Book Nook Cafe discussion

Here is a link for Newsweeks top 100 books of all time. How many have you read ? Do you agree with the list?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/204478

Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List
Declaring the best book ever written is tricky business. Who's to say what the best is? We went one step further: we crunched the numbers from 10 top books lists (Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more) to come up with The Top 100 Books of All Time. It's a list of lists — a meta-list. Let the debate begin.

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jun 29, 2009 | Updated: 12:01 p.m. ET Jun 29, 2009

I've only read 31. Looks like I have some catching up to do !


1- The day of the Locust--
2- Death comes for the Archbishop-
3- Autobiography of Malcom X
4- The color purple
5-Animal Farm
6- The Lord of the Flies
7- In cold blood
8 - As I lay Dying
9- The Sun Also Rises
10- the heart is a lonely hunter
11- Night
12 - Bible- I've read all NT but only part of OT
13- Light in August
14- Anna Karenina
15 Hamlet
16- Frankenstein
17- Song of Soloman
18-One Flew over the cuckoo's nest
19 - For Whom the Bell Tolls
20- - Grapes of Wrath
21- Mrs. Dalloway
22- Native Son
23- To Kill a Mockingbird
24- 1984
25 - the sound and the fury
26- Invisible man
27- Pride and Prejudice
28- Things Fall Apart
29- Catcher in the Rye
30 - the Great Gatsby
31- Beloved


Some that would appear on my list instead of any Toni Morrison book:

Poisonwood Bible
The Power of One
The Kite Runner
The Tender Bar
A Separate Peace
The Defining Moment
Lord of the Flies
Fahrenheit 451
Uncle Tom's Cabin
and my all time favorite A Tale of Two Cities

Barbara, that huge set of books by Churchill in on the list #100 :)

Alias Reader wrote: "Some that would appear on my list instead of any Toni Morrison book: ."

This made me laugh. I would put almost any book in the world on my list instead of ANY of Morrison's books!

Don't have time to check out the list this morning. Will do over the weekend I guess. Having the Churchill books on the list is interesting. I wonder how many people have actually read the whole set. Having said that -- I know someone. But this person is an absolute expert on Churchill. Can't imagine too many people are.

Barbara

I've read 57.

Bobbie, I didn't count the Churchill because I've only read 3.5 volumes of the set. It was a long time ago, but I really enjoyed it. It's just that I was reading it while job-hunting, so had time. Then I got a job, LOL! I still intend to get back to it some day and finish it. He writes well.

Oh yes, Churchill definitely writes well. I am supposed to be retired but I didn't think I had the time to read the set. Maybe I should rethink that.

Bobbie, read the first book of the set. You'll probably get hooked. But, you don't have to read it all at once, one book after the other! Take a break between books in the set. Then you'll get there eventually, and won't get burned out.

Yes, I think that is a very good idea. I definitely don't need to read them one after the other.
How fat is even one of these books?

In the trade paperback edition I have, the first volume (The Gathering Storm) is 693 pages of text. The others are of comparable length. Phwew! But the print is fairly large, if that helps, LOL! I do remember the books being so interesting and well-written that they just carried me along. If I hadn't gone and looked it up, I would have said the book was 350-400 pages. So, what I'm saying is that it didn't seem as long as it is. I wasn't in the habit of reading really long books at the time, and it would have remained with me that the books felt extraordinarily long.

Oh boy. I just can't look at another list. I'm too far behind in my reading.

I think I was asking about the length of the Churchill books because I am trying to judge whether or not I could read one in the time allotted from the library. Looks as if I could. And as it is probably not on a long list of requested books I could even renew so I definitely could borrow it.
Thanks for bringing these books to my attention for sure.

Barbara

Sherry > Oh boy. I just can't look at another list. I'm too far behind in my reading. <

Not to worry. You've probably read about 90 of them anyway!

Bobbie, yeah, I think if you can renew, you should have no problem reading a library copy. I'll be interested in hearing how it goes if you do check it out.

