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2 hours ago
9
As an avid reader, I was excited to go through your recently published book list (100 best novels, 16 May). However, I swiftly became disillusioned at the old-fashioned and frankly elitist lens used to judge the “best”. Why were there so few modern books? Why does “best” so often seem to equate to misery?
The article introducing your list (Who’s in, who’s out, and how many have you read? The story behind our 100 best novels list, 16 May) says “Never has such a list been more needed” and that “reading for pleasure is a dying pursuit”, adding “we are here to help”. But this list will not help non-readers get into reading.
Who is realistically going to make the leap from non-reader straight into a lengthy tome about the people and activities relating to the longest-running case at Chancery (number 12) or to a devastating account of the failure of multiple bigamous marriages and the miserable lives they then accept as punishment (number 70)?
Both are excellent books, but given the topics and language style, there’s no way that they could be considered accessible! These challenging books will not cultivate a love of reading in those who have made it to adulthood without falling in love with books.
Instead, why not curate a list of the 100 best “gateway” books that might actually help them to get started and form that reading habit? Your judges may consider “popular” to be a dirty word, but we should be actively celebrating the popular books that get people hooked – the Agatha Christies and JRR Tolkiens of the world; dare I even say, the Dan Browns and the JK Rowlings? Then, and only then, might they be able to tackle your 100 most “worthy” ones. And for goodness sake, please allow at least a few in that list to have a happy ending!
Sarah Steiner
Croydon, London
I yield to no one in my admiration of Middlemarch, and I’m not surprised that the greatest novel in world literature, Tom Jones, does not figure in the Guardian’s list of the greatest 100 novels. However, I’m disappointed and dismayed that neither it nor its author, Henry Fielding, is mentioned in your editorial or the article introducing the greatest 100.
This is the man whom George Eliot describes at the beginning of chapter 15 of Middlemarch as the “great historian” while, not without irony, suggesting that “we belated historians must not linger after his example” lest “if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house”.
Would Eliot have written the way she did in Middlemarch without the example of Fielding’s extraordinary and revolutionary authorial “I”? Would Charles Dickens? Even Jane Austen remarks on the white coat that Tom Jones wears when he is wounded by the cowardly Ensign Northerton.
Alan Downie
Emeritus professor, department of English and creative writing, Goldsmiths, University of London
This list was very interesting, not just because of what is or isn’t in it, but because it shows a lot about the changeable nature of what we read. Sixty years ago, I got into two fine American novelists. I read every book by John Steinbeck and all that I could find of John Dos Passos. I was not alone. All bookshops had many of their books. Now you will find their books in very few bookshops and mostly only in secondhand ones.
Neither author is anywhere in your list, and neither is mentioned in the introductory article. Dos Passos is not perhaps as great a novelist as Steinbeck was. Steinbeck’s East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath are surely great novels. They have been very influential and are both outstanding monuments about and of US history.
Graham Mytton
Coldharbour, Surrey
Several patterns were discernible in your list of the 100 greatest novels, but it was the “thud factor” that stood out. The top 10 include hefty tomes such as In Search of Lost Time (4,200 pages), War and Peace (1,400) and Anna Karenina (850). Even as an avid reader, the list left me feeling more inadequate than inspired. By the time life affords me the hours to tackle these heavyweights, I fear I will have lost the requisite upper‑body strength.
Dr James Taylor
London
Some years ago I thought I’d better read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which is at No 5 in your 100 best novels list, so I trotted along to my local library and asked for a copy. The assistant gave me a quizzical look and asked me how many volumes I wanted?
I had no idea there was a superfluity so she disappeared into the vaults and came back with the first volume. On opening it I was dismayed to see it was set in small type and in two columns a page: but I thought I’d better take it home.
It was of course unreadable. And in the same category I would place Ulysses. But no Evelyn Waugh whom many regard as one of our greatest novelists?
Dave Patten
Taunton, Somerset
The list of 100 best novels of all time is oh so serious and worthy (and yes I have read a number of them), but it totally overlooks the influence of the lighthearted and joyful. Why no mention of, say, Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan, Terry Pratchett, Barbara Pym or the great Plum Wodehouse? Time to compile an alternative list?
Alan R Watkins
Haddenham, Buckinghamshire
Just to add to the inevitable and pointless controversy: Ulysses, the book that almost no one is able to finish, in third place? Five by Virginia Woolf, only one Graham Greene and nothing by the Johns – Le Carre, Fowles and Wyndham?
Jim Hatley
Brighton, East Sussex
Many years ago, I admitted to a very good friend that I had never read Middlemarch. She turned to me in amazement and said: “Oh, I envy you. How I wish I could say that and then I could read it for the first time!”
Jennifer Basannavar
Twickenham, London
In all your praise of Middlemarch, I am surprised to see no reference to its being hilariously funny. Perhaps that feature is regarded as unfitting for a masterpiece.
Stephen Joseph
Sheffield
Did popularity disqualify a book from your list? Fifty million purchasers seemed to think All Quiet on the Western Front was a pretty good novel.
Rhoda Koenig
London
I know it’s only a list – a hundred different conversations in a hundred different bars and cafes – but no Steinbeck. Really?
Alex Dickie
Edinburgh
Whatever happened to Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles? The greatest novel ever written!
Stephen Friar
Painswick Gloucestershire
