My wife tells me that I can be a little obsessive with my hobbies and projects. She also tells me that I have a serious book problem. This is not going to help either opinion.
The Project, as I’m calling it, is simple: I am going to read and review 100 of the best novels of the last century in, I hope, 100 weeks. My own idiosyncratic top 100.
————————————————–
This idea had its genesis over my weekly lunch and beer with a
good friend a couple of months ago. We were discussing the general state of our literate society and I was lamenting, as a good former English major is apt to do, the ubiquity of piffle that seems to be in everyone’s hands these days… if they bother read at all. I was thinking, I’m sure, of 50 Shades of Grey, which seems to be handed out with train tickets in this country judging by a glance over your average peak-hour carriage. This was particularly sad, I argued, given the swelling contingent of great contemporary novelists. My friend asked for some examples and suggested I name my top five novels and authors of the last 25 years, which I hazarded in an extemporaneous muster that felt rushed and inadequate the moment I closed my mouth.
I went home and spent the next few hours assembling something more satisfying, which succeeded primarily in getting myself excited to get hold of a new book or two.
A few days later I visited the local bookstore and bought a copy of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, one of the authors I recommended. I’ve loved his writing for years now and vaguely remembered reading this, his magnum opus, when I was in high school. I’m typically a rather fast reader but working through this took me weeks. (Protracted more than a little, no doubt, by the arrival of our daughter.) But it was predominately the language – the gushing onslaught of esoteric, wicked and oddly biblical verbiage that drags your protesting conscience through one of the most blood-drenched landscapes any novelist has dared paint. McCarthy reminded me of how mindblowingly reeling a good novel could be.
So, like any powerful drug, I wanted another shot.
And so began my quest to compile a list of contemporary must-reads. In the process I stumbled across
101books.net, Robert Bruce’s excellent site which provided the last piece of the puzzle. Robert is blogging his way through Time Magazine’s 100 greatest novels. I think the concept is brilliant and is a perfect excuse for me to read more and finally get back to blogging.
Trouble is the
Times List, like the
Modern Library’s top 100, didn’t quite satisfy. Among other things the former was too heavily US-centric and where the Modern Library list was slightly more geographically balanced it presented a shameful 8 out of 100 books written by women. Not to mention post-colonialist and ethnically diverse authors writing in English.
Any list that attempts to construct a sort of canon of great literature must by nature of the endeavour also privelege older novels that have established themselves over the more recent. But I have read a lot of classic novels and wanted to read some more recent fiction…
And I didn’t want to read anything that I have read too recently (or that I hated!)…
And I wanted new books for my library…
And I wanted to read Australian authors that I’ve sadly neglected (rare specimens indeed in the prestigious aforementioned lists)…
