Update - Hey guys, the list is arranged chronologically, not ranked by which books are the best. This makes some of my outrage at the placement of certain books comically misplaced 😂 But it was still a fun thought-experiment nonetheless. Perhaps one could dispute a few books being there, but overall the list had a ton of great books that are definitely worth reading! Let us know which ones you agree with, and which books you think should have made the list. Happy reading!
At least this way, all the books higher up in the list were classics and have in some way stood the test of time. I am imagining how annoyed you would have been if they had put the newer books in the top ten and Ulysses was down at number 55. 😉
This is better, there are still too many "pulp" works on this list, and they made some weird choices by author. I read another list, ranked by current acclaimed writers that put Middlemarch first on the list of novels. Some would contest whether Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are even novels, perhaps Joyce himself. Copperfield is one of my favourite Dickens, but I would definitely put Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend ahead of it. I'm not sure about Great Expectations, it's a fascinating, cleverly structured book, the least fat in any Dickens, but the characters are a little strange; almost like it's a kind of Baroque experiment in exaggerated representation. I like Copperfield because its a Bildungsroman that follows the character into adulthood, Goethe would have approved. I also might put a second Elliot on the list before I'd include Thackeray or Poe or maybe even the Brontes. I quite like Daniel Deronda, though it is an awkward read by modern sensibilities, others like Adam Bede or Mill on the Floss. Tender is the Night is my favourite Fitzgerald, I agree with you about Hemingway. Faulkner definitely deserves another spot, The Sound and the Fury is maybe his quintessential work, Ulysses level difficult, Absalom Absalom! is my favourite Faulkner. Who are your favourite contemporary prose authors? Do any do interesting things with the form or the characters. I really like Franzen, Ferrante, Adichie, but I'm not sure any of their work will last. they might just capture the moment, which still makes them worth reading.
Wow this makes so much more sense. But still- no Vonnegut? No Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest? If anyone got the short end of the stick here it's the American post-modernists.
I was just going to suggest this! Ben, I can already guess some of your fav novels. The ones we've read so far in the book club are probably all within top 20!
'Disgrace' was recommended to me by an English professor I had a terrible crush on. It's about an English professor who ruins his life by having an affair with a student. Point taken, professor 🤣.
Could listen to you talk about books all day. Your passion and knowledge is a joy to watch :) you’ve motivated me to read some books I might have overlooked
McEvoy's passion for books is contagious, like a good teacher, one is motivated to read those books one has known but not got round to read to date because of the compelling way he describes them!
My list. 1. Moby Dick 2. As I Lay Dying 3. Middlemarch 4. Bleak House 5. Pride and Prejudice 6. The Old Man and the Sea 7. The Scarlet Letter 8. Great Expectations 9. Huckleberry Finn 10. The Grapes of Wrath 11. The Sound and the Fury 12. Frankenstein 13. The Picture of Dorian Grey 14. Ulysses 15. Mrs. Dalloway 16. Gulliver’s Travels 17. Robinson Crusoe 18. The Return of the Native 19. Hound of the Baskervilles 20. 1984 21. A Christmas Carol 22. A Tale of Two Cities 23. Absolom! Absolom! 24. For Whom the Bell Tolls 25. To Kill a Mockingbird 26. Song of Solomon 26. The Wind in the Willows 27. Heart of Darkness 28. Alice in Wonderland 29. Godric 30. The Power and the Glory 31. Jane Eyre 32. Emma 33. Clarissa 34. Finnegan’s Wake 35. Wise Blood 36. Mayor of Casterbridge 37. Hard Times 38. East of Eden 39. Romola 40. The Awakening 41. House of Mirth 42. David Copperfield 43. Beloved 44. Persuasion 45. Brideshead Revisited 44. Vanity Fair 45. The Last of the Mohicans 46. The Red Badge of Courage 47. Catch-22 48. Tom Sawyer 49. Orlando 50. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 51. Gone With the Wind 52. The Jungle Book 53. King Solomon’s Mines 54. Son of Laughter 55. A Prayer for Owen Meany 56. One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest 55. Flowers for Algernon 56. The Godfather 57. The Violent Bear it Away 58. North and South 59. The Sun Also Rises 60. Little Women 61. Little House in the Big Woods 62. Dracula 63. Lolita 64. The Natural 65. The Adventures of Augie March 66. The Golden Bowl 67. Ivanhoe 68. The Man Who Was Thursday 69. To the Lighthouse 70. Father Elijah 71. The End of the Affair 72. The Ball and the Cross 73. Oliver Twist 74. Right Ho, Jeeves 75. Our Mutual Friend 76. Nicholas Nickleby 77. The Moonstone 78. The Poet and the Lunatics 79. The House of Seven Gables 89. The Confidence Man 90. Housekeeping 91. Adam Bede 92. Tess of the D’… 93. The Monk 94. Death Comes for the Archbishop 95. The Centaur 96. The Living 97. The Return of Ansel Gibbs 98. The Age of Innocence 99. Little Dorrit 100. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Now, Ulysses should be top three, but frustrating book in many ways, so too bad Joyce😂) (And Dickens’ novels get smattered throughout, but really he would have ten in the top 50. I’m trying to throw in some variety.) (Kept wanting to put in novels by non-English, plays by O’Neill, Miller, and others. ) (Left fantasy and sci-fi out, other than Frankenstein)
68. Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry - 1947), 69. The Heat of the Day (Elizabeth Bowen - 1948), 70. 1984 (Orwell - 1949), 71. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene - 1951) He recommends Brighton Rock - GG's 1938 novel. 72. Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger - 1951), 73. The Adv. of Augie March (Saul Bellows - 1953), 74. Lord of the Flies (Wm Golding - 1954), 75. Lolita (V. Nabokov - 1955), 76.On the Road (Jack Kerouac - 1957), 77. Voss (P. White - 1957), 78. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee - 1960), 79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark - 1960), 80. Catch 22 (J. Heller - 1961), 81. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing - 1962), 82. Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess - 1962), 83. The Single Man (Christopher Isherwood - 1964), 84. In Cold Blood (T. Capote - 1966), 85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - 1966), 86. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth - 1969), 87. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (Elizabeth Taylor - 1971), 88. Rabbit Redux (John Updike - 1971), 89. Song of Solomon (T. Morrison - 1977), 90. A Bend in the River (VS Naipaul - 1979), 91. Midnight Children - Salman Rushdie - 1981), 92. Housekeeping - M. Robinson - 1981), 93. Money A Suicide Note (M. Amis - 1984), 94. An Artist of the Floating World (K. Ishiguro - 1988) He recommends Klara and the Sun by KI. 95. The Beginning of Spring (P. Fitzgerald - 1988), 96. Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler - 1990), 97. Amongst Women (McGahern - 1990), 98. Underworld (Don DeLillo - 1997), 99. Disgrace (JM Coetzee - 1999), 100. The True History of the Kelly Gang (Petelr Carey - 2000)
31, Dracula (B. Stoker - 1897), 32. Heart of Darkness (J. Conrad - 1899), 33, Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser - 1900), 34. Kim (R. Kipling - 1901), 35. The Call of the Wild (J. London - 1903), 36. The Golden Bowl (H. James - 1904), 37. Hadrian the Seventh (Frederick Rolfe - 1904), 38. The Wind in the Willow (Kenneth Grahame - 1908), 39. The History of Mr. Polly (H. G. Wells - 1910), 40. Zuleika Dobson - (Max Beerbohm - 1911), 41. The Good Soldier -( Ford Madox Ford - 1915) 42. The 39 Steps - (John Buchan - 1915), 43, The Rainbow (DH Lawrence - 1915), 44. Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham - 1915), 45. The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton - 1920), 46.EM Ulysses - (James Joyce - 1922), 47. Bobbitt - (Sinclair Lewis - 1922), 48. A Passage to India (EM Forster- 1924), 49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Anita Loos - 1925), 50. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf - 1925), 51. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925), 52, Lolly Willowes (Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1926), 53. The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway - 1926), 54. The Maltese Falcon (D. Hammett - 1929), 55. As I Lay Dying (Falkner - 1930), 56. Brave New World (Huxley -1932), 57. Cold Comfort Farm - (Stella Gibbons - 1932), 58. 1919 (John Dos Passos - 1932), 59. Tropic of Cancer (H. Miller - 1934), 60. Scoop (Evelyn Waugh - 1938), 61. Murphy (Samuel Beckett - 1938), 62. The Big Sleep (R. Chandler - 1939), 63. Party Going (Henry Green - 1939) 64. At Swim Two Birds (Flann O'Brien - 1939), 65. The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck - 1939), 66. Joy in the Morning (Wodehouse - 1946), 67. All the Kings Men (RP Warren - 1946),
My top ten reveals my entire psyche: 10. Little Women (now I find it maudlin, but when I was 10, it was formative.) 9. Walden (now I find it chaotic, but at 20, it was formative.) 8. The Fountainhead (for the sentiment, not for the story- or you'll hang yourself. And at 30, it was formative!) 7. Jane Eyre (my introduction into classic literature. Now I realize it's basically Pamela, but with bite.) 6. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (reads like a memoir but I'm counting it. If you want to understand American culture, Florence King will start your journey.) 5. Sense & Sensibility (Marianne's character arc... you just know she read Clarissa.) 4. Endless Love (If you've never read it, do not watch the movies. It's about mental illness, not love. And it's really hair-raising.) 3. House of Mirth (I have way too much in common with Lily: a useless person in some respects.) 2. Clarissa (My personal favorite. My brain walks around her boudoir every day.) 1. Middlemarch (It just blew my mind. Every page, I had to stop and smell my thoughts. I can't explain it.)
Incredible list! Thank you so much for sharing. You have exquisite taste in literature, and you're right that you can tell a lot about you from this list. I've gotten so much out of each of these books, and many have personal meaning to me - the only one I haven't read is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. Seeing as all of your other choices are such winners, I've ordered myself a copy now and look forward to reading it :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Has it arrived yet? I hope you really do get a chance to read it. You'll particularly understand a lot of the cultural elements King's British father brought into her life. It's such a great book!
