True!

No surprise here. Sometimes I feel they are uncapable to see the beauty around them, by being too focused on themselves. That's a shame. As someone who reads in 4 different languages (English is not my native language), this is upsetting but def not surprising

It’s an English paper talking about English books - it’s not pretending to be international in scope

@@hedgiecc it's an English paper ranking "The 50 best books of the past 100 years". Not "The 50 best English/anglo books of the past 100 years"

@@criss8836 Right, had the paper emphasized "the 50 best English/anglo books of the past 100 years", then we wouldn't take issue with their intentionally narrowed focus, but they're purporting to present only English-language works as the best anywhere for that time period, which is incredibly myopic. I also don't like how best books are automatically assumed to be best novels, omitting the wide range of writing outside of extended narrative fiction from consideration.

Thank you! 😊📚

That's great! I'm sure I'll love her writing. I'll let you know if I set a read along plan.

Thank you! It's lovely to meet you. 📚

Yes! I love that video of her.

😊📚

😄📚

Thanks so much! That’s kind of you to say. 😊📚

The Enchantress of Florence is especially good, and a good one to start with, imo.

Thank you! 📚 Yeah, I really ought to reread Gatsby.

Some of the Americans: Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Lewis, et al, are difficult to separate from the politics they embraced.

Maybe not so interesting today full fo feminst retelling a but wide Sargasso Sea is pretty revolutionary and influential for critically re-examining a classic such as Jane eyre in post colonial feminist Lense

Thanks! I hope to read Blood Meridian soon too.

I hope Blood Meridian won't be your first Cormac McCarthy. If it is, I highly recommend reading No Country for Old Men and/or The Road. I read both Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horse before I read The Road, and I couldn't see the appeal. After The Road, I finally got his style and then No Country for Old Men cemented it in my mind. I then reread Blood Meridian and found a whole new appreciation of McCarthy.

@@thetheatrezoo3603 thanks for the advice. I have read a couple of McCarthy novels recently in ‘The Road’ and ‘All the Pretty Horses’ and have enjoyed both immensely. I wouldn’t mind finishing the ‘Border Trilogy before jumping in but I have the copy of BM ready to go. My understanding is that Blood Meridien is both dense literally (akin to a ‘Moby Dick’) but moreso, thematically. Hopefully I will appreciate it.

@@jonathonglover6488 BM is really good, I just needed to understand his style better. When I reread All the Pretty Horses and BM, I preferred BM. Though, The Road made me appreciate CM, I think my favorite might be No Country for Old Men. I look forward to his upcoming books.

Maybe she was having a bad day or just a bad moment on that occasion. We all have our failings from time to time, even the great artists among us.

@@barrymoore4470 I don’t give a 💩. You don’t speak to people like that and especially not people who buy your books! She was having a bad day is a piss poor excuse used to excuse people’s vulgar behaviour.

@@barrymoore4470 I don’t give a 💩. You don’t speak to people like that and especially not people who buy your books! She was having a bad day is a piss poor excuse used to excuse people’s vulgar behaviour.

Thank you! Hope you enjoy those two! 📚

Or Cabrera Infante

I hadn't heard about Seymour's new bio. Thanks for the tip! I think After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is the only one of her books I haven't read.

She pubIshed 4 short noveIs in the earIy part of the Iast century and feII into obscurity (or was never Iifted out of it) untiI she pubIished a book in the 1960s caIIed Wide Sargasso Sea, which was a take off on Jane Eyre. I Iike the desperate reaIism in her earIy noveIs. I'm curious, why wouId you read a biography about an author whose work you've never read? I've never heard of anyone doing that. One becomes curious about the author because you've connected in some way with his or her work.

@@JeffRebornNow I read an article in The New Yorker Magazine: “The Many Confrontations of Jean Rhys” which piqued my interest. I do not hold any hard and fast rules regarding my reading selections.I had only read “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath and picked up “Red Comet”, which I highly recommend. Also,intend to pick up a biography of Patricia Highsmith after reading “The Talented Mr.Ripley.” Thanks for commenting.