Jo----I am reading a book from that list now but i havent read any of the others although theres a few i am interested in reading. I think i need to do some catching up
===============

What book from the list are you reading?

My library has 3 copies and they are all out.

Really -- none of the copies in my Central Library are out. I'm going to try to capture one on Monday.

Barbara

All this talk about it, I think I'll add it to the top of my TBR list.

I should request it, since it is 600+ pages, I think the 3 copies will be out for a bit.

I may start with a library copy, and see if I want my own copy. Amazon has it for $14. from the library.

Barbara, it was noted on RR that there is condensed into one 1000 page book of the series. I think we talked about this when we discussed this book on AOL.

I am curious as to the print size.

It's titled- Memoirs of the Second World War (An Abridgement of the Six Volumes of the Second World War) [ABRIDGED:]

(http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Second-...





My library also has this:
The Second World War, by Winston S. Churchill and the editors of Life. It's 615 pages.

Specially abridged by Denis Kelly from Sir Winston Churchill's six-volume memoirs entitled The Second World War, excerpts from which were published in Life from 1948 to 1953. The picture essays were written by Robert Wernick and the map captions by David Bergamini."

I may start with this one first when I can fit it into my reading schedule.

Unfortunately I found out when I got to the library that what they have is the Memoirs of the Second World edition. The print size is OK. Not horribly small.
So I'll see how it goes. I hate the idea of it being abridged as it messes up the flow of the prose. On the other hand there may be more of a chance of it being read.

Bobbie, I know what you mean! I've read abridged versions of multi-volumed works and have mixed feelings. I never would have read all the volumes yet by the end of the abridged edition i feel as though i wanted to learn more. Is that Catch 22?

deborah

I know a lot about WWII so I don't think it will be that I wanted to learn more. What I wanted was to have a feel for Churchill's style of writing.

Barbara

That's different from what i thought, Barbara. Then the shorter, definitely the better. ;-) Enjoy!

deborah

I know alot abut wwII as well but I am not sure that I would read Churchill. I am more into the stories from the camps and information from the SS soldiers. The powers that be don't really interest me its the people who were really in the muck of it that I find facinating.

Anyway, this list is like something I have never seen I am not sure how you can put Twlight up there with the Bible but I guess people did.

Thanks
Jennifer

One of the more interesting views of WWII is from Ernie Pyle -- who was a famous reporter at that time.
In current lingo you would say that he was imbedded with the troops. I highly recommend his writing.

Both the little guys views and the leaders views interest me. Especially since I was alive then.

Barbara

Barbara, DH read one of Pyle's books two years ago & enjoyed his writing enormously. I was going to read it until i saw that it was long and each page had two columns, likely because it was published during the war & paper needed to be saved. Still, the stories DH shared from the book were informative & some were quite sad.

deborah

I have read 8 from the list currently own 19 that I have not read
Perhaps I am young and obviously A list like this is to each his own but its not list I stride to finish and obsess over

It's just a fun thing to look at. Some use them as a guide. Others use the lists as a goal.

Here is a list of book lists that I keep on my computer.


The Modern Library | 100 Best | Nonfiction
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibr...

NR's List of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century
http://www.nationalreview.com/100best...

Pulitzer Prize:Past winners & finalists by category
http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat

All Nobel Laureates in Literature
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/li...

NY Magazine List- Novels
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/...

Random House Best 100 Non Fiction
http://www.nationalreview.com/100best...


NYPL, Books of the Century
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/eve...


Bloom. Western Canon
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/g...
A sort of "specialty" list for those living in or interested in the western part of America is:

The Best in the West / TOP 100 NONFICTION
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article... .DTL


Art Garfunkel - Official Website
http://www.artgarfunkel.com/favorites...

NY public library books lists.
http://www.nypl.org/branch/books/book...

Books of the century
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/eve...

links for everything books. A great site
http://refdesk.com/books.html


100 best novels
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibr...