@@mkteku I mean the ideas she was trying to get across, such as the value of individual excellence, and the detrimental side effects of forced altruism.
I'm not a native english speaker, but Samuel Beckett really ignited my passion for literature, as before him I didn't know this kind of book was possible. Read him as 20-21 year old, his trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and Unnamable and still consider him my favorite author. When you speak about consciousness in the 20th century, in my opinion he belongs alongside Joyce, Proust and Woolf. It's nice that you are yet to discover him, looking forward to hearing your thoughts if it's going to happen soon enough.
Benjamin I must say you've got me fired up about these Classics. I stopped reading Classics after I earned my Master's in English. But recently I picked up Dracula and I couldn't believe how fresh and exciting it is. Then I started watching your Channel. Now I spend at the classics section at the bookstore and I'm almost shaking with excitement. Like a kid in the candy store. Last night I picked up Moby Dick As I Lay Dying Don Quixote. I just can't wait to devour these things. But I've been listening to your Channel obsessively. Your Enthusiasm is infectious. I truly wish you the best and great success. I'm a big fan!
Thank you, Mark! I really appreciate your kind words :) It sounds like we're in sync - I picked up Dracula myself just the other day (already preparing for some Halloween lectures), and it really is still incredibly fresh. I relate to your shaking with excitement at the bookstore classics section. Kid in the candy store - perfect description! Let me know what you think of those three books (or, indeed, any book) - you've listed three of my favourites :)
@@dererlkonig7428 thanks for asking for an update! I finished Moby dick. Best novel in the world. Then I read Great Expectations also the recommendation from this Channel and it was fantastic! Also read Christmas Carol for Christmas! Then I just finished Huckleberry Finn and I got to say that novel moved me to tears a couple times and also laugh out loud moments. This channel made me a literary scholar all over again
Anybody have a recommendation of what I should read next question mark I know The favorite here is George Elliott's middle March and war and peace Period but those seem Pretty heavy reads
Benjamin, I just stumbled upon one of your UA-cam videos yesterday. I was NOT deliberately searching UA-cam for literature videos or anything like that. But I must say that it was a good discovery for me. After watching that first one, I have watched a few more of your videos. Some are a bit lengthy, but I may be making time to watch those also. There was a time in my life (years ago) when I loved to read books. Admittedly, none of the books that I read were classic novels. One exception would be “The Catcher in the Rye” - which I did not really get into at the time. …I may not have finished that book. I’m not entirely sure what changes as a person ages, but I believe that I appreciate/understand things more now than I did when I was younger. Maybe re-reading “The Catcher in the Rye” is worth a try for me. For someone who wants to get back into reading (me), I would not be mad if you recommended a few classic books that you think might be good starter books. But here’s the deal… I would like to start with books that are relatively easy reads. …And “easy” might not be the correct term. I would appreciate your recommended books to be such that I would not have to re-read numerous pages over and over to understand or uncover the hidden meaning, etc… My end of the deal is that I promise to watch more of your UA-cam videos!! I am hooked! 😀
Perfect :) I would love to hear what you think of them, Ellan! I'll have another video like this for the world's best novels soon. Thank you for watching!
Some missing names: Cormac McCarthy, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Robert Stone, Thomas Pynchon, Ralph Ellison, Ken Kesey, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut jr, and go on...
English isn’t my native language and I usually have a tough time understanding people speaking with a british accent. Thank you Benjamin for speaking so clearly and properly enunciate your words. Makes it a lot easy for people like me.
BEN!! I love Catch 22. I've taught it to college freshmen. I don’t doubt that it's a man's book, but it speaks to some women. Somehow, the scene when Snowden meets his end is grand expression! I'm female, 80 years old, now but have loved it for decades. Cheers!!
Great to hear a shout out to Stanley Kubrick’s film: ‘Barry Lyndon’ a very cool movie where every shot was intended to look like a dramatic scene in an oil painting.
I suggest everyone - especially writers - read the Anais Nin preface to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. It is short but packed with brilliant insight into literature, Miller's in particular, and the overall state of culture at the time - which hasn't improved imho. The book is currently $1.99 for the kindle version (having lost track of my hard copy who knows when, I bought the kindle version and read the preface as if I'd never read it before).
the thing about Miller that i suppose you either love (my case) or hate is his voice. There are few writers that i "hear" so clearly in my mind as Henry. i know he is is reviled by many today but i consider him to be amongst the most honest and introspective authors of all time. And his voice is a great companion
That was hilarious watching your reactions. Fortunately, I spotted the chronology after about the first 7 or 8. The title "100 Best Novels in English" is also misleading as obviously they have declined to consider more than one work per author. Good fun, though, and I appreciate your personal insights. Definitely several entries that I will investigate further.
It will never make THE top 100, but Nicholas Nickleby makes mine. It’s not only a wonderful story in its own right, but it opened the door for me to read the rest of Dickens.
I love those books that make it into our list but perhaps wouldn't be on mainstream lists - very special indeed! I was mesmerised by Nicholas Nickleby as a child. I really must return to this one. Thank you for sharing, Steven!
I agree with’East of Eden’ Read it as a teen and nearly had breakdown emotionally over the existential hole I fell in. Then later as adult a whole new realization. A great ‘human’ novel.
In accordance with your title: all of Dickens, all of Hemingway, all of Steinbeck, all of Sir Walter Scott, all of Robert Louis Stevenson, all of Thomas Hardy, all of Melville, all of Somerset Maugham, all of Orwell, all of “Mark Twain”, “Pilgrim”s Progress”, “Gone with the Wind”, “The Last of the Mohicans”, “The Scarlet Letter”, “The Lord of the Flies”, Edgar Allen Poe’s novellas & novel, “The Call of the Wild”, “The Heart of Darkness”, “The Portrait of Dorian Grey”, selected works of Sir Conan Doyle, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankenstein”, “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”, “Tarzan of the Apes”, “Penrod”, all of John Grisham. Total should exceed 100…
At 22 1/2 insert Black Beauty by Anne Sewell published in 1877 and a Classic having sold over 50 million copies. Reading Level 7.7 The story began the movement against animal cruelty.
Thank you Ben for this really interesting and entertaining video! I love how you can so aptly talk about these different books, being as well read as you are! I have been inspired by your videos, and am reading Anna Karenina (about halfway through now). I have especially enjoyed other Russian classics like Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov, too. The thing I want to thank you for, is in a video about Anna Karenina, I believe you talked about taking it slow, and that such a book is to be lived with, not read through quickly! I am not very fast at reading, and never have been. But when you said that I felt the pressure was taken away from being like 'I need to get through this succinctly and quickly! And preferably get through a huge stack of 50-100 books in a year'! So, thanks again for these really intelligent and insightful, yet entertaining videos!
Thank you, Sophie :) I really appreciate this - you've made my day! I'm so happy to hear that I inspired you to read Anna Karenina. I'd love to know your thoughts when you finish the novel. The Russians are terrific, aren't they? If you want to add another great Russian writer to your reading programme, I would recommend my favourite writer of short stories/sketches - Turgenev. It's also great to hear that you feel the pressure taken off. I had a similar feeling a few years back when I told myself that reading didn't need to be a competition. I was struggling to enjoy books, only wishing to finish them and get onto the next. My reading speed is naturally slow too, so consciously deciding to live with these great books was quite life-changing. I would much rather read 5-10 books per year slowly, deeply, than hundreds that I'll just forget. Thanks again for the great comment, and keep up the great reading!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks for your reply! So glad i made your day, always a nice thing to hear from someone! Thank you for the recommendation of Turgenev. I have tried a few of Chekhov's short stories- i would read them with my mum slowly then we would discuss. Another useful tip you gave in a video was on having several read throughs of short stories, not expecting to get everything from one reading. Like poetry, of course! So, I'd like to check out Turgenev too. Also, i will let you know my thoughts on Anna Karenina on finishing it! 😊
@@sophieeeee93 That’s lovely - you have a wonderful mum! And oh yes - multiple readings is so key. The last poem I read required me reading it 10+ times before I started to understand it!
Kerouac was my dad’s college roommate at Columbia. My dad became a NYC reporter with Mike Wallace. Dad said what a lot of people didn’t know about Kerouac was that he loved to play football (gridiron). He was quite an athlete.
Wow. Seriously? That is so cool! It sounds like your dad has lived a very eventful life! Reading some of Kerouac's early stuff, his love of football shines through - what a shame that things went the way they did.
A personal favorite of mine, 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, was included in the list, but it can be debated if it is actually composed in English! The futuristic argot Burgess devised for his narrator, a dense medley of Russian vocabulary along with a smattering of rhyming puns and old Cockney expressions, is so alien from standard English that it could be argued to be sui generis linguistically. I've known people who found Burgess' language here too impenetrable to reward the effort, abandoning what is to my mind one of the key dystopian fictions of the twentieth century. Similarly, James Joyce's swansong 'Finnegans Wake' (not on the list), one of the most innovative creative works of the last century, is composed in a bewildering idiom utterly unique to itself, incredibly dense and infinitely allusive, pressing at the very frontiers of comprehensibility of the English language to which scholars and critics ascribe the text by default. A truly avant-garde work even some eighty years since its publication, this "queer as a clockwork orange" novel by Joyce will forever elude a popular readership. Back to the list itself, it would have been fun to have seen some more idiosyncratically experimental or left-field authors cited, such as the Jane Bowles of 'Two Serious Ladies' (another of my personal favorites) or her husband Paul Bowles' 'The Sheltering Sky', or, going back a generation or so, the Djuna Barnes of 'Nightwood'. For that matter, the Nathanael West of 'Miss Lonelyhearts' and 'The Day of the Locust' presents another unique American voice missing from this imperfect list. I am perhaps most surprised, though, by the omission of Willa Cather, a key American author of the twentieth century, a popular writer in her day who remains highly esteemed by critics and scholars, whose novels limn important experiences of transition and loss, American in their particulars but universal in their implications. Finally, D H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love' would have made a fine pendant with 'The Rainbow', it after all being a sequel to Lawrence's shamefully suppressed earlier classic, and equal in eminence in the eyes of many critics.
