Is this hasty? I don’t think so, though it may appear to be. Here’s the new update:
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Hong lou meng by Cao Xueqin
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The list might be slightly different on a different day. I might swap something out for Madame Bovary, or The Age of Innocence. I might remove something to make space for The Brothers Karamazov.
But Anna Karenina and War and Peace are the two novels dearest to my heart, with moments imprinted on my mind, like Vronsky meeting Anna, Kitty at the ball, the horse race, Levin’s proposal scene, Levin in the fields, Anna’s death, Natasha at the ball, Andrei at Borodino, Lise’s death, Nikolai in battle, Petya’s death, and so on. These novels shaped my taste, and in some way, shaped me as a person.
Don Quixote might even fight Moby Dick for the third spot—we’ll see. Don Quixote is perhaps one of those novels that resonate more when one is a bit older.
So what can one learn from my list? 6 of these novels are over 700 pages. 6 are from the 19th century, 1 from the 11th, 1 from the 17th, 1 from the 18th, and 1 from the 20th. 6 are arguably about everything, 5 depict an obsession, with overlaps (Mansfield Park is the outlier, about neither). 8 are Western, 2 are Eastern; 5 are originally written in English, 2 in Russian, 1 in Spanish, 1 in Japanese, 1 in Chinese; 9 I read in the original English or in an English translation, 1 I read in a Vietnamese translation.
Not sure what all that says about me.
I’m currently reading Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote by Manuel Durán and Fay R. Rogg.
Here is a list of ten of my favorite novels, in no particular order:
ReplyDeleteDavid Copperfield
Bleak House
The Brothers Karamazov
The Master and Margarita
Middlemarch
Moby Dick
Les Miserables
Cancer Ward
Gilead
Anna Karenina
That's a good list. 2 by Dickens, I noticed.
DeleteI meant to also include War and Peace (of course!). And that means half of my favorites are in Russian. Regrettably, I don't know a word of Russian, so must rely on translations. Thanks for your engaging posts. Tim Guirl
ReplyDeleteHahaha, that's cool.
DeleteAnd thanks.
Mine would be (in no order - it's hard enough narrowing the list to ten, mush less ranking them within it!):
ReplyDeleteDavid Copperfield
Middlemarch
Anna Karenina
Blood Meridian
From Here to Eternity (maybe out of place among these others, but this ex-soldier cannot exclude the greatest portrait of military life ever)
Barchester Towers
White Noise
Call It Sleep
A Handful of Dust
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ah, a Trollope. A friend of mine is going to be very happy.
DeleteYou have more 20th century titles than me.
Just one friend? Surely you have more than one friend who loves Trollope. Lol.
DeleteI have several, but only one (I'm not naming names) who haunts me about Trollope.
DeleteSo far each list has exactly two books I have not read, which makes me feel both well read and eager to read more novels. A nice feeling!
ReplyDeleteTom,
DeleteFrom Tim's list, I'm guessing Gilead and Cancer Ward.
Which two of Thomas's list have you not read? Can't guess there.
And I think you're the most well-read among people I know. I mean well-read and able to talk about the books.
Blood Meridian and From Here to Eternity, the latter just the kind of book I enjoy seeing on "favorite" lists.
DeleteHope to get to Genji this year.
I should put mine up. Many are form chilhood, old friends, special cases, others from early university days. All read by the time I was 20.
ReplyDeleteDon Quixote
Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels
Dead Souls
Moby-Dick
Bleak House
Madame Bovary
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Huckleberry Finn
Anna Karenina
Tom,
ReplyDeleteShocking!
I'm obviously not changing my list just to avoid it, but I do sometimes wonder if my list is a bit too conventional.
What do you like about Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels?
Those two books are deeply imprinted, although I now know I read them, again and again, in abridged editions, my Robinson Crusoe, for example, beginning with the shipwreck.
ReplyDeleteBoth are peak adventure novels in their way, the epitome of the "man alone" story in one case and a picaresque of great inventiveness and depth in the other.
A lot of my favorites, which would likely continue if the list were longer, are journeys, a series of adventures.
Interesting. So what does that say about you, if we're talking "autobiography"?
DeleteI always had a vague feeling of reading Don Quixote as a kid, it was probably an abridgement or adaptation.
