Via the Guardian, a reader list of the Top 100 books you can’t live without. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice tops the list (I’ve never read it but I’ve endured both movie versions)…the Bronte sisters are also well-represented.
Are these people serious?
No William Burroughs, no Alduous Huxley, no Toni Morrison…but Jane Austen shows up no less than three times–and every Thomas Hardy book I can name is on there!
On the whole, the majority of contemporary fiction (novels published in the last 15 years) is total book-club schlock: Dan Brown, Helen Fielding, Alice Sebold, etc. inexplicably co-mingle with Dostoevsky, Melville, Nabokov and García Márquez.
Sheesh. Can we amend this thing?