Ben! the order is "heavily influenced" by the year written. That explains the out of order, order. Love your channel. You have inspired me to start reading fine literature, I never read a single book until I finished college (other than physics and math textbooks). I've read 10 books now. I'm on my way to the bookstore today to start. A hurricane is coming in today. I'll buy "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Moby Dick" to read at my beach house in Florida as the storm blows through. Thanks.
Two books/authors that should make the list: Invisible Man by Ellison. That’s a c’mon man. And Bonfire of the Vanities by Wolfe Maybe also Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut.
Benjamin! Excellent video as always. Wanted to tell you that your videos rekindled my love of reading. Currently reading Don Quixote on your recommendation. You’re genuinely the literary mentor I’ve always wanted. Keep up the great work! :)
It was entertaining to watch you struggle with the rationale when it was, well, right under your nose the whole time. Your commentary was still illuminating and stimulating, and I'm glad you didn't scrap it because of an error on your part. I picked up many ideas for future reading, though I think I'll start with the highly recommended (by you) that I haven't read before. I started Pride And Prejudice a day or two ago after having studiously avoiding Jane Austen for all my life. I'm finding it hilarious and absorbing.
I’d be curious to hear some recommendations from you for some great horror novels (be it classic literature or just stuff you like). Reason for the season, and all. I think you’ve talked a bit about the classic gothic novels, but would be curious to hear other recommendations.
That’s a great idea - I’d be very happy to do that. Horror, and the gothic, has been on my mind a lot recently due to the season. It would be good fun to talk about it!
Benjamin I don't know how you can talk at length in such an interesting way about all of this, but I admire that. I watch your videos all the time. If you asked most people their opinion of XXX most would say "It's good" and stop there, me included. But you carry on like a critic should. As for the list, I would add "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann. As for your appreciation of Harold Bloom, I can't understand a word of what he writes. Almost as bewildering at Auden's lectures on Shakespeare.
Thank you so much, Walker. I really appreciate that! Harold Bloom is definitely very dense, and he is a great master of ellipsis. One of the difficulties of reading him is due to just how much he chooses to leave out. Auden's an interesting one because those lectures were put together from the notes of a student in the audience. I would have loved to have heard his lectures first hand :)
Benjamin, I was enjoying the hell out of your comments on the novels after Ulysses, but then Middlemarch! LOL on Louisa May, etc. -- I couldn't agree more. ❤
I had a difficult time getting into contemporary English-language literature until I found Paul Auster. I really enjoy some of his books. But I agree, it's nothing like the classics.
Yesterday was my birthday and literally this video was like a present to me. Great job, it’s good to know many new recommendations and authors to add to my TBR list. By the way, as I enjoy reading English novels, especially Victorian books, your opinion of each book here was so compelling. 😄 Greetings from Mexico, my friend! 👋
I think of some of these reading lists: The Great Books, 1001 Books you must read before you die, the Lifetime Reading Plan, and others are meant to give us a taste of the best/first of a genre, even if that best or first isn't "great literature". Raymond Chandler is a excellent example of this. Sometimes these tastes help us explore more. For example: I love American southern literature because of To Kill a Mockingbird and Robert Penn Warren's All the President's Men, they are so atmospheric.
Interestingly I'm British and to kill a mockingbird was a GCSE text for me. I remember buying the book and absolutely flying through it after our teacher announced we'd be watching the film in class, and I didn't want to experience that before having read it, given my existing interest.
Same thing happened to me (I'm from Germany) though I ended up not really liking the book as much as I had hoped. Maybe that was because I basically speed read it, will have to give it another go some time soon. Did you like it?
@@nouanni I really did and still do. I've read it several times and find myself continuing to enjoy it, despite knowing all the beats. I didn't like 'Go set a Watchman', the sequel that was released a few years ago however... If you are interested; I think a good accompanying novel is 'If Beale Street Could Talk' by James Baldwin which deals with similar themes to mockingbird, but from a black perspective.
Ahem, as a South African and three times back-to-back winner of the All South African Nit-Picking Championship I should point out JM Coetzee's surname is pronounced more like 'Coo- tzee'e' (It's Afrikaans, a daughter language of Dutch, although sounds closer to Flemish) Thank you for your criticism. P.S. I hope no one has made this point below.
I just discovered your channel and I really like what you are saying about the relatively recent novels on this list of 100 best of all time. I am sure you have noted how there does seem to be this "recentism" problem where those novels that are somehow present in the minds of the reading public shine a little brighter than maybe their aesthetic and cognitive brilliance actually reveals. I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of the list, and thank you for your taking the time and energy to talk to us about this.
I love this video, and your comments about each of the books in the list. Thank you, Ben! Not sure, but it seems they didn't include Honoré de Balzac. From my perspective, another noticeable absence is Flannery O’Connor with her short story masterpieces - I’ve just read “A good man is hard to find” for the third time! As for literature written in Spanish, I think "Pedro Páramo" by Juan Rulfo would deserve a place in the list - a significantly influential novel in Latin American literature during the XXth century.
This video was a special treat, to know you, my favorite booktuber better, for your opinions, and reactions. Would Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales constitute as a novel, if so it should have been above Bunyan.
Thank you, my friend :) I personally wouldn't consider Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to be a novel, but it undoubtedly inspired many of the greatest novelists in the language! I'm currently reading through the tales of an evening and it's a wonderful experience.
1. The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan - 1678), 2. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe - 1719), 3. Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift - 1726), 4. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson - 1748), 5. Tom Jones (Henry Fielding - 1749), 6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne - 1759), 7. Emma (Jane Austin - 1816) 8. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley - 1818), 9. Nightmare Abbey (Thomas Love Peacock - 1818), 10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Edgar Allen Poe - 1838), 11. Sybil (Benjamin Disraeli - 1845), 12. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte - 1847), 13. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte - 1847), 14. Vanity Fair (Wm Thackeray - 1848), 15. David Copperfield (C. Dickens - 1850), 16. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1850), 17. Moby Dick (Herman Melville - 1851), 18. Alice in Wonderland (Louis Carroll - 1865), 19. Moonstone (Wilkie Collins - 1868) 20. Little Women (Louisa Mae Alcott- 1868) 21. Middlemarch (George Eliot - 1871 ), 22. The Way We Live Now (Anthony Trollope - 1875), 23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain - 1884), 24. Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson - 1886), 25. Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome - 1887), 26. The Sign of Four (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 1890). 27. The Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde - 1891), 28. New Grub Street (George Gissing - 1891), 29. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy - 1895), 30. The Red Badge of Courage (Stephan Crane - 1895)
At last, at last! I've been waiting for years for someone to say they preferred 'Dharma Bums' to 'On the Road'. And I agree with your comments on 'East of Eden' as well.
Ben, you glossed over “Under the Volcano” with a “sounds good” and though it isn’t for everyone, I couldn’t recommend it more strongly for a Joycean such as yourself
For Beckett’s novels, would recommend MOLLOY. Can also tell you’re into film: fun fact that Orson Welles only made CITIZEN KANE (1941) because he couldn’t get the funding to make HEART OF DARKNESS. Of course, he’d cast himself as Kurtz...
Honestly I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on the factor that the books were listed in chronological order 😭😂 The dates were right there with the titles and you even read some of them out loud haha. I kept waiting and waiting for you to realise it and found your rants very frustrating since I wished to tell you that it’s not a worst to best ranking but alas I couldn’t of course. Other than that I liked hearing your thoughts and would be interested in seeing your own list!
Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite films ever as well -- I also love Paths of Glory, The Killing and Dr. Strangelove... Clockwork... yea, basically everything he did. In my opinion they're all endlessly rewatchable. but i do love those early films especially. his genius shown through almost fully formed very early on.
Agreed. I'm old enough to have had the privilege of seeing 2001 A Space Odyssey on the gigantic Cinerama screen with no foreknowledge about it or its influential use of music. What an experience it was, so much so that I promptly saw it again a week later.
Fascinating and instructive commentary. Absolutely clearsighted and clearheaded, in my opinion. I find myself in almost total agreement with this charming and erudite man.
That is such a great suggestion! Thank you so much :) American Literature has gifted me most of my favourite works of all time, so this is definitely something I would be passionate to speak about!
Well, two books in and I am thrilled! Great to see Aussie Thomas Kenneally in the list. Disgrace by Coetzee is an astounding work which stayed with me for quite a while after I finished it. Very excited to see what's going to unfold! I was amused to see your enthusiasm for Patrick White and 'Voss'. I had to read White's 'Tree of Man' for last year of high school and absolutely loathed it, but that was 40 years ago and I am sure I would view it quite differently today. White is Australia's only literature Nobel Prize winner so I should give him a second chance!
I subscribed simply because of your comments about Steinbeck. In lists of Nobel prize winning authors who shouldn't have received the prize, Steinbeck is frequently mentioned by critics, which is unconscionable. In my estimation, he is not only the greatest American author, he is also the most American. His work is breathtakingly beautiful. And like you, I would list East of Eden as being slightly better than the Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, in America, most junior high and high school kids are introduced to Steinbeck with either The Red Pony, The Pearl, or Of Mice and Men, and those stories - although important - do not represent the sheer power of his work. And also, as a humorist, he is amazing. Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday come to mind. Thanks for the video and your insightful comments.
Thanks for putting your time into this. I pretty much lost confidence when they placed Kazuo ishiguro so low and picked "an artist of the floating world" over his masterpiece for me "the remains of the day." Btw you definitely ought to make time to finish Klara and the sun, the latter part is very illuminating.
Ben, I wonder if you have done anything on Thomas Wolfe? I started reading Of Time and the River and I am enjoying his rejection of Hemingway’s brevity. It seems like Hemingway takes a black and white photo to get the message out but Wolfe paints with a full palette to squeeze every nuance out of every circumstance - and then does it again from a different perspective … thoughts?