The God of Small Things....I have read. Very interesting and surprising.

I used to enjoy reading Graham Greene - the Third Man comes to mind immediately - and frankly I'm not surprised he fails to make this particular list (IMO)

She was quite intimidating. And it’s certainly not a revolutionary list of suggestions though some are books I really ought to get to.

What is the old saying- Never Meet your Heroes. They may dissapoint you.

@@EricKarlAnderson it's embarrassing for her to act in this manner. She left you without nice memories :((

@@HoldenNY22 I think it's okay to be receptive to meeting one's heroes, but to always remember they are fallible human beings just like the rest of us. Ms. Lessing might have been having a bad day or bad moment on that occasion, but I'm glad our host can laugh at the memory of his encounter with this formidable personality.

I think Lessing's point was that she felt asking for signatures is trivial, rather than speaking about the writing. If you haven't seen it, I recommend looking at this video: m.kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rNtygqd5q6i-aJ8.html

Great, hope you find some new favourite reads. I think the critics and writers picked out 40 books which were shown in the article of the paper I bought but then they opened it up to the public to suggest 10 more to make 50. I just bought the physical paper so I don’t have access to the online content so I don’t know what the 10 extra are either. A confusing way to go about it but more democratic I guess.

J. M. Coetzee represents the southern hemisphere, and Doris Lessing could arguably count also. But you're right in that there is no sign here of Patrick White, Joan Lindsay, Janet Frame, and many outstanding Spanish-language authors of the past century, including Jorge Luis Borges, Antonio Di Benedetto, and Isabel Allende, and, in Portuguese, probably Brazil's most esteemed twentieth-century writer, Clarice Lispector.

Oh yes! I totally agree about adding Murdoch and Barnes’ novels.

I have read so many books by Nabokov and admire him so much. It took rather a long time (in England) for him to be regarded as a genius and not a pornographer.

@@alidabaxter5849 Genius and pornographer need not be mutually exclusive categories. I agree, though, that Nabokov was not purveying pornography through his writing, which is indeed illustrative of his genius.

I know! No One Hundred Years of Solitude! I expected to see it in the top ten.

Great! 😊📚 Yes, definitely A Brief History of Seven Killings!

I’ve read sections but not the entire book through. Love the NightTown section and Molly Bloom’s section obviously.

Sorry - Eric.

Thanks! Some of them are UK first editions and others are proof copies publishers send me in advance of publication.

'Women in Love' and 'The Rainbow' are universally regarded as superior as literature to 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', but they fall outside the scope of the 'Times' survey, having been written and published before 1922.

Nabokov wrote Lolita in English

@@hedgiecc good point! And that then probably solves the question: these are the best novels written in English

@@qinlkpah Except the 'Times' was not promoting the list as the best novels written in English--they are presenting these as the best books (not merely novels) written anywhere over the last century. Which is short-sighted on at least two counts (literature is more than just novels, and great literature extends beyond English-language works).

Yeah, I remember reading and enjoying Tom Wolfe but I can't recall any other list putting Bonfire so high up.

Well, first of all there's Nick, who probably is in love with Jay, and is therefore shattered when Fitzgerald forecloses any chance of a relationship between them. And then there's Jordan Baker, who likes to cheat. She doesn't need to cheat, she doesn't feel guilty about cheating, she just likes it. Also, there Daisy, who unexpectedly finds herself in a happy ending. As for Jay, as Rodney Dangerfield tersely explained: He's great.

It is neither the best nor the most important book of the last 100 years. I was shocked to see it at the top.

I don't get the hype either. I was underwhelmed by it.

I just bought "The Moskat family" written by Isaac Bashevis-Singer, have you read it?

