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100 classics

Chris Little
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Post by Chris Little » Wed June 16th, 2010, 4:59 am

While looking at the this list of 100 classics, I became curious about the question Keny asked in another thread, whether newer books could qualify as classics. For perspective, I re-sequenced this list chronologically by author’s birth year, and deleted Bible, Dante & Shakespeare. IMO, few of the books by authors born after 1930 will likely be considered classics in decades to come.

1775 Brit - Emma-Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Persuasion - Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
1802 French - Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
1802 French - The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
1802 French - Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
1811 Brit - Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
1812 Brit - Bleak House - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit – Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
1816 Brit - Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
1818 Brit - Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
1819 Brit - Middlemarch - George Eliot
1819 Yank - Moby Dick - Herman Melville
1821 French - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
1821 Russ - Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1824 Brit - The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
1828 Russ - Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
1828 Russ - War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
1832 Brit - Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
1832 Brit - Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
1840 Brit - Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
1840 Brit - Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
1840 Brit - Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
1840 French - Germinal - Emile Zola
1847 Irish -Dracula - Bram Stoker
1849 Brit - The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
1857 Brit - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
1859 Scot - Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1859 Brit - The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
1874 Canadian - Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
1882 Brit - Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
1882 Irish - Ulysses - James Joyce
1884 English - Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
1892 Brit - The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
1892 Brit - The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
1894 Brit - Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
1896 Yank - The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
1897 Brit - The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
1898 Brit - Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
1898 Brit - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
1899 Yank - Charlotte’s Web - EB White
1899 Russ - Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
1899 Brit - A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
1900 French - The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
1900 Yank - Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
1902 Yank - Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
1902 Yank - Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
1902 Brit - Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
1903 Brit - Animal Farm - George Orwell
1903 Brit - Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
1907 Brit - Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
1911 Brit - Lord of the Flies - William Golding
1916 Brit - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
1919 Yank - Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
1920 Yank - Dune - Frank Herbert
1920 Brit - Watership Down - Richard Adams
1922 Yank - On The Road - Jack Kerouac
1923 Yank - Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
1926 Yank - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
1927 Colombian - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927 Colombian - Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1932 Yank - A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
1936 Brit – Possession – AS Byatt
1937 Yank - A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
1939 Canadian - The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
1944 Yank - The Color Purple - Alice Walker
1946 Brit - His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
1949 Indian - Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
1951 Yank - Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
1952 Indian - A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
1952 Brit - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
1952 Canadian - A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
1953 Brit - Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
1954 Brit - Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
1954 Scot - The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
1954 Japanese - The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
1956 Yank - Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
1958 Brit - Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
1958 Yank - The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
1962 Brit - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
1963 Brit - Atonement - Ian McEwan
1963 Canadian - Life of Pi - Yann Martel
1963 Yank - The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
1963 Yank - The Secret History - Donna Tartt
1963 Yank - The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
1964 Spanish - The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
1964 Yank - The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
1965 Brit - Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
1965 Persian - The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
1969 Brit - Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Hmm, who’s not here …
1924 Brit – Shogun – James Clavell
Last edited by Chris Little on Wed June 16th, 2010, 5:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Saw another oops after posting

litchickuk
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Post by litchickuk » Tue August 31st, 2010, 4:24 pm

This is going to be bad - thats why I am planning my Grand Tour of the Classics! Lets see just how many I have read - though its probably quicker to see which ones i havent! If ive read it then its in bold! And if ive tried to or read bits of it but not read it in its entirety then its italic. standard is not read at all!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - except the last one! Lost interest in them!
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

read - 16
partially read - 10

uh oh! off on a Grand Tour i need to go!

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fljustice
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Post by fljustice » Tue August 31st, 2010, 4:59 pm

I've read 73 of these, but mostly because I was on a "classics" (Austin, Dickens, Fielding, etc.) kick in high school, SF/F in college, and involved in a book club for several years recently, so picked up several of the more modern books -- I wouldn't have read them otherwise. I read the classics (including the Bible, the complete Shakespeare, and the Complete Sherlock Holmes) because I thought you had to know those books to get into college. Silly me! Recently, I started rereading some that I thought would be more interesting as an adult. Austin, Dickens et.al just get better and better. I doubt Bridget Jones and The Da Vinci Code will stand the test of time.
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Kveto from Prague
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Post by Kveto from Prague » Tue August 31st, 2010, 6:32 pm

[quote=""Chris Little""]While looking at the this list of 100 classics, I became curious about the question Keny asked in another thread, whether newer books could qualify as classics. For perspective, I re-sequenced this list chronologically by author’s birth year, and deleted Bible, Dante & Shakespeare. IMO, few of the books by authors born after 1930 will likely be considered classics in decades to come.