I would have to include “Stoner,” the 1965 novel by John Williams in this list. A wonderful read. A masterpiece. The best “literary” novel I’ve read in the past 5 years, and in my top 50 favorites all-time. Off the top of my head, here are a few contemporary (literary) novelists who’ve meant a lot to me. And one of their novels should, at the very least, be considered for inclusion in this list. Thomas Pynchon? Paul Auster? Hilary Mantel? Walker Percy? Margaret Atwood? Cormac McCarthy? James Salter? Joan Didion? Jonathan Franzen? Nadine Gordimer? Evan S. Connell? Bernard Malamud? David Markson? Charles Portis? Paula Fox?
Glad you mentioned Paul Auster. I read 'The New York Trilogy' when I was sixteen, and it inspired my lifelong interest in American fiction. 'Moon Palace' is great too.
Our 9th grade English teacher in 1963 had us read SILAS MARNER and it has been my favorite by Eliot. I also read The Mill on the Floss and then Adam Bede.
Found myself wishing Alice Monroe had written a novel so she could qualify. Her short stories are rereads for me. I would have found a place for Wallace Stegner’s “angle of repose” and put “on the road “ on the road. Maybe find a place for Ralph Ellison ‘s “ the invisible man”.
David Copperfield is my favourite Dickens's book! I wanted to depict morality in a very powerful way, to teach about good and bad, this novel is a perfect tool for this purpose. Plus Uriah Heep! This character is so inconceivably evil and abominable! I felt authentic disgust. An iconic achievement!
I agree with Pilgrim's Progress being #1 because I'm biased. 🤣 It's not just a story about one person or a handful of people, it's the story of the Church, it's the story of every Christian everywhere. When I read it, I'm not being transported into a different world, but I'm given a clear picture of my own. I'm reminded of where I came from, what happened to me, and most importantly where I'm going.
Ben, I should add that I think Anthony Trollope's Barchester series of novels should be in the canon, especially 'The Warden' & 'Barchester Towers', I have loved these books for so long and go back and re-read them. I find The Warden comforting actually, I can sit and read this on a rainy afternoon! I would also suggest that 'The Forsyte Saga' by John Galsworthy seems to me to be underrated & even ignored numerous times. Galsworthy wrote an amazing canon in the Forsyte Saga, on its' own. Perhaps the writing may not be up to scratch but the storyline and themes are so entertaining and the setting! If you would like to get into some Australian literature like 'Voss' might I also suggest you read 'The Timeless Land' (1941) by Eleanor Dark and 'The Getting of Wisdom' (1910) by Henry Handel Richardson, also the canon's of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson shouldn't be missed. 'My Brilliant Career', of course 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', 'An Australian Girl' by Catherine Martin. Anything Patrick White wrote is great, he certainly was an Australian literary powerhouse.
To add to this, the True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey is wonderful. It takes a few pages to get into the voice, but I was so happy to see it on this list. Not many people I know who do love to read, have read it. I always recommend it.
"That's part of the tragedy. That our lives are not long enough to read everything worth reading". Oh my god man i think of this sometimes and it makes me really sad. However it also motivates me to read more and spend less time playing games and watching social media.
To Kill A Mockingbird was compulsory reading in my high school in the UK. I know it's not a list, but the majority of what everyman library has published is worth reading.
I just found you. I’m so happy. I listened to your lecture on shakespeare’s sonnets. It’s such a new topic for me. I’m going to get the book you recommended w one sonnet and then notes, page by page …
Thank you so much :) I'm so happy to hear you're diving into Shakespeare's sonnets! A sonnet a day makes for a wonderful reading routine. I'm going through them all over again myself at the moment!
Intriguing, if fractal, list. But was introduced to some writers and books I never knew. I'm astounded (perhaps shouldn't be), that Iris Murdoch didn't make the list -- not even 'The Sea, The Sea', her Booker winner. But then, Murdoch is one of my favorite writers, and is not everyone's taste. I wonder what your thoughts are about her work Benjamin, in the Irish literature? Also, I'd love to see you do a list of '50 Great Short Novels'! Conrad, Kafka, Melville, Flaubert, etc? Many moderns as well as core literature in that genre. And while Song of Solomon made the list, I'm surprised that NO Baldwin made the list for its period of time.
Surely it is time for DH Lawrence to be brought back in to the canon and .... Nostromo possibly the greatest twentieth century novel written in English?
Thank you Ben for keeping up this great work. Your work has genuinely brought me closer towards books where I find my serenity. I am currently reading "The Rainbow" by DH Lawrence (40 pages a day).
Thank you, my friend! I really appreciate such kind words. I love that phrasing - “find my serenity”. We’re reading The Rainbow at the same time :) I’m loving it so far!
I love lists, I always find a book or two that peek my interest. Where or if a book appears on a list is down to the compiler and I don't hold it against them. I remember picking up Franny and Zooey form a charity store and really loved it. I hadn't read Catcher so went on to read it. Unfortunately, Holden Caulfield's character grated. I just kept thinking he has every advantage. I don't think I would have thought that way if I had read it when I was younger.
Enjoyed listening to the list. I’ve read 52 novels on the list. Some of the others listed I had never heard of and others have me looking to read. Thanks for reading then list. I,like you have Irish from Dublin and Cork, though I’m a Scot living in California.
Am I the only one who is troubled by the omission of Walter Scott ? He was certainly the most influential novelists of all time, and left many to choose from but my personal favorite is The Heart of Midlothian. And I would think that a novel by Smollet should be included as well. In modern times what about Anthony Powell' novels ? I was reading his Music of Time series around the same time that I was reading The Prime of Muriel Spark's Miss Jean Brodie. I only got about half-way through that series but I think some of the novels should be on the list. And also what about Durrel's Alexandria Quartet ? On the American side it seems to me there are 4 novels that should not be omitted. First of all, James Fenimore Cooper whatever his faults was still a great novelist and like Scott invented a whole genre of Frontier fiction. My favorites however are Myles Wallingford and Afloat and Ashore which are epic in nature. Next, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin which is a book that changed the world forever. That is, to my mind a major omission. I also think that Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe belongs on any list of great English novels. And finally Mitchell's Gone With the Wind which is probably a controversial choice these politically correct days, but it is still a very important book.
I never see Winston Graham's Poldark series on any lists. His writing is AMAZING. The writing demands that you live within the story. His character development is a steady growth throughout the series., and his characters stay true to their written characterizations throughout. I'm not speaking of the Masterpiece Theatre series on PBS - although that was well done. But reading Graham's words - he brings you into the Cornish landscape - you can hear the gulls, you can smell the sea. You can envision the angry, enormous waves crashing against the cliffs. He brings the French revolution and the resulting Napoleonic Wars, up close, as they effect the economy of Cornwall, the decisions made in Parliament, and the life of England's inhabitants - all while keeping the continental conflicts in the background. His descriptions of the ships, their crews, and the shipwrecks are palatable. His description of the 1790s - 1800s attire is well detailed. All in all, the writing is phenomenal! I highly recommend READING the books. Or, Audible has the entire series in an audiobook - the reader, Oliver J. Hembrough does a beautiful job changing his voice for each character.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Ruth. The Poldark books are, in my opinion, a perfect example of consistently excellent writing over all 13 of the books, and I think Winston Graham was seriously underrated as a writer. They really do suck you in to Cornish life at that time, and they are a magnificent accomplishment.
I am thoroughly enjoying listening to you. It's always nice to know, to recall how many books I have read this far in my life. I must have been quite a voracious reader when I wasvmuch younger. Such pleasure in being helped to recall this time. Thank you so much.
Funny, my husband thought I was watching a sporting match by my reactions to this video! LOL I have read many of the books on the list and made a list of those I would like to read. I absolutely agree with you about the Jane Austen pick. Persuasion is my favorite and then Pride and Prejudice. And I will definitely be reading Middlemarch due to your high praise.
I know it's not loved by the critics but how on Middle Earth is Lord of The Rings not in there? Personally my favourite book but that aside, just for the scale of its world building and lasting influence it should be there.
What a wonderful find you are have watched 5 videos straight off, was also surprised at how many of the "50" I had readwill undertake one of the lecture series also Thankyou so much
Probably won't make you rethink Updike, but his short story "A & P" provides a glimpse at why he is so favored. Thanks for your work from a recent graduate in English Lit/Creative Writing - Long Beach, California. As for The Shining, careful viewing reveals that the only supernatural is Danny's ESP, while the book is rife with the supernatural.
I don't understand why Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea isn't on the list. For Gothic, I just can't stop reading Melmoth the Wanderer, by Oscar Wilde's relative Charles Robert Maturin. Yep, another Irish. Got to read Clarissa! Thank you so much for this UA-cam page. It's bringing me back my love for fiction. For some reason the last years I have been solely immersed in non-fiction reading.
My own top 100 would be quite a bit different- I find the older I get the more annoying it is that the published lists pf great books reflect such a male bias. I do now own a copy of Lolita, and will get to it eventually, and I waded through a lot of other, probably similar works of men's literature in the course of reading my way through the Boxall 1001 Books lists (a project I may eventually finish). I finished 60 of the books on this top 100 list, so far, and most were at least ok. My personal favorites from the authors included in this list are often different (My favorite Steinbeck is probably still The Winter of Our Discontent, and my favorite Rushdie was The Enchantress of Florence.) but I can usually see why particular authors make these lists still. It is nice to see how other dedicated readers react to books on these lists. I may have to shift some of the remaining books I haven't read yet on this list into my TBR soon.
Update - Hey guys, the list is arranged chronologically, not ranked by which books are the best. This makes some of my outrage at the placement of certain books comically misplaced 😂 But it was still a fun thought-experiment nonetheless. Perhaps one could dispute a few books being there, but overall the list had a ton of great books that are definitely worth reading! Let us know which ones you agree with, and which books you think should have made the list. Happy reading!
