I wrote for my Substack (regular free newsletter, see top right of this page to sign up) about choosing the best books: and felt I should share it here too. I made my own list (not the full 100 you'll be glad to hear), and the picture above is a giveaway for what's at the top of it. This is my piece:
The Guardian newspaper published a list last week
as chosen by polling authors, academics and others. If you read the Guardian or are on social media you couldn’t have missed this, as – and presumably this is the whole point – it has to be argued over at enormous length, with people getting very irate. How could you miss out MY favourites? Since it was done on votes the answer to that one is clear: No-one else likes them that much.
I would file it away as ‘enjoyable distraction that means nothing’. I live my cultural life by the George Orwell remark: ‘you cannot prove to me that a work of art is good’. Or bad for that matter.
But obviously, I also counted up how many of the books I had read. I don’t think I’m going to share that number: it is very high, and that makes people get very cross for some reason. I will say that it was (surprisingly) more than Andy Miller, revered master of the Backlisted podcast,
had read from the list.
The other figure I don’t ever like to reveal is how many books I read in a month or a year, because again people find it annoying. Yes, it is a lot. In the days when I gave an answer people would say ‘but you don’t read them properly do you?’ and ‘well you can’t count short books’ and so on, which I found quite rude (who made the rules?), so now I don’t say. My only important tip is that all my life I have made time for reading by doing minimal housework, and not worrying about it.
I have done posts on more than 2500 different books here on the blog.
Aaanyway, I did make a list of my favourite novels, which might be different another week or month or year. But right now, these ones. Wolf Hall is top choice (and that probably isn't going to change anytime soon), but after that they are not in order, just random.
Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (see particularly Hilary Mantel and the Ghost of Thomas Cromwell)
Alastair Mcleod No Great Mischief
Ford Madox Ford Parade’s End
Sybille Bedford A Legacy
Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle
Marilynn Robinson Housekeeping
Mrs Gaskell Wives and Daughters
Nancy Mitford Pursuit of Love/Love in a cold climate
Robert Irwin Wonders Will Never Cease
George Eliot Middlemarch
LP Hartley The Go-Between
Agatha Christie Five Little Pigs
Dorothy L Sayers The Nine Tailors
Katherine Heiny Standard Deviation
James Joyce Ulysses
F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
WG Sebald Rings of Saturn/The Emigrants
Henry James Wings of the Dove
Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited
Giorgio Bassani Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth
Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano
Marcel Proust A la Recherche de Temps Perdu
Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy
JL Carr A Month in the Country
Charles Dickens Great Expectations
Mrs Oliphant Miss Marjoribanks
Sebastian Japrisot A very long engagement
Jane Austen Emma
There are entries on most of them (not Vikram Seth, and not, weirdly, that particular Dickens), you can easily find them with the search box (top right)
You know how it works: plenty of room for others' choices below...
I have a section of my bookshelves just for my absolute favorites and about half of them are also on your list, Moira.
ReplyDeleteHere are a few more that I think you might enjoy - Josephine Tey - The Daughter of Time; Margaret Attwood - The Penelopiad; Margaret Craven - I Heard the Owl Call My Name; T H White - The Sword in the Stone; Robbie Arnott -The Rain Heron; Seamus Deane - Reading in the Dark.
I'm starting a list of all the ones you - and others - list that I haven't met yet. If there's anything that rivals thinking about a good book I've read, it's making a list of books I'm going to find and read
Thank you, what a lovely comment! Ive read some of these, but not heard odfArnott or Deane - I will look them up and add them to my list! I love getting book recommendations.
DeleteFunny how people react to someone who reads a lot, and some of those comments are hilarious--"you only read short books" like Middlemarch! I used to get comments about always "having my nose in a book" which I personally considered a good thing--there would be less trouble in the world if more people read a lot, IMO! I've slacked off since then or maybe I've just become "narrower" in my reading....Loved your philosophy about reading v housework, I always choose reading but may take it a bit far.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think there's something about people thinking I'm judging them for not reading as much, which I would never do. Crazy.
DeleteI once said to someone 'look at my house and you'll see why I have so much time to read', meaning the housework thing, and she misunderstood and thought I meant I spent so much money on books that I couldn't afford a nice house. And she said 'Oh your house is OK'. I don't think we were destined to be great friends....
