I scored 15%:
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Rowling
- Cold Mountain - Frazier
- Into Thin Air - Krakauer
- The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood
- Bridget Jones’ Diary - Fielding
- The Things They Carried – O’Brien
- The Joy Luck Club - Tan
- The Lovely Bones - Sebold
- Angela’s Ashes – McCourt
- His Dark Materials – Pullman
- The Giver – Lowry
- The Remains of the Day – Ishiguro
- Eat, Pray, Love – Gilbert
- Atonement – McEwan
- one I’m not prepared to name, because I disliked it intensely as meccano-fiction.
What about you? Which have you read, which do you rate most highly?
Added later: my list above is only 15 of the 100 - the top link takes you to the full list. I appreciate that EW is hardly the New Yorker - but even then it's interesting to see the list (which is a tad curious, and as noted heavily weighted to American writers) and yay for books being discussed...). Thanks for the comments!
4 comments:
Ok, here goes:
Love Harry Potter, though it is children's fiction and should be read as such; enjoyed Cold Mountain, but didn't really think it was anything to write home about; liked The Handmaid's Tale, as I do most Atwood; Bridget Jones' Diary was a trifle and I'm not quite sure it rates as "literature"; The Joy Luck Club was a lovely book, but not as good as The Kitchen God's Wife; enjoyed The Lovely Bones; enjoyed Angela's Ashes, but for the pathos rather than it being particularly well written, and 'Tis proved him to be a blowhard; loved, loved, loved The Remains of the Day.
I'm going to steal your idea and do a very similar blog post...
That is a very strange list and there is a lot of junk on there. I can't even countenance a list like that which does not include even one Rushdie book. There are so many books that should be on a list like that. Entertainment Weekly is not exactly a literary publication - it is a rag. Which explains a lot about this list.
Thanks for the comments! I've added a PS to the blog entry...
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