At least this way, all the books higher up in the list were classics and have in some way stood the test of time. I am imagining how annoyed you would have been if they had put the newer books in the top ten and Ulysses was down at number 55. 😉
This is better, there are still too many "pulp" works on this list, and they made some weird choices by author. I read another list, ranked by current acclaimed writers that put Middlemarch first on the list of novels. Some would contest whether Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are even novels, perhaps Joyce himself. Copperfield is one of my favourite Dickens, but I would definitely put Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend ahead of it. I'm not sure about Great Expectations, it's a fascinating, cleverly structured book, the least fat in any Dickens, but the characters are a little strange; almost like it's a kind of Baroque experiment in exaggerated representation. I like Copperfield because its a Bildungsroman that follows the character into adulthood, Goethe would have approved. I also might put a second Elliot on the list before I'd include Thackeray or Poe or maybe even the Brontes. I quite like Daniel Deronda, though it is an awkward read by modern sensibilities, others like Adam Bede or Mill on the Floss. Tender is the Night is my favourite Fitzgerald, I agree with you about Hemingway. Faulkner definitely deserves another spot, The Sound and the Fury is maybe his quintessential work, Ulysses level difficult, Absalom Absalom! is my favourite Faulkner.
Who are your favourite contemporary prose authors? Do any do interesting things with the form or the characters. I really like Franzen, Ferrante, Adichie, but I'm not sure any of their work will last. they might just capture the moment, which still makes them worth reading.
I admire someone who can laugh at himself. It’s an admirable trait.
I'm glad to hear that. Any list that places The Scarlet Letter above Middlemarch is disgusting.
Wow this makes so much more sense. But still- no Vonnegut? No Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest? If anyone got the short end of the stick here it's the American post-modernists.
Compile your own list of the 100 best novels you've read. Would love to watch that
I can certainly do that :)
I was just going to suggest this! Ben, I can already guess some of your fav novels. The ones we've read so far in the book club are probably all within top 20!
@@shsulab the book club books would definitely make the list :) they’re very hard to beat!
I'd watch that!
Yes please! And/or perhaps your own personal favourites.
'Disgrace' was recommended to me by an English professor I had a terrible crush on. It's about an English professor who ruins his life by having an affair with a student. Point taken, professor 🤣.
What happened to the professor?
I'm kinda more interested in your story than the 100 best novels lol 😂🤣
@@graybow2255 I'm Pakistani why?
That’s a story that you should write
It's also a masterpiece, like many of Coetzee's works.
Could listen to you talk about books all day. Your passion and knowledge is a joy to watch :) you’ve motivated me to read some books I might have overlooked
Aw, that is so kind of you. Thank you so much. You have made my day :)
McEvoy's passion for books is contagious, like a good teacher, one is motivated to read those books one has known but not got round to read to date because of the compelling way he describes them!
My list.
1. Moby Dick
2. As I Lay Dying
3. Middlemarch
4. Bleak House
5. Pride and Prejudice
6. The Old Man and the Sea
7. The Scarlet Letter
8. Great Expectations
9. Huckleberry Finn
10. The Grapes of Wrath
11. The Sound and the Fury
12. Frankenstein
13. The Picture of Dorian Grey
14. Ulysses
15. Mrs. Dalloway
16. Gulliver’s Travels
17. Robinson Crusoe
18. The Return of the Native
19. Hound of the Baskervilles
20. 1984
21. A Christmas Carol
22. A Tale of Two Cities
23. Absolom! Absolom!
24. For Whom the Bell Tolls
25. To Kill a Mockingbird
26. Song of Solomon
26. The Wind in the Willows
27. Heart of Darkness
28. Alice in Wonderland
29. Godric
30. The Power and the Glory
31. Jane Eyre
32. Emma
33. Clarissa
34. Finnegan’s Wake
35. Wise Blood
36. Mayor of Casterbridge
37. Hard Times
38. East of Eden
39. Romola
40. The Awakening
41. House of Mirth
42. David Copperfield
43. Beloved
44. Persuasion
45. Brideshead Revisited
44. Vanity Fair
45. The Last of the Mohicans
46. The Red Badge of Courage
47. Catch-22
48. Tom Sawyer
49. Orlando
50. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
51. Gone With the Wind
52. The Jungle Book
53. King Solomon’s Mines
54. Son of Laughter
55. A Prayer for Owen Meany
56. One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest
55. Flowers for Algernon
56. The Godfather
57. The Violent Bear it Away
58. North and South
59. The Sun Also Rises
60. Little Women
61. Little House in the Big Woods
62. Dracula
63. Lolita
64. The Natural
65. The Adventures of Augie March
66. The Golden Bowl
67. Ivanhoe
68. The Man Who Was Thursday
69. To the Lighthouse
70. Father Elijah
71. The End of the Affair
72. The Ball and the Cross
73. Oliver Twist
74. Right Ho, Jeeves
75. Our Mutual Friend
76. Nicholas Nickleby
77. The Moonstone
78. The Poet and the Lunatics
79. The House of Seven Gables
89. The Confidence Man
90. Housekeeping
91. Adam Bede
92. Tess of the D’…
93. The Monk
94. Death Comes for the Archbishop
95. The Centaur
96. The Living
97. The Return of Ansel Gibbs
98. The Age of Innocence
99. Little Dorrit
100. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(Now, Ulysses should be top three, but frustrating book in many ways, so too bad Joyce😂)
(And Dickens’ novels get smattered throughout, but really he would have ten in the top 50. I’m trying to throw in some variety.)
(Kept wanting to put in novels by non-English, plays by O’Neill, Miller, and others. )
(Left fantasy and sci-fi out, other than Frankenstein)
WOW!! That's quite a list!
My favourite novel is 'Black Beauty' by Anna Sewell.
I believe that 1984 and Brave New World are usually considered science fiction. Dracula is horror/fantasy.
I agree with you on Bleak House...just the first paragraph should place it high up.
No the quincunx ?
Have you read all these
Benjamin you are a living encyclopedia, a perfect example for our current generation. Thank you for your videos.
Thank you and I agree with Patty’s….your are a living encyclopedia!!!
Do I think our current generation has time to read 19th Century novelists ?
68. Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry - 1947), 69. The Heat of the Day (Elizabeth Bowen - 1948), 70. 1984 (Orwell - 1949), 71. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene - 1951) He recommends Brighton Rock - GG's 1938 novel. 72. Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger - 1951), 73. The Adv. of Augie March (Saul Bellows - 1953), 74. Lord of the Flies (Wm Golding - 1954), 75. Lolita (V. Nabokov - 1955), 76.On the Road (Jack Kerouac - 1957), 77. Voss (P. White - 1957), 78. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee - 1960), 79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark - 1960), 80. Catch 22 (J. Heller - 1961), 81. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing - 1962), 82. Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess - 1962), 83. The Single Man (Christopher Isherwood - 1964), 84. In Cold Blood (T. Capote - 1966), 85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - 1966), 86. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth - 1969), 87. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (Elizabeth Taylor - 1971), 88. Rabbit Redux (John Updike - 1971), 89. Song of Solomon (T. Morrison - 1977), 90. A Bend in the River (VS Naipaul - 1979), 91. Midnight Children - Salman Rushdie - 1981), 92. Housekeeping - M. Robinson - 1981), 93. Money A Suicide Note (M. Amis - 1984), 94. An Artist of the Floating World (K. Ishiguro - 1988) He recommends Klara and the Sun by KI. 95. The Beginning of Spring (P. Fitzgerald - 1988), 96. Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler - 1990), 97. Amongst Women (McGahern - 1990), 98. Underworld (Don DeLillo - 1997), 99. Disgrace (JM Coetzee - 1999), 100. The True History of the Kelly Gang (Petelr Carey - 2000)
31, Dracula (B. Stoker - 1897), 32. Heart of Darkness (J. Conrad - 1899), 33, Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser - 1900), 34. Kim (R. Kipling - 1901), 35. The Call of the Wild (J. London - 1903), 36. The Golden Bowl (H. James - 1904), 37. Hadrian the Seventh (Frederick Rolfe - 1904), 38. The Wind in the Willow (Kenneth Grahame - 1908), 39. The History of Mr. Polly (H. G. Wells - 1910), 40. Zuleika Dobson - (Max Beerbohm - 1911), 41. The Good Soldier -( Ford Madox Ford - 1915) 42. The 39 Steps - (John Buchan - 1915), 43, The Rainbow (DH Lawrence - 1915), 44. Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham - 1915), 45. The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton - 1920), 46.EM Ulysses - (James Joyce - 1922), 47. Bobbitt - (Sinclair Lewis - 1922), 48. A Passage to India (EM Forster- 1924), 49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Anita Loos - 1925), 50. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf - 1925), 51. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925), 52, Lolly Willowes (Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1926), 53. The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway - 1926), 54. The Maltese Falcon (D. Hammett - 1929), 55. As I Lay Dying (Falkner - 1930), 56. Brave New World (Huxley -1932), 57. Cold Comfort Farm - (Stella Gibbons - 1932), 58. 1919 (John Dos Passos - 1932), 59. Tropic of Cancer (H. Miller - 1934), 60. Scoop (Evelyn Waugh - 1938), 61. Murphy (Samuel Beckett - 1938), 62. The Big Sleep (R. Chandler - 1939), 63. Party Going (Henry Green - 1939) 64. At Swim Two Birds (Flann O'Brien - 1939), 65. The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck - 1939), 66. Joy in the Morning (Wodehouse - 1946), 67. All the Kings Men (RP Warren - 1946),
My top ten reveals my entire psyche:
10. Little Women (now I find it maudlin, but when I was 10, it was formative.)
9. Walden (now I find it chaotic, but at 20, it was formative.)
8. The Fountainhead (for the sentiment, not for the story- or you'll hang yourself. And at 30, it was formative!)
7. Jane Eyre (my introduction into classic literature. Now I realize it's basically Pamela, but with bite.)
6. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (reads like a memoir but I'm counting it. If you want to understand American culture, Florence King will start your journey.)
5. Sense & Sensibility (Marianne's character arc... you just know she read Clarissa.)
4. Endless Love (If you've never read it, do not watch the movies. It's about mental illness, not love. And it's really hair-raising.)
