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I just found this list by the GlobeandMail.com  and couldn’t resist juxtaposing it with a list I found on The Millions of contemporary award-winners. 

The Globe and Mail is releasing, week by week, a list of the 50 best books ever written in no particular order. They started this in January, and I’ve included the list so far with links to each review, as well as excerpts of the Huck Finn review so you can get a sense of what they are looking for:

Over the coming year, an international panel chosen by The Globe and Mail will select the 50 Greatest Books ever written. Each week, a single work will be discussed by an expert or a writer passionate about the work in question. This is the first in the series.

‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Thus Ernest Hemingway. And thus Mark Twain’s unlikely masterpiece, a book he sort of made up as he went along (so no grand fictional architecture), a book that contemporary critics found, if not immoral, at least a possible corrupter of youth (Twain and Socrates, together at last), a book that has often, in the past half-century or so, been charged with, if not racism, then at least with discomfiting black students. But also a book that is funny, disturbing, original and often deeper than the river of its setting.

Huckleberry Finn is, finally, the very best sort of American fiction, and, as Hemingway said, inspiration for countless thousands of other novels. It’s a great in-your-face whoop and holler of a book, a truly original exploration of the moral rot at the heart of self-congratulatory society, and a boy’s (and now girl’s) own idyll of escapes of various kinds. As Huck declares in his famous last line, it’s an invitation to readers “to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

• On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin

• The Divine Comedy by Dante

• The Republic by Plato

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

• Ulysses by James Joyce

• Das Kapital by Karl Marx

• The Confessions of St. Augustine by St. Augustine

• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Middlemarch by George Eliot

• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

• The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Now, if you’re like me, you’re wondering if the list will only include Western books — I don’t know that answer, but their offerings so far are a bit…  masculine and white.  On the other hand, the few I have read — Huck Finn, Gatsby, Middlemarch, St. Augustine, and The Prince — certainly belong on the list with regard to their influence on subsequent writers and thinkers.  (As an aside, Huck Finn’s ending really needed work — but the first 2/3rds is wonderful!)

By the way, I have book club kits available for Huck Finn, Gatsby, and Middlemarch.  I chose them because I believe they are much better when read as an adult and are great for discussion.  Middlemarch is a haul, no doubt, but the other two only require an investment of 2 – 3 hours.  Just a thought!

I’ll periodically update this list and maybe once it is complete we can discuss which titles do/not belong and which were sorely excluded…

Now here is a list, courtesy of Max Magee at The Millions, of recent award-winners and a brief summary of how he compiled the list:

I looked at these six awards from 1995 to the present awarding three points for winning an award and two points for an appearance on a shortlist or as a finalist. Here’s the key that goes with the list: B=Booker Prize, C=National Book Critics Circle Award, I=International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, N=National Book Award, P=Pulitzer Prize, W=Costa Book Award [formerly the Whitbread]

bold=winner, **=New to the list since the original “Prizewinners” post

• 11, 2003, The Known World by Edward P. Jones – C, I, N, P
• 9, 2001, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – C, I, N, P
• 8, 1997, Underworld by Don DeLillio – C, I, N, P
• 7, 2005, The March by E.L. Doctorow – C, N, P **
• 7, 2004, Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – B, C, W
• 7, 2002, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – I, N, P
• 7, 2001, Atonement by Ian McEwan – B, N, W
• 7, 1998, The Hours by Michael Cunningham – C, I, P
• 7, 1997, Last Orders by Graham Swift – B, I, W
• 7, 1997, Quarantine by Jim Crace – B, I, W
• 6, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz – C, P **
• 6, 2005, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – B, C **
• 6, 2004, Gilead by Marilynn Robinson – N, P
• 5, 2007, Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson – N, P **
• 5, 2006, The Road by Cormac McCarthy – C, P **
• 5, 2006, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers – N, P **
• 5, 2005, Europe Central by William T. Vollmann – C, N **
• 5, 2005, The Accidental by Ali Smith – B, W **
• 5, 2004, The Master by Colm Toibin – B, I **
• 5, 2003, The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard – I, N
• 5, 2001, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey – B, I
• 5, 2000, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – C, P
• 5, 2000, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood – B, I
• 5, 1999, Waiting by Ha Jin – N, P
• 5, 1999, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee – B, C
• 5, 1999, Being Dead by Jim Crace – C, W
• 5, 1998, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott – I, N
• 5, 1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth – C, P
• 5, 1996, Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge – B, W
• 5, 1996, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser – N, P
• 5, 1995, The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie – B, W
• 5, 1995, The Ghost Road by Pat Barker – B, W
• 5, 1995, Independence Day by Richard Ford – C, P
• 5, 1995, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth – N, P
• 4, 2005, Veronica by Mary Gaitskill – C, N **
• 4, 2005, Arthur and George by Julian Barnes – B, I **
• 4, 2005, A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry – B, I **
• 4, 2005, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – B, C **
• 4, 2005, Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie – I, W **
• 4, 2004, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – B, C
• 4, 2003, Brick Lane by Monica Ali – B, C
• 4, 2003, Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor – B, I
• 4, 2003, The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut – B, I
• 4, 2003, Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins – N, P
• 4, 2002, Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry – B, I
• 4, 2002, The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor – B, W
• 4, 2001, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – B, I
• 4, 2001, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – I, N
• 4, 2001, John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead – N, P
• 4, 2001, Oxygen by Andrew Miller – B, W
• 4, 2000, The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins – B, I
• 4, 2000, When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – B, W
• 4, 2000, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates – N, P
• 4, 1999, Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan – B, I
• 4, 1999, Headlong by Michael Frayn – B, W
• 4, 1999, The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin – B, I
• 4, 1997, Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid – C, I
• 4, 1997, Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty – B, W
• 4, 1997, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan – I, W
• 4, 1997, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick – I, N
• 4, 1996, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – B, I
• 4, 1995, In Every Face I Meet by Justin Cartwright – B, W

 

A couple of questions — Do you think any titles on the second list will find their way to the first list?  Why not?  How many titles from either list have you read?  Do you plan on reading any others in the future?  Why/not?

Like lists?  Here is a link to my previous “Book Club Favorite” lists — enjoy!

 

 

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