BBC 100 Book Meme

I saw this list (or something very like it) go by a while ago and blogged on that. I mainly remember it for the odd double listings (Hamlet and the Complete works of William Shakespeare; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Chronicles of Narnia), and the (to my mind anyway) unusual inclusion of one of my favorite books of all time, Cold Comfort Farm. I personally take issue with the inclusion of the "Bible" without saying which bible they had in mind--the Puritan Bible (without the Apocrypha), the Protestant Bible (with the Apocrypha), the Orthodox Bible (with the expanded Old Testament), or what?

Also, I see you didn't "love" any of them. While some of the books on the list (the da Vinci Code, Gone with the Wind, Lord of the Flies) are utter trash, wasn't at least one of the books on this list worthy of your "love"?

It doesn't seem to be exactly the same list as on the actual BBC site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

hence the double ups, I suppose, from someone making their own "BBC list".

I have to agree with Stephen. And I like the actual BBC list so much better. Just the presence of so much Pratchett makes it worth while.

You're absolutely right. I'll replace it.

My comments above applied to the list as originally posted, not to this corrected version. Incidentally, I don't feel that the corrected version is much of an improvement, except for losing The Da Vinci Code, the Bible, and the various duplicates. In place of the Dan Brown book we get King's interminable The Stand, Auel's childish Clan of the Cave Bear, and Puzo's awful The Godfather, all books that wasted hours of my life I can never get back. On the other hand some excellent books--Moby Dick, The Bell Jar--have disappeared.

By the way, I'm with you on Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker's Guide, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Alice's Adventures. Gormenghast, on the other hand, always inspires me with the urge to parody.

What do you suppose Gormenghast is? I recognise many places I have worked in that book...

The Aussi Anthropoid wrote:

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell x+ (first novel I ever read)

So where did the first bomb fall, Mr Wilkins?

Too much Rowling in that list. If you've read one of them, haven't you read them all?

PZ, you lumper. I found all the HP books delightful, each one standing on its own.

I did not see the first list and admit I have only read 47 books on the second, if you count that I found C.S. Lewis too damn religious and soon put it down thinking, "I'm not reading any more of this Christian stuff."

Okay, I only read 46 of the books.

Whent he first Rowling came out I remarked on a forum this was the beginning of a major children's classic series. I was increasingly disappointed as they went on, but here's the interesting thing - my kids, who unlike me don't read much, read each one with exactly the same interest and devotion, no matter how wordy or flabby the volume was. This suggests that parents are not the best evaluators of children's fiction...

I read Lewis when I was Christian. Now, I find it unreadable, excepting the Perelandra series.

About C.S. Lewis (whose books I also read long ago in my Christian youth)... I re-read the Perelandra series ("Out of the Silent Planet," "Perelandra," "That Hideous Strength") a few years back, found the way Lewis treated acceptance of traditional gender roles (particularly in the last volume), and even the English class system, as intrinsic to good Christianity VERY hard to stomach.
... I think his explicitly Christian "fantasies" ("Screwtape Letters" for example) might be more fun -- I'm re-reading "The Great Divorce" now (wanted to identify a quotation, got started...) after close to 50 years, and finding I enjoy it!

But in its time (and I am nearly old enough to remember those) it was not really any different from the bulk of science fiction. Read War of the Worlds again sometime. I do think the Screwtape Letters are well done, but not on a par with, say, Pilgrim's Progress or Paradise Lost, which is what he was self-consciously emulating. Actually I find Lewis very shallow these days. Apart from Till we Have Faces, his telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, he was predictable. [Late note: Hell, I have a first edition! I wonder if ti's worth anything?]

I just read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/weekinreview/22schuessler.html?ref=bo…

Jane Austen! Zombies!

The Harry Potter books worked for children because they did repeat things. Children need the familiar to feel secure and give them the confidence they need to explore the new. With HP you got the known, the already explained which the reader could then use as a point of reference when the new and unknown appeared. I've never met Rowling, but I'd say she understands kids.

Lewis, "self-consciously emulating" Pilgrim's Progress? You shock me! I always thought the similarity of the latter title to Lewis's "Pilgrim's Regress" was a coincidence. (Grin!)

Point taken about the contemporary standard of sexism in science fiction: I get annoyed when other people criticize past writers for (sex/rac)ism without taking into account the historical context... but when I reread "That Hideous Strength" a few years back i found it impossible to ignore and it spoiled the enjoyment.

As for finding him "shallow"... He was a serious amateur philosopher (wanted at one stage to be a professional, applied for philosophy jobs, but by the 1920s the market for orthodox Absolute Idealists had collapsed) and there are occasional ideas that are interesting. But literarily, yes. He wrote his stories a lot faster and with a lot less effort than Tolkien wrote his: Tolkien was apparently quite annoyed with Lewis's facile productions. ... Of the other Inklings, I haven't looked at Charles Williams since I was in high school and don't know what I'd think now: at the time I though his novels were the best of bunch.

I forget who it was, but it may have been Williams, who famously said to Tolkein, "Not more fucking elves!" when that worthy read out some of the LotR. It can't have been Lewis, that prude.

Lewis was emulating Milton and Bunyan in nearly all his fiction writing. It gets very wearing. Where's the friggin' Dante?

Maybe if someone published a book about it...

How about if YOU published your books on species concepts? I mean, seriously, John, you have to be the top blogger on the world on the topic and given the rareified nature of the topic, that makes you probably on the short list of the truly expert. You get them in print, and I'll hype it to high heaven with all of my usual gusto....Scott

My books will be published this year:

2009. Species: a history of the idea, Species and Systematics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2009. Defining Species: a sourcebook from antiquity to today. New York: Peter Lang.

I am also working on essentialism in biology, discovering more and more that it is a phantom that never existed until recently.

"Not more fucking elves!"

Ha! Not for the average tastes, but I'm one of the few who actually enjoyed the silmarillion and it's complex mythology.

The HP books were delightful, but more so with the earlier books. The same is true of the movies, with the superb musical scoring by John Williams very much a contributing factor.

I wrote a post about the book meme where I noticed that it wasn't really a BBC list, and it's fast becoming my most read post ever. Maybe I should start specializing in debunking facebook memes?

Anyway, some of my kind commenters pointed out that the list came from the Guardian and was based on a poll done for World Book Day in 2007.

Based on the books you've marked above as having especially enjoyed, I don't know if you'd like it, but as much as anything because it's a departure from your previous fare, I'd suggest a look at "On the Road."

I read Kerouac as a teenager. I can't remember much about it now, though.