3. House of Mirth (I have way too much in common with Lily: a useless person in some respects.)
2. Clarissa (My personal favorite. My brain walks around her boudoir every day.)
1. Middlemarch (It just blew my mind. Every page, I had to stop and smell my thoughts. I can't explain it.)
Incredible list! Thank you so much for sharing. You have exquisite taste in literature, and you're right that you can tell a lot about you from this list. I've gotten so much out of each of these books, and many have personal meaning to me - the only one I haven't read is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. Seeing as all of your other choices are such winners, I've ordered myself a copy now and look forward to reading it :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Has it arrived yet? I hope you really do get a chance to read it. You'll particularly understand a lot of the cultural elements King's British father brought into her life. It's such a great book!
The Fountainhead (for the sentiment, not for the story- or you'll hang yourself. And at 30, it was formative!). How you you mean "sentiment"? :)
@@mkteku I mean the ideas she was trying to get across, such as the value of individual excellence, and the detrimental side effects of forced altruism.
I'm not a native english speaker, but Samuel Beckett really ignited my passion for literature, as before him I didn't know this kind of book was possible. Read him as 20-21 year old, his trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and Unnamable and still consider him my favorite author. When you speak about consciousness in the 20th century, in my opinion he belongs alongside Joyce, Proust and Woolf. It's nice that you are yet to discover him, looking forward to hearing your thoughts if it's going to happen soon enough.
Benjamin I must say you've got me fired up about these Classics. I stopped reading Classics after I earned my Master's in English. But recently I picked up Dracula and I couldn't believe how fresh and exciting it is. Then I started watching your Channel. Now I spend at the classics section at the bookstore and I'm almost shaking with excitement. Like a kid in the candy store. Last night I picked up Moby Dick As I Lay Dying Don Quixote. I just can't wait to devour these things. But I've been listening to your Channel obsessively. Your Enthusiasm is infectious. I truly wish you the best and great success. I'm a big fan!
Thank you, Mark! I really appreciate your kind words :) It sounds like we're in sync - I picked up Dracula myself just the other day (already preparing for some Halloween lectures), and it really is still incredibly fresh. I relate to your shaking with excitement at the bookstore classics section. Kid in the candy store - perfect description! Let me know what you think of those three books (or, indeed, any book) - you've listed three of my favourites :)
I have reread Dracula so often - indeed fresh and exciting but also so sexy (for its time). I'm always surprised that Frankenstein is rated higher.
Did you finish Moby Dick, Don Quixote and As I lay dying? I read all three of them and they're all really good. Hope you liked them!
@@dererlkonig7428 thanks for asking for an update! I finished Moby dick. Best novel in the world. Then I read Great Expectations also the recommendation from this Channel and it was fantastic! Also read Christmas Carol for Christmas! Then I just finished Huckleberry Finn and I got to say that novel moved me to tears a couple times and also laugh out loud moments. This channel made me a literary scholar all over again
Anybody have a recommendation of what I should read next question mark I know The favorite here is George Elliott's middle March and war and peace Period but those seem Pretty heavy reads
Benjamin, I just stumbled upon one of your UA-cam videos yesterday. I was NOT deliberately searching UA-cam for literature videos or anything like that. But I must say that it was a good discovery for me.
After watching that first one, I have watched a few more of your videos. Some are a bit lengthy, but I may be making time to watch those also.
There was a time in my life (years ago) when I loved to read books. Admittedly, none of the books that I read were classic novels. One exception would be “The Catcher in the Rye” - which I did not really get into at the time. …I may not have finished that book.
I’m not entirely sure what changes as a person ages, but I believe that I appreciate/understand things more now than I did when I was younger.
Maybe re-reading “The Catcher in the Rye” is worth a try for me.
For someone who wants to get back into reading (me), I would not be mad if you recommended a few classic books that you think might be good starter books.
But here’s the deal…
I would like to start with books that are relatively easy reads. …And “easy” might not be the correct term.
I would appreciate your recommended books to be such that I would not have to re-read numerous pages over and over to understand or uncover the hidden meaning, etc…
My end of the deal is that I promise to watch more of your UA-cam videos!! I am hooked! 😀
Ulysses, Clarissa are definitely added to the tbr ....
It was fun watching this 1 hour long video !! Would love to see more content like this
Perfect :) I would love to hear what you think of them, Ellan! I'll have another video like this for the world's best novels soon. Thank you for watching!
Thank you for standing up for Bleak House. I have never been able to convince anyone to read Bleak House.
The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce fabulous ........the bbc version was also great
Bleak House and Little Dorritt are my favourite Dickens novels.
Some missing names: Cormac McCarthy, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Robert Stone, Thomas Pynchon, Ralph Ellison, Ken Kesey, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut jr, and go on...
English isn’t my native language and I usually have a tough time understanding people speaking with a british accent. Thank you Benjamin for speaking so clearly and properly enunciate your words. Makes it a lot easy for people like me.
BEN!! I love Catch 22. I've taught it to college freshmen.
I don’t doubt that it's a man's book, but it speaks to some women. Somehow, the scene when Snowden meets his end is grand expression! I'm female, 80 years old, now but have loved it for decades. Cheers!!
Great to hear a shout out to Stanley Kubrick’s film: ‘Barry Lyndon’ a very cool movie where every shot was intended to look like a dramatic scene in an oil painting.
An unbelievably beautiful film, true piece of art
@@wingedstatue My son always lists this as his favorite movie.
I suggest everyone - especially writers - read the Anais Nin preface to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. It is short but packed with brilliant insight into literature, Miller's in particular, and the overall state of culture at the time - which hasn't improved imho. The book is currently $1.99 for the kindle version (having lost track of my hard copy who knows when, I bought the kindle version and read the preface as if I'd never read it before).
the thing about Miller that i suppose you either love (my case) or hate is his voice. There are few writers that i "hear" so clearly in my mind as Henry. i know he is is reviled by many today but i consider him to be amongst the most honest and introspective authors of all time. And his voice is a great companion
That was hilarious watching your reactions. Fortunately, I spotted the chronology after about the first 7 or 8. The title "100 Best Novels in English" is also misleading as obviously they have declined to consider more than one work per author. Good fun, though, and I appreciate your personal insights. Definitely several entries that I will investigate further.
Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham is one of my all time favorites
It will never make THE top 100, but Nicholas Nickleby makes mine. It’s not only a wonderful story in its own right, but it opened the door for me to read the rest of Dickens.
I love those books that make it into our list but perhaps wouldn't be on mainstream lists - very special indeed! I was mesmerised by Nicholas Nickleby as a child. I really must return to this one. Thank you for sharing, Steven!
I agree with’East of Eden’ Read it as a teen and nearly had breakdown emotionally over the existential hole I fell in. Then later as adult a whole new realization. A great ‘human’ novel.
In accordance with your title: all of Dickens, all of Hemingway, all of Steinbeck, all of Sir Walter Scott, all of Robert Louis Stevenson, all of Thomas Hardy, all of Melville, all of Somerset Maugham, all of Orwell, all of “Mark Twain”, “Pilgrim”s Progress”, “Gone with the Wind”, “The Last of the Mohicans”, “The Scarlet Letter”, “The Lord of the Flies”, Edgar Allen Poe’s novellas & novel, “The Call of the Wild”, “The Heart of Darkness”, “The Portrait of Dorian Grey”, selected works of Sir Conan Doyle, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankenstein”, “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”, “Tarzan of the Apes”, “Penrod”, all of John Grisham. Total should exceed 100…
Patty- Great Expectations is my favorite Dickens book. I love Hardy as well, Far From the Madding Crowd.
At 22 1/2 insert Black Beauty by Anne Sewell published in 1877 and a Classic having sold over 50 million copies. Reading Level 7.7 The story began the movement against animal cruelty.
Black Beauty so painful to read! Read it as a child, 85 yrs old now and haven't recovered yet!
Moira Clegg Totally agree!
Thank you Ben for this really interesting and entertaining video! I love how you can so aptly talk about these different books, being as well read as you are! I have been inspired by your videos, and am reading Anna Karenina (about halfway through now). I have especially enjoyed other Russian classics like Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov, too.
The thing I want to thank you for, is in a video about Anna Karenina, I believe you talked about taking it slow, and that such a book is to be lived with, not read through quickly! I am not very fast at reading, and never have been. But when you said that I felt the pressure was taken away from being like 'I need to get through this succinctly and quickly! And preferably get through a huge stack of 50-100 books in a year'! So, thanks again for these really intelligent and insightful, yet entertaining videos!
Thank you, Sophie :) I really appreciate this - you've made my day! I'm so happy to hear that I inspired you to read Anna Karenina. I'd love to know your thoughts when you finish the novel. The Russians are terrific, aren't they? If you want to add another great Russian writer to your reading programme, I would recommend my favourite writer of short stories/sketches - Turgenev. It's also great to hear that you feel the pressure taken off. I had a similar feeling a few years back when I told myself that reading didn't need to be a competition. I was struggling to enjoy books, only wishing to finish them and get onto the next. My reading speed is naturally slow too, so consciously deciding to live with these great books was quite life-changing. I would much rather read 5-10 books per year slowly, deeply, than hundreds that I'll just forget. Thanks again for the great comment, and keep up the great reading!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks for your reply! So glad i made your day, always a nice thing to hear from someone!
Thank you for the recommendation of Turgenev. I have tried a few of Chekhov's short stories- i would read them with my mum slowly then we would discuss. Another useful tip you gave in a video was on having several read throughs of short stories, not expecting to get everything from one reading. Like poetry, of course!
So, I'd like to check out Turgenev too. Also, i will let you know my thoughts on Anna Karenina on finishing it! 😊
@@sophieeeee93 That’s lovely - you have a wonderful mum! And oh yes - multiple readings is so key. The last poem I read required me reading it 10+ times before I started to understand it!
Kerouac was my dad’s college roommate at Columbia. My dad became a NYC reporter with Mike Wallace. Dad said what a lot of people didn’t know about Kerouac was that he loved to play football (gridiron). He was quite an athlete.
Wow. Seriously? That is so cool! It sounds like your dad has lived a very eventful life! Reading some of Kerouac's early stuff, his love of football shines through - what a shame that things went the way they did.