1775 Brit - Emma-Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Persuasion - Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1775 Brit - Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
1802 French - Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
1802 French - The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
1802 French - Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
1811 Brit - Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
1812 Brit - Bleak House - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit – Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
1812 Brit - A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
1816 Brit - Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
1818 Brit - Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
1819 Brit - Middlemarch - George Eliot
1819 Yank - Moby Dick - Herman Melville
1821 French - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
1821 Russ - Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1824 Brit - The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
1828 Russ - Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
1828 Russ - War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
1832 Brit - Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
1832 Brit - Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
1840 Brit - Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
1840 Brit - Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
1840 Brit - Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
1840 French - Germinal - Emile Zola
1847 Irish -Dracula - Bram Stoker
1849 Brit - The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
1857 Brit - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
1859 Scot - Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1859 Brit - The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
1874 Canadian - Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
1882 Brit - Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
1882 Irish - Ulysses - James Joyce
1884 English - Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
1892 Brit - The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
1892 Brit - The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
1894 Brit - Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
1896 Yank - The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
1897 Brit - The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
1898 Brit - Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
1898 Brit - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
1899 Yank - Charlotte’s Web - EB White
1899 Russ - Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
1899 Brit - A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
1900 French - The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
1900 Yank - Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
1902 Yank - Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
1902 Yank - Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
1902 Brit - Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
1903 Brit - Animal Farm - George Orwell
1903 Brit - Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
1907 Brit - Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
1911 Brit - Lord of the Flies - William Golding
1916 Brit - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
1919 Yank - Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
1920 Yank - Dune - Frank Herbert
1920 Brit - Watership Down - Richard Adams
1922 Yank - On The Road - Jack Kerouac
1923 Yank - Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
1926 Yank - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
1927 Colombian - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927 Colombian - Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1932 Yank - A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
1936 Brit – Possession – AS Byatt
1937 Yank - A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
1939 Canadian - The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
1944 Yank - The Color Purple - Alice Walker
1946 Brit - His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
1949 Indian - Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
1951 Yank - Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
1952 Indian - A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
1952 Brit - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
1952 Canadian - A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
1953 Brit - Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
1954 Brit - Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
1954 Scot - The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
1954 Japanese - The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
1956 Yank - Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
1958 Brit - Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
1958 Yank - The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
1962 Brit - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
1963 Brit - Atonement - Ian McEwan
1963 Canadian - Life of Pi - Yann Martel
1963 Yank - The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
1963 Yank - The Secret History - Donna Tartt
1963 Yank - The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
1964 Spanish - The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
1964 Yank - The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
1965 Brit - Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
1965 Persian - The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
1969 Brit - Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Hmm, who’s not here …
1924 Brit – Shogun – James Clavell[/quote]

hey chris,

thats a really interesting way to look at it. thanks. it shows how silly it is to call any recent book a classic.

And thanks for putting on the authors' origins (but you'll have to explain to me the difference between a Brit and a Scot :-)

It kind of confirms what I noticed earlier, that this is an extemely Anglo-centric list, with almost all of the authors being American or British. I mean come on, not a single German writer worthy of making the list. Thats a crime. And only one Spaniard (and its not Cervantes!), thats just silly.

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Michy
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Post by Michy » Tue August 31st, 2010, 6:48 pm

We've had the discussion before on this and other threads about what makes a classic; it is highly contentious and subjective because everyone has their own ideas, and who's to say who's right (or wrong)? I do agree that most (if not all ) of the books on this particular list written by authors born after 1930 will probably not stand the test of time to become a "classic" -- (I think some of them have failed the test of time already.)

One minor correction: Louisa May Alcott was a Yank, not a Brit. :)

P.S. I don't think the fact that this list is almost exclusively Anglo authors is a bad thing -- it is simply reflective of the fact that we are English speakers/readers. I am sure that a list of "classics" composed by French speakers, or Spanish speakers, or whatever, would be quite different, and more inclusive of authors who wrote in those languages.
Last edited by Michy on Tue August 31st, 2010, 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Nefret » Tue August 31st, 2010, 8:34 pm

[quote=""Michy""]

One minor correction: Louisa May Alcott was a Yank, not a Brit. :)

[/quote]

One of my favourite Yank authors too. I mainly like Brits.
Into battle we ride with Gods by our side
We are strong and not afraid to die
We have an urge to kill and our lust for blood has to be fulfilled
WE´LL FIGHT TILL THE END! And send our enemies straight to Hell!
- "Into Battle"
{Ensiferum}

Sharz
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Post by Sharz » Wed September 1st, 2010, 6:47 pm

IMO, few of the books by authors born after 1930 will likely be considered classics in decades to come.
Great idea, arranging it that way, and I completely agree with your conclusion. It is very surprising to me what a DRAMATIC difference there is in my perception at the dividing line of 1930. There are five books before 1930 that I'm not familiar with, and so I can't say "Yes, that's clearly a classic", but there isn't a single book on the list that I would dispute the status. Meanwhile, of the 28 books after 1930, I'm completely unfamiliar with 11 of them, and of the remaining 19 there are only two that I think might belong on a classics list 30 years from now -- and I haven't actually read either of them! (Hence, "might" instead of "should belong".) The other 17 books I'm familiar with (from reading, spot reading, or just reviews) receive "not likely" votes from me.
Last edited by Sharz on Thu September 2nd, 2010, 4:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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The Czar
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Post by The Czar » Sun May 29th, 2011, 4:09 pm

I always see Ulysses in the top five of lists... but have yet to ever meet anyone who has successfully slogged through this thing. I tried once years ago and didn't get anywhere.
Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.
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Post by SGM » Sun May 29th, 2011, 8:10 pm

[quote=""The Czar""]I always see Ulysses in the top five of lists... but have yet to ever meet anyone who has successfully slogged through this thing. I tried once years ago and didn't get anywhere.[/quote]

Even more so with Finnegan's Wake. The only people I know who got to the end, read in a group.
Currently reading - Emergence of a Nation State by Alan Smith

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