I just read this and thought of you, I wonder which of you has read more books? https://lithub.com/the-man-who-reads-books-for-a-living-one-every-two-days/
ReplyDeleteThat was absolutely fascinating, thanks Marty. I couldn't tell how many he reads in total. I have exactly the same calculation that I can read 100 pages an hour. In pre-Kindle days when I was going up to London on the train, I would have to calculate how big a book I took with me to read to make sure I had enough for two x one hour journeys....
DeleteThe story about reading a 1000 page book overnight was awful, but apart from that I would have loved that job, which I didn't know exists
I can just see you reading/writing for adaptations! I suppose the BBC doesn't have the same mindset as those American producers (thank goodness). I liked his point about some books not being suited to the screen, however good they are. He seems to agree with your views about faithfulness to the sources not being of the most importance, that an adaptation needs to be evaluated on its own merits as a film.
DeleteI felt I could have a really good conversation with that guy!
Delete100 pages per hour - impressive! My normal reading pace for fiction / easy texts is 60 pages per hour and that's relatively quick. In fact I only know one person who reads faster than I do. (Not that I go around asking people how fast they read, but it's the sort of thing you notice when you are perusing a text together with another person. Apart from this one friend I always reach the end of a page before the other person and have to wait for them to finish.)
DeleteIt took me years to fully realize that I read significantly faster than other people. I did notice what you describe: when reading something together I always finished ages before everyone else and was wasting time waiting for them to get through it. But the full force of it took years to hit home.
DeleteLovely to see many favourites on your list and definitely agree Truth is the daughter of time and Sword in the Stone are contenders. Have many people really read Ulysses? To me it is almost mythic 'good"book like War and Peace and Moby Dick. I haven't read it so I may be very wrong here (though I enjoyed The Dubloners).
ReplyDeleteMoira. I enjoyed your reading v housework anecdote, many times people have remarked on the number of books I have and then added thst they must get dusty. I hasten to add I don't have Lucy Mangan numbers of books...
I did not study literature at all, and in my 20s decided I needed to catch up on the classics I hadn't read. I had a lovely time reading wonderful books, BUT - I worked with some very highly edcuated artsy people, degrees in literature etc, and I would go into work dying to talk about whatever great classic I had just finished. And of any given book, I could find someone who had read it, but most people wouldn't have. This surprised me...
DeleteI also have read all the long ones, with my simple scheme of setting myself a target of so many pages a day. even War and Peace (NOT one of my favourites) can be subdued with this one.
People say, looking at my books, 'but you haven't read them all?' and again, don't really want to hear that I have. The proportion of TBR is very small in my house.
Hardly any TBR here either. I have often borrowed a library book and sunsequently bought if I liked like it enough to re-read it.. This is definitely puzzling behaviour for non-readers " Why have you bought a book you have just read? It doesn't make sense".
DeleteI have always hated the idea of someone telling me what to read , too much like school so no English lit for me. I am impressed by your reading the classics schedule. Maybe not too late for me.
Yes, there are quite different attitudes I think.
DeleteReading the classics is something I've always been glad I did, even the ones I didn't enjoy so much. I always think that Very Famous Books, when you finally get to them, are either Surprisingly Good or Surprisingly Boring - not often just Meh.
I like your choices very much, Moira, and honestly, I am not surprised that Wolf Hall is your top choice. Even before I saw the photo, I thought it would be. And about revealing how many books you read in a week/month/year, I think everyone is so different about reading speed and reading habits that I sometimes wonder if one even can compare numbers of books read. But that's just me.
ReplyDeleteThanks Margot, and I agree. there are much more important aspects to reading than numbers and statistics
DeleteHmmmmmmm ...... I have read Wolf Hall and thought it a good but not great book. I have not read any of your other favourites. That surprised me. I have never tried to make a list of favourites and am not sure I am interested. I highlight favourite reads of a year but not lifetime favourites.
ReplyDeleteThat surprises me too Bill. I have enjoyed your yearly roundups, and often found new books from them.