A personal favorite of mine, 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, was included in the list, but it can be debated if it is actually composed in English! The futuristic argot Burgess devised for his narrator, a dense medley of Russian vocabulary along with a smattering of rhyming puns and old Cockney expressions, is so alien from standard English that it could be argued to be sui generis linguistically. I've known people who found Burgess' language here too impenetrable to reward the effort, abandoning what is to my mind one of the key dystopian fictions of the twentieth century.
Similarly, James Joyce's swansong 'Finnegans Wake' (not on the list), one of the most innovative creative works of the last century, is composed in a bewildering idiom utterly unique to itself, incredibly dense and infinitely allusive, pressing at the very frontiers of comprehensibility of the English language to which scholars and critics ascribe the text by default. A truly avant-garde work even some eighty years since its publication, this "queer as a clockwork orange" novel by Joyce will forever elude a popular readership.
Back to the list itself, it would have been fun to have seen some more idiosyncratically experimental or left-field authors cited, such as the Jane Bowles of 'Two Serious Ladies' (another of my personal favorites) or her husband Paul Bowles' 'The Sheltering Sky', or, going back a generation or so, the Djuna Barnes of 'Nightwood'. For that matter, the Nathanael West of 'Miss Lonelyhearts' and 'The Day of the Locust' presents another unique American voice missing from this imperfect list.
I am perhaps most surprised, though, by the omission of Willa Cather, a key American author of the twentieth century, a popular writer in her day who remains highly esteemed by critics and scholars, whose novels limn important experiences of transition and loss, American in their particulars but universal in their implications.
Finally, D H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love' would have made a fine pendant with 'The Rainbow', it after all being a sequel to Lawrence's shamefully suppressed earlier classic, and equal in eminence in the eyes of many critics.
Ben! the order is "heavily influenced" by the year written. That explains the out of order, order. Love your channel. You have inspired me to start reading fine literature, I never read a single book until I finished college (other than physics and math textbooks). I've read 10 books now. I'm on my way to the bookstore today to start. A hurricane is coming in today. I'll buy "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Moby Dick" to read at my beach house in Florida as the storm blows through. Thanks.
@@etiennedevignolles7538 Yes it's great so far!. I'll finish it tonight. Then on to Moby Dick.
Two books/authors that should make the list: Invisible Man by Ellison. That’s a c’mon man. And Bonfire of the Vanities by Wolfe Maybe also Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut.
Great books, all three! Completely agree with you, Joe.
Benjamin! Excellent video as always. Wanted to tell you that your videos rekindled my love of reading. Currently reading Don Quixote on your recommendation. You’re genuinely the literary mentor I’ve always wanted. Keep up the great work! :)
Thank you, Sawyer! I really appreciate that :) and I’m so thrilled to hear you’re reading Don Quixote! Terrific book. Happy reading, my friend!
So agree with you. Also going to partake of Don Quixote audiobook
It was entertaining to watch you struggle with the rationale when it was, well, right under your nose the whole time. Your commentary was still illuminating and stimulating, and I'm glad you didn't scrap it because of an error on your part. I picked up many ideas for future reading, though I think I'll start with the highly recommended (by you) that I haven't read before. I started Pride And Prejudice a day or two ago after having studiously avoiding Jane Austen for all my life. I'm finding it hilarious and absorbing.
I’d be curious to hear some recommendations from you for some great horror novels (be it classic literature or just stuff you like). Reason for the season, and all. I think you’ve talked a bit about the classic gothic novels, but would be curious to hear other recommendations.
That’s a great idea - I’d be very happy to do that. Horror, and the gothic, has been on my mind a lot recently due to the season. It would be good fun to talk about it!
Benjamin I don't know how you can talk at length in such an interesting way about all of this, but I admire that. I watch your videos all the time. If you asked most people their opinion of XXX most would say "It's good" and stop there, me included. But you carry on like a critic should. As for the list, I would add "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann. As for your appreciation of Harold Bloom, I can't understand a word of what he writes. Almost as bewildering at Auden's lectures on Shakespeare.
Thank you so much, Walker. I really appreciate that! Harold Bloom is definitely very dense, and he is a great master of ellipsis. One of the difficulties of reading him is due to just how much he chooses to leave out. Auden's an interesting one because those lectures were put together from the notes of a student in the audience. I would have loved to have heard his lectures first hand :)
Benjamin, I was enjoying the hell out of your comments on the novels after Ulysses, but then Middlemarch! LOL on Louisa May, etc. -- I couldn't agree more. ❤
Thank you so much 🥰
I had a difficult time getting into contemporary English-language literature until I found Paul Auster. I really enjoy some of his books. But I agree, it's nothing like the classics.
This is the channel that keeps on giving.
Thank you :)
Yesterday was my birthday and literally this video was like a present to me. Great job, it’s good to know many new recommendations and authors to add to my TBR list.
By the way, as I enjoy reading English novels, especially Victorian books, your opinion of each book here was so compelling. 😄
Greetings from Mexico, my friend! 👋
Happy birthday for yesterday, Axl :) I hope you had a lovely day and managed to get some good reading time in! Have a wonderful day, mi amigo!
I think of some of these reading lists: The Great Books, 1001 Books you must read before you die, the Lifetime Reading Plan, and others are meant to give us a taste of the best/first of a genre, even if that best or first isn't "great literature". Raymond Chandler is a excellent example of this. Sometimes these tastes help us explore more. For example: I love American southern literature because of To Kill a Mockingbird and Robert Penn Warren's All the President's Men, they are so atmospheric.
YES! All the President's Men! an often forgotten masterpiece!
Interestingly I'm British and to kill a mockingbird was a GCSE text for me. I remember buying the book and absolutely flying through it after our teacher announced we'd be watching the film in class, and I didn't want to experience that before having read it, given my existing interest.
Same thing happened to me (I'm from Germany) though I ended up not really liking the book as much as I had hoped. Maybe that was because I basically speed read it, will have to give it another go some time soon. Did you like it?
@@nouanni I really did and still do. I've read it several times and find myself continuing to enjoy it, despite knowing all the beats.
I didn't like 'Go set a Watchman', the sequel that was released a few years ago however...
If you are interested; I think a good accompanying novel is 'If Beale Street Could Talk' by James Baldwin which deals with similar themes to mockingbird, but from a black perspective.
@@jamcarnage ooo yeah I might have to give James Baldwins book a read that sounds really good! Thank you :)
Ahem, as a South African and three times back-to-back winner of the All South African Nit-Picking Championship I should point out JM Coetzee's surname is pronounced more like 'Coo- tzee'e' (It's Afrikaans, a daughter language of Dutch, although sounds closer to Flemish)
Thank you for your criticism.
P.S. I hope no one has made this point below.
Just made coffee and saw this good video in recommendations.Thanks, My man.
Nice one :) I hope you enjoy your coffee and the video!
I just discovered your channel and I really like what you are saying about the relatively recent novels on this list of 100 best of all time. I am sure you have noted how there does seem to be this "recentism" problem where those novels that are somehow present in the minds of the reading public shine a little brighter than maybe their aesthetic and cognitive brilliance actually reveals. I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of the list, and thank you for your taking the time and energy to talk to us about this.
Do we take into account - or can we avoid the pressures from the media. Best sellers - etc. Popularity does not equate to greatness.
I love this video, and your comments about each of the books in the list. Thank you, Ben! Not sure, but it seems they didn't include Honoré de Balzac. From my perspective, another noticeable absence is Flannery O’Connor with her short story masterpieces - I’ve just read “A good man is hard to find” for the third time! As for literature written in Spanish, I think "Pedro Páramo" by Juan Rulfo would deserve a place in the list - a significantly influential novel in Latin American literature during the XXth century.
This video was a special treat, to know you, my favorite booktuber better, for your opinions, and reactions. Would Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales constitute as a novel, if so it should have been above Bunyan.
Thank you, my friend :) I personally wouldn't consider Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to be a novel, but it undoubtedly inspired many of the greatest novelists in the language! I'm currently reading through the tales of an evening and it's a wonderful experience.
1. The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan - 1678), 2. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe - 1719), 3. Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift - 1726), 4. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson - 1748), 5. Tom Jones (Henry Fielding - 1749), 6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne - 1759), 7. Emma (Jane Austin - 1816) 8. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley - 1818), 9. Nightmare Abbey (Thomas Love Peacock - 1818), 10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Edgar Allen Poe - 1838), 11. Sybil (Benjamin Disraeli - 1845), 12. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte - 1847), 13. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte - 1847), 14. Vanity Fair (Wm Thackeray - 1848), 15. David Copperfield (C. Dickens - 1850), 16. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1850), 17. Moby Dick (Herman Melville - 1851), 18. Alice in Wonderland (Louis Carroll - 1865), 19. Moonstone (Wilkie Collins - 1868) 20. Little Women (Louisa Mae Alcott- 1868) 21. Middlemarch (George Eliot - 1871 ), 22. The Way We Live Now (Anthony Trollope - 1875), 23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain - 1884), 24. Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson - 1886), 25. Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome - 1887), 26. The Sign of Four (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 1890). 27. The Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde - 1891), 28. New Grub Street (George Gissing - 1891), 29. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy - 1895), 30. The Red Badge of Courage (Stephan Crane - 1895)
At last! Thank you for confirming my opinion that Petsuatipn is Jane Austen's masterpiece.
The late eminent American critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019) also held this view.
Benjamin - due to you...I started Middlemarch. Mary Ann Evans got me to complete it. She is amazingly insightful!
Wow! That's amazing :) I'm so happy to hear that, Diana. Such a masterpiece!
At last, at last! I've been waiting for years for someone to say they preferred 'Dharma Bums' to 'On the Road'.
And I agree with your comments on 'East of Eden' as well.
Ben, you glossed over “Under the Volcano” with a “sounds good” and though it isn’t for everyone, I couldn’t recommend it more strongly for a Joycean such as yourself
I realise allegory is generally disliked but CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia are brilliant, just brilliant.
