-reviewed middlebrow stuff you'd pick out for your book group.
There are some off-the-beaten-track gems in the list, like Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to identify promising titles one hasn't read in a list this long and indiscriminate.
Posted by: gundryggia at Oct 22, 2006 10:06:58 AM
I'm pleased to see Iain (M.) Banks on the list, but five times? And his one science fiction contribution is Player of Games rather than Use of Weapons? Absurd.
Has anyone compiled the top 100 most absurd lists yet?
Posted by: Dylan at Oct 22, 2006 11:48:59 AM
Roth's Portnoy's Complaint sucks. Worse than Anthem.
And that Handmaid's Tale by Atwood?! Talk about your lame didactic polemics! And people give Rand crap? Total left-wing hypocrisy, man. I would really like someone to sit me down and explain what Rand does that's so awful that isn't done by Steinbeck, Atwood, and Dickens.
But Confederacy of Dunces is on there, and it's awesome.
Salinger's Franny and Zooey is there, and I agree, but I think Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters should be there, too. Frankly, all of Salinger's work with the Glass characters was better than Catcher in the Rye.
I always liked Gurganis' Plays Well with Others, which isn't on the list. But that may be a quirk on my part.
Never Let Me Go is a great book, though.
Posted by: Keith at Oct 22, 2006 12:47:59 PM
May I toss out a different list? "Index of the 100 science fiction books you just have to read"
http://www.phobosweb.com/features/100books/top100index.html
We have already commented on the list that includes several Rabbit books but not, say, Hamlet. It should be more coherent to develop a list looking at a more constrained area, like "the ten books about astronomy that you MUST read before you die."
Posted by: Zubon at Oct 22, 2006 1:14:59 PM
Surprising? why?most of them are high school books.And teenager are the most prone to download
Posted by: S at Oct 22, 2006 2:05:01 PM
And many of them are the basis of recent films.
500 disposables books.No Livy, Julius Cesar, Seneca, Lucretius, greck drama and poetry.Murakami is great but where is Lady Misaraku or Oe , Kawabata.Boccacio the author copied by Chaucer, The Divine Comedy
Posted by: S at Oct 22, 2006 2:20:13 PM
The list would probably be more useful reinvented as authors you must read before you die.
Posted by: SwatBrat at Oct 22, 2006 9:58:11 PM
I would really like someone to sit me down and explain what Rand does that's so awful that isn't done by Steinbeck, Atwood, and Dickens.
Rand puts long-ass speeches in her characters' mouths, and demands that they be kept in the movie versions. I read Rand at the proper time (i.e. early high school), and believed that I too was a misunderstood hero, and I still skipped parts of those speeches because they were so damn long and repetitive and IT'S THE END OF A THOUSAND PAGE BOOK, I GOT THE POINT ALREADY. Steinbeck and Dickens are dead, so we can do what we like with the films and they put their didacticism mostly in the third-person narration. Handmaid's Tale is written in the first person, so she can just say things as a narrator. It's a wonder they didn't try to kill John Galt for mouthiness instead of genius.
In some ways, earlier Rand is better (the stuff collected in The Early Ayn Rand), though Anthem is a crime against humanity. Portnoy's Complaint was bad, but at least occasionally funny.
Posted by: PG at Oct 22, 2006 11:22:09 PM
I've read 16. Literature, as a rule, bores me. Ludwig von Mises' Epistemological Problems of Economics is worth more than all of Hemingway put together, times 1000.
I do find it incredibly odd that the King James Version of the Bible is not on the list, considering how much of post-1611 English literature draws from it. My only guess, with some of the more glaring omissions, is that the list's creator assumed that everyone has already read Julius Caesar, Hamlet, the Bible, The Divine Comedy etc.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Oct 23, 2006 11:21:54 AM
