Friday, July 25, 2008

The New Classics in fiction

In a fairly US-centric list (not a surprise) Entertainment Weekly lists the 100 best reads 1983-2008.

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.
The four in purple are the ones I rate most highly. I may not have read them recently, but they stay with me.

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:

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to steal your idea and do a very similar blog post...

Candy Schultz said...

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.

rooruu said...

Thanks for the comments! I've added a PS to the blog entry...