Time magazine best 100 novels
http://www.time.com/time/2005/100book...


library book link
http://www.waterborolibrary.org/bklis...


Great book list
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/g...


nice library list that goes by genre
http://www.webrary.org/rs/FLbklistmen...

best non fiction list
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibr...

Best children books
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/lists...

NY Times bestseller
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/be...

USA today bestsellers
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/to...

The BBC book list
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top...

Pulitzer
Pulitzer Prize: past winners & finalists by category
http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat

All Nobel Laureates in Literature
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/li...

NY Magazine List- Novels
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/...

Random House Best 100 Non Fiction
http://www.nationalreview.com/100best...

1001 book to read before you die
http://www.listology.com/content_show...

Natural Geographic best adventure books
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adv...

Esquire Mag's List of 75 Books Every Man Should Read
http://www.suite101.com/blog/dansgirl...

100 novels everyone should read
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/bo...

WOW Alias Reader thanks!

Alias, I am overwhelmed. This is quite the list of ideas for reading!

You're welcome, Ana !

Sherry, I hope all the links work. I've had the list on my computer for some time.

Thanks to JoAnn & Schmurguls fron GR Readers & Reading board, here is another list of books.
It's the
100 Great American Novels You’ve (Probably) Never Read, by Karl Bridges

http://neglectedbooks.com/?page_id=271

I've only read one

Players

A very interesting list. And I also have read only one -- and that was required reading in my College American novel class. It was McTeague. Don't remember too much about it. Other than I think it was in the Edith Wharton period.

I bet Raintree County is good. It was a good movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

Barbara

Being a New Yorker, I was intrigued by a title on the list. I think I will check it out.

Leaving Brooklyn
by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

How much of this work is fiction? How much memoir? Schwartz walks the fine line separating fiction and memoir, thereby exploring the role of memory in the creation of art. In the end, she concludes, "If it wasn't a memory to begin with, it has become one now. . . . Memory is revision. I have just destroyed another piece of my past, to tell a story." The story she tells is of her adolescence, her coming of age in the sheltered world of the 1950s, and more aptly, her emergence from the sheltered life of childhood. Its central metaphor, that of the oddity of vision occasioned by a lazy, or "bad" eye, represents Schwartz's attempt to reconcile the sexually charged chaotic truths she discovers beneath the placid surface of her safe childhood world. Here, Brooklyn is more a state of mind, a state of unendurable innocence, than the sharply concrete place Schwartz can evoke. Recommended.

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Hawthorne Books

http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Brookly...

Alias Reader wrote: "Thanks to JoAnn & Schmurguls fron GR Readers & Reading board, here is another list of books.
It's the
100 Great American Novels You’ve (Probably) Never Read, by Karl Bridges

http://neglected..."

You know me - I read out of the way things quite a lot. I've read five of these "neglected" novels. I enjoyed all but the first one very much one very much.

A Feast of Snakes A Novel - Read when I was on a horror jag, came recommended by Stephen King in his nonfiction work, Danse Macabre. This one was nasty.

Stones for Ibarra - Read for my local AAUW book group. I think anyone here would like this multigenerational story.

A Gathering of Old Men - I don't remember a thing except it was short and I liked it. I think I read right after A Lesson Before Dying.

China Boy - Loved this one! I think I read it with the old OBG group on AOL.

Ceremony Read this for a class in NA literature. It was interesting enough, plenty to think about, but maybe not for the casual reader.

Read 17 from the Newsweek list. Not terrible. May have to slip more literature into the next reading challenge.

Tanja: Read 17 from the Newsweek list

********************

Is that the Time list, Tanja ? I think I read 22 on that list.

I can't see what type of books you like to read as your profile is set to private. :(

What is a Reading Challenge? Is that something you do on your own or with a group?

Here on BNC, in January, some of us make and post our DL list. (determination list). That is a list of books we have been meaning to read, but haven't. It's just an individual thing.

Edit--- I see the Newsweek link at the top of this thread. Sorry !

