The Guardians top 1000 books

Crash

1000 novels that everyone must read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

Just interested as to what people think? and if you have the time, run down through it and see how well you do - surprised my total was as low - 50 out of 1000

pwd

62. about half of which were in the sci fi and fantasy section. Started reading a lot of others on that list, but put them down because they were boring.
American Gods I did read in full and I thought it was one of the most overrated books ever. Definitely don't think it should be on the list.

turgon

I generally prefer lists with numbers, although obviously more divisive, they at least give a starting point. Imagine trying to get someone into books, just go yeah just read any of the Guardian 1000. Wouldnt work methinks.

orangecake

I managed 82. Although the Science Fiction and Fantasy section was odd. The Magus, The Monk and The Butcher Boy? I wouldn't have thought when I was reading them that they would be in that category.

pwd

Yeah there were a few choices in that category that surprised me too. Robin Hobb and Steven Erikson were glaring omissions also.
edit: I don't think there were many pure fantasy novels there at all in fact

lemon_sherbert

I'd read 94. But I really liked the list; the subdivision by genre, all of my favourite books are on that list, I've saved it to my computer for future reference.

Blush_01

A paltry 51. i was actually more shocked at how many books are on that list that I've bought and never finished reading.

Woohoo, new mission!

Sticky??

adamski8

9 pretty pretty bad

John

58 read and another false start (Emma). The "genres" were a bit loose all right and I noticed an error in one of the titles: they list Pier Paulo Pasolini's Ragazzi di Vita (Boys of Life) as The Ragazzi Pier by Paulo Pasolini. Philistines!

Crash

orangecake wrote: »

I managed 82. Although the Science Fiction and Fantasy section was odd. The Magus, The Monk and The Butcher Boy? I wouldn't have thought when I was reading them that they would be in that category.

Wow didn't even notice it in the SF&F list...bizarre - that means I match Blush_01 at 51.

Blush_01 wrote: »

A paltry 51. i was actually more shocked at how many books are on that list that I've bought and never finished reading.

Woohoo, new mission!

Sticky??

Snap by the way - I think i'd be around 80-90 if I included books i'd started to some extent.

EDIT: Oh if this were to be a sticky, the selection of books could be displayed nicely as a table.

Six of One

That list hurts my eyes ... but ... 58! And quite proud of that. Thought it was going to be a single digit figure. Resisting the calls of Amazon as we speak :P.

Permabear

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Crash

They do have it quite clearly displayed on the entry page stating "comedy - does not equal humour"

edit: I think they include at-swim-two-birds in the comedy list - which again, like finnegans wake, would be one of the above, not the other.

Tristram

Books read wrote:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Just William by Richmal Crompton
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
The Third Man by Graham Greene
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Evelina by Fanny Burney
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
Dune by Frank L Herbert
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Time Machine by HG Wells
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Amongst Women by John McGahern
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Bomber by Len Deighton
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

I think thats 104.

Permabear

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John

And for the record, Finnegans Wake is frequently hilarious.

oxygen_old

Why is the Wasp Factory in the SciFi and Fantasy section. I think their confusing Iain Banks, and his sudoname Iain M Banks. Makes you wonder about the crediblity of the list.

Earthhorse

I don't know, that list is kind of overwhelming. Couldn't be bothered going through it to count what I have or haven't read.

A shorter list with a little information on each entry would be more useful.

Lizzykins

I ploughed through that list and I've read 126 of them. I thought I was reasonably well read but seemingly not!

girlbiker

Lizzykins wrote: »

I ploughed through that list and I've read 126 of them. I thought I was reasonably well read but seemingly not!

Me too...127 read...pretty crap outof 1000 but dont agree with some of them White Teeth Zadie Smith, hated it.
But love Robert Harris and Rohinstin Mistry and The novel Middlesex...actually alot of my favourites are on the list.
Why do anderoids dream of electric sheep I wouldnt have read until someone highly recommened it and it was great, maybe I'll try his other books on the list.

I'll take some of these choices on board but fares much better out of the BBCs best read list, something like 179 out of 200 but beware all you highbrow readers Harry Potter is there!

Earthhorse

As with all lists there are a few odd entries; Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - what? The whole series?

girlbiker wrote: »

Why do anderoids dream of electric sheep I wouldnt have read until someone highly recommened it and it was great, maybe I'll try his other books on the list.

I'd recommend tackling his short stories first and Dr. Bloodmoney before The Man in the High Castle, which I personally didn't enjoy but which is often acknowledged as one of his best.

Despite what I said earlier I did actually do a count. A rather paltry 22 it turns out. To make up for that here is the list in Excel format for those of you interested in keeping track of it (you'll find the books I've read marked in column B so you may wish to clear it down).

KevinH

Zadie Smith is on that list and Charles Bukowski isn't, so instead of counting how many books I've read on it I think I might print it out and use it to wipe my arse.

Richard Roma

Shocked that there are no Ayn Rand books in it

KevinH

In fairness Rand is atrocious.

Permabear

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Nevyn

I gave up counting after I hit 620 /shrug I have always been a prolific reader.

John

KevinH wrote: »

In fairness Rand is atrocious.

In fairness, you're wrong :pac:

tangerinepuppet

I got 92 and I have about forty more of them at home, waiting to be read. I can't understand the complaints about Zadie Smith being on the list. I love White Teeth.

silvine

Jonothan Strange and Mr Norrell
The Years of Rice and Salt
Cloud Atlas

Three disappointing and boring books

Too much work to wade through the list figuring out what I've read but I guess 50+ maybe.

no memoirs, no short stories

Um why? There's dozens of both which deserve to be read.

trishasaffron

I've read 270+ of those on the list. But in fairness I've a few years on most other posters:o

When I find a writer I like I tend to devour all their books - so people like Anthony Trollope and Patrick O'Brien (though I'd more than enough of him in the end) I've whole shelves full of their books.

Blush_01

tangerinepuppet wrote: »

I got 92 and I have about forty more of them at home, waiting to be read. I can't understand the complaints about Zadie Smith being on the list. I love White Teeth.

On Beauty is one of my favourite novels.

I'm now intent on reading Tristram Shandy this year. I've attempted and failed a few times, but I will not be beaten this time!

Thaed has reinforced herself as one of my Boards heroes.