It says I was materially deprived and never got to go anywhere.
DeleteExcept none of that is true.
Hahahhaha.
DeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised there's no Nabokov on your list.
Pale Fire could go on there, some others, too. Tough competition though and only 10 spots.
ReplyDeleteYeah haha.
DeleteA list of favorite English-language novels, in chronological order.
ReplyDeleteTom Jones
Rasselas
Pride and Prejudice
Moby-Dick
Kidnapped
The Wind in the Willows
The Code of the Woosters
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Offshore
A Month in the Country
Nice. Now give me a list of favourite novels not in English. Haha.
DeleteReally lame of me, but I'm cheating and doing a Top 25, in very rough order, with year of composition from memory, which in most cases will be embarrassingly out.
ReplyDeleteLes Liaisons Dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782).
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (1848).
Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866).
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1874).
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922).
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (1857).
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880).
Emma - Jane Austen (1816).
Middlemarch - George Eliot (1872).
Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov (1859).
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726).
The Confidence-Man - Herman Melville (1859).
The Bostonians - Henry James (1885).
Bleak House - Charles Dickens (1852).
The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (1940).
La Cousine Bette - Honore De Balzac (1846).
The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg (1824).
Decline & Fall - Evelyn Waugh (1924).
Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1864).
L'Education Sentimentale - Gustave Flaubert (1869).
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1961).
Fathers & Sons - Ivan Turgenev (1862).
Le Rouge et le Noir - Stendhal (1830).
Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton (1941).
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia - Samuel Johnson (1759).
That's cheating, Mr Wicked, I mean Wise.
DeleteNarrow it down to 10.
Oh all right then.
DeleteLes Liaisons Dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782).
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (1848).
Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866).
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1874).
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922).
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (1857).
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880).
Emma - Jane Austen (1816).
Middlemarch - George Eliot (1872).
The History of Tom Jones - Henry Fielding (1749).
I missed Tom Jones off my original list of 25, but they had a Melvyn Bragg "In Our Time" about it recently and I was reminded of how enjoyable I found it. Blifil in particular is a superb portrait of wheedling insidious evil masquerading as good, rivalling Iago and that horrible bloke in Confessions of a Justified Sinner. And while a lot of people are rather sniffy about the digressive general remarks that begin every chapter, I really like them.
Good, that's a good list.
DeleteNow how do I force you to read Hong lou meng and The Tale of Genji...
With no more than one per writer, mine would be something like this:
ReplyDeleteDon Quixote
Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Wuthering Heights
Bleak House
The Idiot
Bouvard et Pécuchet
Anna Karenina
The Ambassadors
Ulysses
Pather Panchali
I wanted to include one from where I was born (Bengal), and from where I grew up (Scotland), but no special pleading is required for either, as they’re both exceptional novels.
Nice.
DeleteI just can't do the "no more than one per writer" thing, but obvious reasons.
Now I’m thinking I should have included some lighter works as well - The Hound of the Baskervilles, say, or Summer Lightning.
DeleteNothing light on my list though.
DeleteHere’s my list:
ReplyDeleteAnna Karenina
Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
The Idiot
Bleak House
Phineas Finn
The Small House at Allington
In Search of Lost Time
David Copperfield
Aubrey/Maturin series (Patrick O’Brian)
Michael,
DeleteThat's a great list. 4 Russian books!
I did consider adding The Brothers Karamazov to mine, but couldn't remove anything from my list to make space for it.
Haha. I almost included “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, but couldn’t find room. Admittedly the Aubrey Maturin series isn’t really one novel (but twenty connected novels) and isn’t perhaps “great” literature on the level of the others on the list, but it is very, very good and I love it with all my heart and have re-read it many times. (Of course Proust is seven novels, but truly it really is just one.)
DeleteAlso jostling to be on my list:
Little Dorrit
The Last Chronicle of Barset
Phineas Redux
The Remains of the Day
Pride and Prejudice
All Quiet on the Western Front
Night Soldiers
…sorry, that was me who replied. Also forgot to add Moby Dick to the runners up.
ReplyDeleteMichael,
DeleteYou have to reread Mansfield Park. That's the best Austen.
Yes! I do need to do that.
Delete