Wednesday September 12, 2007 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
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I checked this book out of the library a couple of days ago. |
As one of the Amazon reviewers who gave it a 1 star rating wrote, it's "just 1001 books some Prof likes". I'm not even sure he's a professor. The mini-bio on the back inside cover of the dust jacket says Dr. Peter Boxall is a senior lecturer in English Literature at the University of Sussex.
The book has lots of full page pictures, author anecdotes and short synopses of each of the books. If it was a magazine it would be glossy. Somebody kindly typed in the list of the 1001 books and submitted it to Listology. You can see what they are without having to buy the book.
Of these 1001 books, I've currently read 85 of them. I have several others on my "to read" bookshelves. Hopefully I'll get to them soon.
But the list contains some strange selections. Three by Douglas Adams and no Shakespeare there. Eight books by Ian McEwan and Milton's Paradise Lost nowhere in sight. As the Amazon reviewers have noticed there is
"No Iliad. No Odyssey. No Aeschylus. No Euripides. No Boccaccio. No Chaucer. No Dante. No Machiavelli. No Shakespeare. No Marlowe. No Old or New Testament. No Q'uran. No Lao-tse, Confucius, Bhagavda-Gita. No Beowulf. No Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
There is also a definite preference for authors who have won or been nominated for the Man Booker prize. I'm sure an American editor would have generated a totally different list.
There are 51 books since 2000 that have become "classics" in 6 years (this book was published last year), and only 13 that are before 1700. Hmm. How did Boxall work that out?
So if I was going to take this list seriously, how long would it take to complete? 917 books left. Let's say I could read one a week (although books like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake would be likely to blow that theory out of the water, and to be honest, I really don't care enough to try), then it would take another 17-18 years to complete.
Sorry, there are other books that I'm going to be giving much higher priority in my reading list order.
( Sep 12 2007, 07:53:32 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [7]
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