DeleteHah. I'm another nonenthusiast for "War and Peace." Could've been improved by trimming one-third, I felt (specifically, all the philosophical digressions; novel-readers are fundamentally there for a story, thank you). "Favorite Books" are an evergreen topic for conversation, but do you really want to get people riled up? Ask them to name "Overrated Books." --Your blogfriend, Trollopian
ReplyDeleteGlad we agree about W&P
DeleteAnd that is a dynamite idea about over-rated books - it would really get people going...
I read W&P in the 1970s, probably because of the BBC adaptation, but don't really remember a lot about it.
ReplyDelete'What a lot of books. Have you read them all?' has become a standing joke in our house. There are so many of them that's there's hardly any storage space for anything else - it's hard to let them go.
I breathed hard and went for it when we were moving house - I gave 3000 books to Oxfam. I never thought I would. That's a couple of years ago now, and maybe 10 times I have thought 'oh I used to have a copy of that' or actually missed something - but basically it's OK. And now I try to be 'one in one out' and if I read a book and it's staying (by no means all of them) something has to go...
DeleteComing late to this party and since I’m lying abed before upgetting time ( not yet 7 am here) I’m on my phone so won’t ramble on too much for now… (okay already rambling)
ReplyDeleteFor now I’ll just say nearly anything by Barbara Kingsolver, especially The Bean Trees, a perennial reread. Another book I read every summer is L M Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. Gaudy Night also gets a frequent look-in.
Of course I’m talking books I reread because I love them and where they take me. I reel the Guardian list is more along the lines of Very Important and Impressive Books That Some People Think You Should Read.
I FEEL, of course.
DeleteA person's own comfort reads, the ones they read again and again, are very important.
DeleteI think there's room for the more serious books too - there are classics I will never read again, but I am still glad I read them
I HATE being asked to pick out favourite books. You always think of something you left off afterwards. Having said that....
ReplyDeleteUp the Attic Stairs by Angela Bull (which you loved) would definitely be on my list as one of the obscure titles.
There's authors I love, even if I don't love all their books, and it's horrible to have to choose just one. How can I choose just one Pratchett or one Heyer? Or one Kerry Greenaway, when I have absolutely *loved* almost all her Phryne Fisher books? Christopher Fowler, Joanne Harris, Robert Westall, Kate Atkinson (actually, I know you disliked it despite generally liking her work, but I'd say Human Croquet would have to be my favourite KA).
Vivian Shaw's Dr Greta Helsing quadrilogy was superb. Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series is consistently good. I've also absolutely fallen in love with Stephanie Austin's "cosy mysteries" set in Devon - she's just so lovely and readable and being a Devon boy, I actually recognise the settings she writes about. They just draw me in and keep me reading through to the end. Lovely characters, likeable heroine, theatrical costumer besties who keep providing her with fabulous togs for fancy dress balls and undercover work, etc, etc....
The absolute irony is that I used to swear up and down that I love individual books, not authors, but now I hate being asked to choose a single book of an author's oeuvre when I generally love what they do.
Could be more fun to make a list of the books I really didn't vibe with despite them being by authors I love. (I can guess your list would include Human Croquet!)
What a great collection of titles! Some I know (as in Attic Stairs, which you got me into, and I did love it) & some I haven't heard of and will be looking up.
DeleteI love KA so much I probably should try Human Croquet again.
Least favourite book by a much-loved author is a great idea for a list...
We also have to be very fair and objective with that list, so I'd say that for Agatha, I'd be very kind and gently overlook Passenger to Frankfurt and Postern to Fate, just because it's kind of cruel to put things clearly written by a declining and unwell person on a list of Worst Books, even if they ARE shockingly bad and predictable choices.
DeleteI think you have a very good point there, nuanced and hard to put into words. You only want to criticize an author if they were firing on all cylinders.
DeleteI do love a list! I’ve read nearly thirty of yours, and nearly fifty of The Guardian’s, the ‘nearly’ in both cases being Ulysses, of which I’ve read all except the later part of chapter 14, where a number of readings bogged down until finally I made the decision to abandon the chapter, rather than the whole book, and skipped on to chapter 15.