Ultimately, I wanted a list that met some pretty specific criteria and above all, that I could be excited about each individual book. A list that didn’t exist.
 So I thought it would be fun to create my own using the logic above and the following explicit criteria:
- Must be a novel (no short stories)
- Must be originally composed in English (no translations)
- Must be published within the last 100 years (1913 – 2012)
- Must be literary fiction (this is inescapably ambiguous, but given that I’m the final arbiter of my list this is an internal argument in my own troubled head)
- At least 25% of the novels must be written by women
- At least 10% of the novels must be written by Australians
- No author can be represented more than twice
- Attempt an even spread of date of composition
Well, if you’ve waded your way this far, here is The Project:
1
|
Sons and Lovers
|
DH Lawrence
|
1913
|
UK
|
2
|
Of Human Bondage
|
W Somerset Maugham
|
1915
|
UK
|
3
|
A Portrait of the Artist as the Young Man
|
James Joyce
|
1916
|
UK
|
4
|
Ulysses
|
James Joyce
|
1922
|
UK
|
5
|
A Passage to India
|
EM Foster
|
1924
|
UK
|
6
|
The Great Gatsby
|
F Scott Fitzgerald
|
1925
|
US
|
7
|
An American Tragedy
|
Theodore Dreiser
|
1925
|
US
|
8
|
Mrs Dalloway
|
Virginia Woolf
|
1925
|
UK
|
9
|
The Sun Also Rises
|
Ernest Hemingway
|
1926
|
US
|
10
|
Death Comes for the Archbishop
|
Willa Cather
|
1927
|
US
|
11
|
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
|
Thornton Wilder
|
1927
|
US
|
12
|
To The Lighthouse
|
Virginia Woolf
|
1927
|
US
|
13
|
The Sound and the Fury
|
William Faulkner
|
1929
|
US
|
14
|
As I Lay Dying
|
William Faulkner
|
1930
|
US
|
15
|
Brave New World
|
Aldous Huxley
|
1932
|
UK
|
16
|
I, Claudius
|
Robert Graves
|
1934
|
UK
|
17
|
Appointment in Samarra
|
John O’Hara
|
1934
|
US
|
18
|
Their Eyes Were Watching God
|
Zora Neal Hurston
|
1937
|
US
|
19
|
The Big Sleep
|
Raymond Chandler
|
1939
|
UK
|
20
|
The Grapes of Wrath
|
John Steinbeck
|
1939
|
US
|
21
|
The Day of the Locust
|
Nathanael West
|
1939
|
US
|
22
|
The Man Who Loved Children
|
Christina Stead
|
1940
|
AUS
|
23
|
Darkness at Noon
|
Arthur Koestler
|
1940
|
HUN-UK
|
24
|
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
|
Carson McCullers
|
1940
|
US
|
25
|
The Power and the Glory
|
Graham Greene
|
1942
|
UK
|
26
|
Brideshead Revisited
|
Evelyn Waugh
|
1945
|
UK
|
27
|
All The Kings Men
|
Robert Penn Warren
|
1946
|
US
|
28
|
Under the Volcano
|
Malcolm Lowry
|
1947
|
CA
|
29
|
The Heart of the Matter
|
Graham Greene
|
1948
|
UK
|
30
|
The Harp in the South
|
Ruth Park
|
1948
|
AUS
|
31
|
Nineteen Eight-Four
|
George Orwell
|
1949
|
UK
|
32
|
The Catcher in the Rye
|
JD Salinger
|
1951
|
US
|
33
|
Invisible Man
|
Ralph Ellison
|
1952
|
US
|
34
|
Wise Blood
|
Flannery O’Connor
|
1952
|
US
|
35
|
The Adventures of Augie March
|
Saul Bellows
|
1953
|
CA-US
|
36
|
Go Tell it on the Mountain
|
James Baldwin
|
1953
|
US
|
37
|
Fahrenheit 451
|
Ray Bradbury
|
1953
|
US
|
38
|
Lord of the Flies
|
William Golding
|
1954
|
UK
|
39
|
Lucky Jim
|
Kingsley Amis
|
1954
|
UK
|
40
|
Lolita
|
Vladimir Nabakov
|
1955
|
RUS-US
|
41
|
On the Road
|
Jack Kerouac
|
1957
|
US
|
42
|
Voss
|
Patrick White
|
1957
|
AUS
|
43
|
Things Fall Apart
|
Chinua Achebe
|
1958
|
NIG
|
44
|
Rabbit Angstrom Tetrology
|
John Updike
|
1960
|
US
|
45
|
To Kill a Mocking Bird
|
Harper Lee
|
1960
|
US
|
46
|
Revolutionary Road