Many book bloggers do Reading Challenges, Alias....and there are a lot of different types. If you GOOGLE "reading challenges" you will get a lot of results.

From the Time list i've only read 2--
Herland
and
Sea Of Grass

I have enjoyed other works by these two. In fact, in the '70s Elizabeth Montgomery & Hal Holbrook starred in a tv adaptation of Richter's "Awakening Land" trilogy ("The Trees", "The Fields" and "The Town"). Wonderful!Conrad Richter

I must confess that i've heard of only a few of the books listed & only a few authors over that.

deborah

Deborah, are you sure you were looking at the Time List ? I know you are better read than I am, and I've read 26.


http://www.time.com/time/2005/100book...

I've read:

Animal Farm - George Orwell
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Beloved- Toni Morrison
Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf
Native Son - Richard Wright
1984- George Orwell
One flew over the Cuckoo's nest- Ken Kesey
Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger
The Corrections- Jonathan Franzen
Death Comes for the Archbishop- Willa Cather
The Grapes of Wrath- Seinbeck
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Heart is a loney hunter- Carson McCullers
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Invisible Man0 Ralph Ellison
Lord of the Flies- William Golding
Native Son- Richard Wright
the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie- Muriel Spark
the Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
the Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner
The sun also rises - Ernest Hemingway
Their eyes were watching God- Zora Neale Hurston
things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
To Kill A mockingbird - Harper Lee
White Noise- Don DeLillo
White Teeth- Zadie Smith

LOL, Alias. Nope,i was looking at the "most ignored" list or whatever that was. Let me see...i've read 36 of those but don't have time to write them down now. Funny but several of them i know i read with you, Alias! (Sheltering Sky; White Teeth & TKAM, at least, even though you were kinda over my shoulder for another one or two.) Aren't we good?!

deborah

:) I did recall reading some of them with you. And we just read White Teeth as a group here. I think we read White Noise together, or maybe it was one of your relatives read it and I commented on their thoughts.
That is why I suspected you were looking at some other list. I just didn't know which one.

Shame on me but without my list of "books read" i can't recall if i read White Noise or not! I know i read two DeLillo books, one of which was Libra but cannot remember the other. White Noise sounds right, though.

LibraWhite Noise

deborah

I have read 14 of the books

The Adventures of Augie March
Atonement
Brideshead Revisited
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwori Orange
A Death in the Family
The French Lieutenant's Women
Go Tell it on the MOuntain
The Great Gatsby
The Grapes of Wrath
The Heart us a Lonely Hunter
Ragtime
The Sun Also Rises
To Kill a Mockingbird

Meredith

Good list, Meredith. Brideshead is one i always "intend" to read but never do. Maybe my Determination List next year??

deborah

I've read
1. The Color Purple
2.The Wind in the Willows
3.Night
4. Heart of Darkness
5.Charlotte's Web
6.In Cold Blood
7.Animal Farm
8.Huckleberry Finn
9.Shakespeares Sonnets
10.Hamlet
11.To Kill A Mockingbird
12.The Great Gatsby
13.Things Fall Apart
14. The Canterbury Tales
15. Pride and Prejudice
16.The Odyssey
From the reccommended books at the bottom I've read: Of Mice and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God

so if you count those last two, I've read one important book for each year I've been alive.

I think the list is really good, even better than the BBC list, because it seems to include a wider range of books that will appeal to a wider audience.

Jaleh, you seem to be well rounded in the classics for someone still in their teens !

I read most of them as an adult.

I'm glad you like the list. :)

Thanks...and actually I missed one...I've also read Atonement, although I wasn't a fan of the novel.

I thought I was the only one who didn't like Atonement. It was a chore to finish.

You are the only person I know who didn't like it either. I was so disappointed when I read it because everyone else gushed about it.

Alias Reader wrote: "I thought I was the only one who didn't like Atonement. It was a chore to finish."

I hated it. I was annoyed at myself for wasting my time.