ReplyDeleteI don’t get on well with Dickens but my English Lit teacher adored him, so I had to read all the novels at school (except The Mystery of Edwin Drood). I think the only one I’ve re-read is Bleak House, and even then I had to skip a lot of Esther Summerson’s ‘Why does everyone love Little Me?’.
No Trollope! I might put The Eustace Diamonds on my list if I were making one. I’d also replace Jude the Obscure with The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Wuthering Heights with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (keeping it in the family even though not the same author).
Sovay
I think if I'd read that much of Ulysses I would count it as read!
DeleteThere's been a lot of discussion of what's missing from the Guardian list, but as I keep saying - books are not there because not enough people mentioned them.
My own list - I keep thinking of other books I should've added, and one of them is the Mayor of Casterbridge. And yes, some Trollope should be there.
I suspect Trollope's not on the list because he wrote quite a lot and none of his books is really head-and-shoulders above the rest - this is where it pays to write one acknowledged masterpiece and a number of other books that no-one feels that strongly about (eg Thackeray and Vanity Fair).
DeleteSovay
I think you sum it up perfectly Sovay.
DeleteI think I could make a case for The Way We Live Now being on that list.
DeleteI put Eustace Diamonds and Can You forgive Her? on my list, but The Way We Live Now would be high up too
DeleteAll so relatable, Moira, and oh the fear of running out of something to read! Last week I got stuck on a horrible train journey and my main worry was whether I was going to get to the end of my book before I got hime. But I need to know, don't you have different reading speeds for different books? Surely Crime and Punishment is a slower read than Agatha Christie? Chrissie
ReplyDeleteNon-fiction slows me down if it's a serious read. But fiction not so much - I keep thinking 'perhaps I don't pay enough attention?' but when I test my knowledge I dont think that's true, I seem to have read it properly. Dostoyevsky much longer than Agatha of course...
DeleteDidn't you read the whole of Trollope when commuting? My issue when I was commuting - and with a very busy famliy when I got home - was that I would read 200 pp of a normal novel on the way there and back, but didn't get a chance to finish the book at home, and then would have to start a new one the next day to make sure I had enough capacity. It was complicated to juggle that - a lot of catching up over the weekend.
This is why I won't hear a word against Kindle!
Trollope is an excellent commuting read (also bedtime read) because, among other reasons, he has short chapters and they have titles, not just numbers. I recently slogged through Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma." 485 pages in my edition, 28 chapters, no chapter titles, no natural breaks, no table of contents not that it would matter. Contrast that with a middling Trollope of roughly equal length: "The Vicar of Bullhampton" at 527 pages, 73 (!) chapters, and each has an informative but (importantly) non-spoiler title like, Chapter XXXV, "Mr. Puddleham's New Chapel." In the era before e-readers and their search functions, you could actually, y'know, find things. And read in queues or on a train or wherever short snatches of opportunity arose.
DeleteTrollope's approximate contemporary Dickens writes like this too. It's fairly obviously a style shaped by serial publication. Call me shallow but I like it. --Your blogfriend, Trollopian
Ah, well, and circling back to the main topic: Trollope had a hearty scorn for spiritualism and seances and similar claptrap, though they were much in vogue in his lifetime. (His mother and brother were susceptible to "that nonsense.") There's a delightful passage in "The Claverings." Apparently speaking for Trollope, Archie Clavering remarks that "[Y]ou never hear of a swell being a medium. Why don't the spirits go to a prime minister or some of those fellows? Only think what a help they'd be." His gullible conversation partner has no good answer.
DeleteAnd to warm the cockles of CiB's readers' hearts, a few lines later (Clavering again): "If I was a spirit I wouldn't go to a woman who wore such dirty stockings as she had on." --Trollopian, earning my blogname
First of all, totally agree with you about chapters and chapter names: I love a book that does that properly. I think when I was younger a lack of divisions seemed daring or avant garde, but as I get older I have no time for it at all. And Trollope particularly delivers, as you say.
DeleteThose remarks about spiritualism are wonderful! I haven't read The Claverings, but obviously should.
I did read A LOT of Trollope when I was commuting to my job in the Tax Office. Not quite all of it though - I only lasted three or four months! Chrissie
DeleteI have the confident feeling that I wlil read Trollope whenever I feel like, and this quite often, and there will always still be some of his books left....
Delete