|
Richard Yates
|
1961
|
US
|
47
|
A House for Mr. Biswas
|
V. S. Naipul
|
1961
|
TRIN
|
48
|
Catch-22
|
Joseph Heller
|
1961
|
US
|
49
|
A Clockwork Orange
|
Anthony Burgess
|
1962
|
UK
|
50
|
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
|
Ken Kesey
|
1962
|
US
|
51
|
Pale Fire
|
Vladimir Nabakov
|
1962
|
RUS-US
|
52
|
The Golden Notebook
|
Doris Lessing
|
1962
|
UK
|
53
|
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
|
John le Carré
|
1963
|
UK
|
54
|
Herzog
|
Saul Bellows
|
1964
|
CA-US
|
55
|
The Crying of Lot 49
|
Thomas Pynchon
|
1966
|
US
|
56
|
Wide Sargasso Sea
|
Jean Rhys
|
1966
|
DOM-UK
|
57
|
Slaughterhouse Five
|
Kurt Vonnegut
|
1969
|
US
|
58
|
Gravity’s Rainbow
|
Thomas Pynchon
|
1973
|
US
|
59
|
Sophie’s Choice
|
William Styron
|
1979
|
US
|
60
|
Earthly Powers
|
Anthony Burgess
|
1980
|
UK
|
61
|
Housekeeping
|
Marilyn Robinson
|
1980
|
US
|
62
|
Waiting for the Barbarians
|
JM Coetzee
|
1980
|
SA
|
63
|
Midnight’s Children
|
Salman Rushdie
|
1981
|
IND-UK
|
64
|
Schindler’s Ark
|
Thomas Kenneally
|
1982
|
AUS
|
65
|
The Color Purple
|
Alice Walker
|
1983
|
US
|
66
|
Money
|
Martin Amis
|
1984
|
UK
|
67
|
Blood Meridian
|
Cormac McCarthy
|
1985
|
US
|
68
|
White Noise
|
Don DeLillo
|
1985
|
US
|
69
|
The Handmaid’s Tale
|
Margaret Atwood
|
1985
|
CA
|
70
|
Beloved
|
Toni Morrison
|
1987
|
US
|
71
|
The Satanic Verses
|
Salman Rushdie
|
1988
|
IND-UK
|
72
|
Oscar and Lucinda
|
Peter Carey
|
1989
|
AUS
|
73
|
Possession
|
A.S.Byatt
|
1990
|
UK
|
74
|
American Psycho
|
Bret Easton Ellis
|
1991
|
US
|
75
|
Cloudstreet
|
Tim Winton
|
1991
|
AUS
|
76
|
Border Trilogy
|
Cormac McCarthy
|
1992
|
US
|
77
|
The Blue Flower
|
Penelope Fitzgerald
|
1995
|
UK
|
78
|
Infinite Jest
|
David Foster Wallace
|
1996
|
US
|
79
|
The God of Small Things
|
Arundhati Roy
|
1997
|
IND
|
80
|
American Pastoral
|
Phillip Roth
|
1997
|
US
|
81
|
Underworld
|
Don DeLillo
|
1997
|
US
|
82
|
Amsterdam
|
Ian McEwan
|
1998
|
UK
|
83
|
Disgrace
|
JM Coetzee
|
1999
|
SA
|
84
|
Drylands
|
Thea Astley
|
1999
|
AUS
|
85
|
Human Stain
|
Phillip Roth
|
2000
|
US
|
86
|
White Teeth
|
Zadie Smith
|
2000
|
UK
|
87
|
The Blind Assassin
|
Margaret Atwood
|
2000
|
CA
|
88
|
The Corrections
|
Jonathan Franzen
|
2001
|
US
|
89
|
Journey to the Stone Country
|
Alex Miller
|
2002
|
AUS
|
90
|
The Kite Runner
|
Khaled Hosseini
|
2003
|
AFG-US
|
91
|
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
|
Susanna Clarke
|
2004
|
UK
|
92
|
Never Let Me Go
|
Kazuo Ishiguro
|
2005
|
JAP-UK
|
93
|
Gilead
|
Marilyn Robinson
|
2005
|
US
|
94
|
Carpentaria
|
Alexis Wright
|
2006
|
AUS
|
95
|
The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao
|
Junot Diaz
|
2008
|
DOM-US
|
96
|
The Finkler Question
|
Howard Jacobsen
|
2010
|
UK
|
97
|
A Sense of An Ending
|
Julian Barnes
|
2011
|
UK
|
98
|
A Visit From the Goon Squad
|
Jennifer Egan
|
2011
|
US
|
99
|
The Deadman Dance
|
Kim Scott
|
2011
|
AUS
|
100
|
Foal’s Bread
|
Gillian Mears
|
2012
|
AUS
|
If you are a book lover I’d love for you to read any of these along with me and share your thoughts as I blog. I will pick books in groups of five and announce them ahead of time to give the opportunity for anyone interested to be involved.
I would love to hear from you. What do you think of the project? What books did I miss that you would include on your list?
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