Plan B Forum

I've only managed 156 of 'em. Mind, do they count "Lord of the Rings" as 3 books or just 1? There were a couple of other series in there that they actually identified - such as Larry Niven's Ringworld - that's about a million books. I counted them as 1 though. If we get credit for series, then I think I'm up to 170.

If I added all the ones I started and never bothered to finish (or walked out of the movie and hence never bothered with the book) I'd be up to 300 probably. "The Unbearable Lightness Of Having To Be There" was one of those. Ulysses and Magic Mountain were started/tossed. Crap, all of 'em.

All sorts of arguments could be had. Why Ivan Denisovich and not Cancer Ward? Why Flashman and not Flashman and the Redskins (a far better book)? Why not Life of Pi, The Cloister and the Hearth, Windsor Castle...?

Are any comic books on the list?

The History of Mr. Polly by H G Wells. That one made me laugh a lot when I read it back in 1965

MajGenl.Meade wrote:I've only managed 156 of 'em. Mind, do they count "Lord of the Rings" as 3 books or just 1? There were a couple of other series in there that they actually identified - such as Larry Niven's Ringworld - that's about a million books. I counted them as 1 though. If we get credit for series, then I think I'm up to 170.

If I added all the ones I started and never bothered to finish (or walked out of the movie and hence never bothered with the book) I'd be up to 300 probably. "The Unbearable Lightness Of Having To Be There" was one of those. Ulysses and Magic Mountain were started/tossed. Crap, all of 'em.

All sorts of arguments could be had. Why Ivan Denisovich and not Cancer Ward? Why Flashman and not Flashman and the Redskins (a far better book)? Why not Life of Pi, The Cloister and the Hearth, Windsor Castle...?

They also noted only one of the Harry Potter books, the first Bridget Jones book, and one Mark Haddon book. I did note multiple Jane Austen entries (albeit not series), so I would assume the list is title specific.

I stopped counting at 100. It's a very 19th & 20th centuries Brit-centric list, with some color from the Commonwealth countries and even a former colony or two. And of course the Russians. Good stuff (even a few of my favorites), and some things that are missing. Plus, of course, focussing just on novels misses other great works.

It is difficult, is it not? I almost counted Coetzee but then realized that I hadn't read the two that were actually listed. And why list "Foundation" as if they thought only the first book should be read?

I'd have said Brit-USian-centric. But did you miss the Italian, French and German contributions? Perhaps because we are used to reading them in English, Britcentric is assumed? I was pleased to see Tom Sharpe represented altho' after his first two (Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure) I thought his work rather fell away (although I read them all).

Also, I didn't detect much in the way of short-stories - but maybe that's because it was a list of novels But it's a shame not to recommend people such as Maupassant and H C Bosman merely on the grounds of not having written enough words to satisfy an arbitrary quality of 'fiction'.

A non-fiction list would surely be impossible? I can't imagine the volume of argument that would involve.

One thing I wondered--how is Jurassic Park a crime novel? Yes, it involves a crime, but the entire premise of using molecular biology to clone dinosaurs is pure science fiction; unless the reviewers thought somehow that this could be done (is maybe is being done) currently?

And there are far better Crichton novels than that one--the Andromeda Strain to name one.