@@carmensirbu8585 No, I haven't, but I read "In my father's court" long time ago and wanted to reread it, but couldn't find it, that's how I put my hands on "The Slave" and loved it. I loved the story, but it's about his writing too, so I hope you will like it. I bought 3 more books and I have another one by him, and the two that I've read were different, meaning I want to read anything I can find by him. So if you read it, I'm interested to know if you liked it :).

Hello! Could you recommend some Australian novels? What are the greatest Australian classics, in your opinion? That would be very helpful! 🦋

@@luisamota7160 That's quite a lot of novels to choose from and it really depends on your taste, where to start. A recent book which would give you an idea might be, The Books That Made us by Carl Reinecke (2021). Last year, there was a TV series on some important Australian novels and the book goes into more depth. Early classics can be quite classist and racist but for a modern classic in an Australian gothic style, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967) is a good one. A few that hold a special place in my heart, I read them in my teens, are My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901), The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson (1910) and The Harp in the South by Ruth Park (1948). An important novel of recent times is The Yield by Tara June Winch. Some Australian authors that have a great body of work are Richard Flanagan, Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Peter Carey and Patrick White (Nobel prize winner- can be challenging to read), David Malouf, Thomas Keneally and Helen Garner (she writes quite a bit of Non-fiction too). We have some really important indigenous writers Alexis Wright (Carpentaria - it's a huge book) and Kim Scott are exceptional but can be difficult to read, have to really deep dive into their writing and their work sometimes works on a number of different levels. Some of my favourite Australian writers are Heather Rose Inga Simpson, Gail Jones and Joan London, they have novels in a number of different genres, they don't really have a type of novel they write. They write some literary fiction and some that's literary/genre fiction. I'd also recommend looking at The Miles Franklin Award (for books that have an Australian theme, it's Australia's most prestigious literary award) and The Stella Award (for Australian women writers). The Prime Minister's Literary award and the State Premiers Literary Awards are also great places to find some gems. Most of the writers I've mentioned have multiple books that have won these awards.

Probably the most revolutionary novel published after 'Ulysses', 'Finnegans Wake', also by Joyce, did not make the list.

I've read some of those, and while Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet (I've memorized several), her novel, The Bell Jar, maybe isn't a great classic. However, you may want to do a quick study comparing it to Allen Ginsburg's Howl.

@@jamesduggan7200 Have you read any of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry? She’s my fave.

@@Hollis_has_questions No, not really. Sorry, only whatever was offered in college so many years ago, and I don't remember any at all.

@@jamesduggan7200 Here you are: hollis517.blogspot.com/2010/05/renascence-all-i-could-see-from-where-i.html. Edna’s Renascence and This should be Simple are the two I love best. May’s entries show my very favorite poems. (Shelley’s Ozymandias is the very best sonnet ever written, imo.) If you click on April, you’ll see my paper, The Terminator and the Intention of Technology, written in 1994. I consider it prescient.

Seems I missed the part about originally written in English. No wonder it seems a little arthritic.

That’s totally understandable! 😄

I would answer no to your question, as there is no substitute for an author's precise style even in the most attentive film adaptation of a literary work. Style to me is the most important element in assessing a work's literary merit.

You mention a few notables, in particular Sophie's Choice, which is a spectacular novel. Clockwork, too, overwhelmingly deserves continued notice, though I find it difficult to praise Lolita, as bewitching as it is. And of course, everyone should read The Sun Also Rises, but that's life.

Someone pointed out the other day that The Great Gatsby and Mrs. Dalloway are basically the same story tho of course their endings are about as different as can be.

@@jamesduggan7200 hmmm.. interesting... I didn't notice

@@jamesduggan7200 It's interesting that Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel 'The Hours', inspired by and riffing on 'Mrs Dalloway', did not make the list here.

@@barrymoore4470 well, 50 is kind of a small list, and tbh many of my personal favorites, like Vonnegut and Updike, were cut.