Three Men in A Boat is perhaps the funniest book I have ever read! I was surprised to see it listed, though.
For Beckett’s novels, would recommend MOLLOY. Can also tell you’re into film: fun fact that Orson Welles only made CITIZEN KANE (1941) because he couldn’t get the funding to make HEART OF DARKNESS. Of course, he’d cast himself as Kurtz...
When I see Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” over “The Sound and the Fury” and “Absolom, Absolom” I suspect it has to do with length and not worthiness.
Honestly I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on the factor that the books were listed in chronological order 😭😂 The dates were right there with the titles and you even read some of them out loud haha. I kept waiting and waiting for you to realise it and found your rants very frustrating since I wished to tell you that it’s not a worst to best ranking but alas I couldn’t of course. Other than that I liked hearing your thoughts and would be interested in seeing your own list!
Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite films ever as well -- I also love Paths of Glory, The Killing and Dr. Strangelove... Clockwork... yea, basically everything he did. In my opinion they're all endlessly rewatchable. but i do love those early films especially. his genius shown through almost fully formed very early on.
Agreed. I'm old enough to have had the privilege of seeing 2001 A Space Odyssey on the gigantic Cinerama screen with no foreknowledge about it or its influential use of music. What an experience it was, so much so that I promptly saw it again a week later.
@@tonybennett4159 lucky!!
Fascinating and instructive commentary. Absolutely clearsighted and clearheaded, in my opinion. I find myself in almost total agreement with this charming and erudite man.
Hi Ben! I’d love to see an episode on your thoughts and recommendations of American literature in the future, please! 😊
That is such a great suggestion! Thank you so much :) American Literature has gifted me most of my favourite works of all time, so this is definitely something I would be passionate to speak about!
Well, two books in and I am thrilled! Great to see Aussie Thomas Kenneally in the list. Disgrace by Coetzee is an astounding work which stayed with me for quite a while after I finished it. Very excited to see what's going to unfold! I was amused to see your enthusiasm for Patrick White and 'Voss'. I had to read White's 'Tree of Man' for last year of high school and absolutely loathed it, but that was 40 years ago and I am sure I would view it quite differently today. White is Australia's only literature Nobel Prize winner so I should give him a second chance!
Pilgrim's progress is my favorite novel. I'm glad someone else thinks so too.
I subscribed simply because of your comments about Steinbeck. In lists of Nobel prize winning authors who shouldn't have received the prize, Steinbeck is frequently mentioned by critics, which is unconscionable. In my estimation, he is not only the greatest American author, he is also the most American. His work is breathtakingly beautiful. And like you, I would list East of Eden as being slightly better than the Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, in America, most junior high and high school kids are introduced to Steinbeck with either The Red Pony, The Pearl, or Of Mice and Men, and those stories - although important - do not represent the sheer power of his work. And also, as a humorist, he is amazing. Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday come to mind. Thanks for the video and your insightful comments.
Agree with you about Steinbeck but would add Hemingway as well...
Well said!
Thanks for putting your time into this. I pretty much lost confidence when they placed Kazuo ishiguro so low and picked "an artist of the floating world" over his masterpiece for me "the remains of the day." Btw you definitely ought to make time to finish Klara and the sun, the latter part is very illuminating.
Ben, I wonder if you have done anything on Thomas Wolfe? I started reading Of Time and the River and I am enjoying his rejection of Hemingway’s brevity. It seems like Hemingway takes a black and white photo to get the message out but Wolfe paints with a full palette to squeeze every nuance out of every circumstance - and then does it again from a different perspective … thoughts?
I would have to include “Stoner,” the 1965 novel by John Williams in this list. A wonderful read. A masterpiece. The best “literary” novel I’ve read in the past 5 years, and in my top 50 favorites all-time.
Off the top of my head, here are a few contemporary (literary) novelists who’ve meant a lot to me. And one of their novels should, at the very least, be considered for inclusion in this list.
Thomas Pynchon?
Paul Auster?
Hilary Mantel?
Walker Percy?
Margaret Atwood?
Cormac McCarthy?
James Salter?
Joan Didion?
Jonathan Franzen?
Nadine Gordimer?
Evan S. Connell?
Bernard Malamud?
David Markson?
Charles Portis?
Paula Fox?
agree, Stoner is a classic
Glad you mentioned Paul Auster. I read 'The New York Trilogy' when I was sixteen, and it inspired my lifelong interest in American fiction. 'Moon Palace' is great too.
just ordered Middlemarch last week from Target，waiting for it to arrived，now after watching this video，cant wait to read it！
That's amazing :) I'm so excited for you! Incredible novel :)
Our 9th grade English teacher in 1963 had us read SILAS MARNER and it has been my favorite by Eliot. I also read The Mill on the Floss and then Adam Bede.
You won't be disappointed (hopefully). I studied it at school and University and have read it four times.
Found myself wishing Alice Monroe had written a novel so she could qualify. Her short stories are rereads for me. I would have found a place for Wallace Stegner’s “angle of repose” and put “on the road “ on the road. Maybe find a place for Ralph Ellison ‘s “ the invisible man”.
Yes, Patrick White is wonderful. Voss, Tree of Man, The Solid Mandala, etc… Worthy. Keep up the great work
Fringe of Leaves...one of the best books I've ever read.
Just absolutely LOVE your videos.
Wish I had found it long before.
Learning a lot from your insight, criticisms & recommendations, etc.
Good day!
Aw, thank you so much :) I really appreciate you watching! Happy reading :)
David Copperfield is my favourite Dickens's book! I wanted to depict morality in a very powerful way, to teach about good and bad, this novel is a perfect tool for this purpose. Plus Uriah Heep! This character is so inconceivably evil and abominable! I felt authentic disgust. An iconic achievement!
I agree with Pilgrim's Progress being #1 because I'm biased. 🤣 It's not just a story about one person or a handful of people, it's the story of the Church, it's the story of every Christian everywhere. When I read it, I'm not being transported into a different world, but I'm given a clear picture of my own. I'm reminded of where I came from, what happened to me, and most importantly where I'm going.
Ben, I should add that I think Anthony Trollope's Barchester series of novels should be in the canon, especially 'The Warden' & 'Barchester Towers', I have loved these books for so long and go back and re-read them. I find The Warden comforting actually, I can sit and read this on a rainy afternoon! I would also suggest that 'The Forsyte Saga' by John Galsworthy seems to me to be underrated & even ignored numerous times. Galsworthy wrote an amazing canon in the Forsyte Saga, on its' own. Perhaps the writing may not be up to scratch but the storyline and themes are so entertaining and the setting! If you would like to get into some Australian literature like 'Voss' might I also suggest you read 'The Timeless Land' (1941) by Eleanor Dark and 'The Getting of Wisdom' (1910) by Henry Handel Richardson, also the canon's of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson shouldn't be missed. 'My Brilliant Career', of course 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', 'An Australian Girl' by Catherine Martin. Anything Patrick White wrote is great, he certainly was an Australian literary powerhouse.
I love all of Trollope and Galsworthy Thackeray..Margret Attwood .........Wilkie Colling......above all Henry James
To add to this, the True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey is wonderful. It takes a few pages to get into the voice, but I was so happy to see it on this list. Not many people I know who do love to read, have read it. I always recommend it.
I agree, love The Forsyte Saga,such a great story.
"That's part of the tragedy. That our lives are not long enough to read everything worth reading". Oh my god man i think of this sometimes and it makes me really sad. However it also motivates me to read more and spend less time playing games and watching social media.
Heaven will give us eternity to read and gain knowledge. What joy!
@@carrollwilliams8861 I hope so!!!
To Kill A Mockingbird was compulsory reading in my high school in the UK.
I know it's not a list, but the majority of what everyman library has published is worth reading.
I 100% agree with you. I love Everyman - their selection is incredible. Definitely the foundation of any good reading program.
I read it not too long after it was published here in US. Both it and the movie were game-changers for me.
I just found you. I’m so happy. I listened to your lecture on shakespeare’s sonnets. It’s such a new topic for me. I’m going to get the book you recommended w one sonnet and then notes, page by page …
Thank you so much :) I'm so happy to hear you're diving into Shakespeare's sonnets! A sonnet a day makes for a wonderful reading routine. I'm going through them all over again myself at the moment!
Intriguing, if fractal, list. But was introduced to some writers and books I never knew. I'm astounded (perhaps shouldn't be), that Iris Murdoch didn't make the list -- not even 'The Sea, The Sea', her Booker winner. But then, Murdoch is one of my favorite writers, and is not everyone's taste. I wonder what your thoughts are about her work Benjamin, in the Irish literature? Also, I'd love to see you do a list of '50 Great Short Novels'! Conrad, Kafka, Melville, Flaubert, etc? Many moderns as well as core literature in that genre. And while Song of Solomon made the list, I'm surprised that NO Baldwin made the list for its period of time.
Pilgrim's Progress is teaching in a way that never leaves the heart and mind and spirit.
Surely it is time for DH Lawrence to be brought back in to the canon and .... Nostromo possibly the greatest twentieth century novel written in English?
Love all 4 Rabbit novels. Updike captures the feel of each decade.
Agreed, and his prose style has been emulated, but never matched.
Yep, building up a stack of Golding's books with the Spire at the top really warms me up on the inside...
Lol 🤣🤣
It's funny you mention Hardy along with Lawrence. I have never been able to appreciate Hardy, but I love Lawrence!
What do you recommend from Lawrence? I’ve not read anything by him.
Thank you Ben for keeping up this great work. Your work has genuinely brought me closer towards books where I find my serenity. I am currently reading "The Rainbow" by DH Lawrence (40 pages a day).
Thank you, my friend! I really appreciate such kind words. I love that phrasing - “find my serenity”. We’re reading The Rainbow at the same time :) I’m loving it so far!
Lawrence is one of the greatest novelists in the English language. I recommend 'Women in Love' and 'Lady Chatterley' s Lover'.
I love lists, I always find a book or two that peek my interest. Where or if a book appears on a list is down to the compiler and I don't hold it against them. I remember picking up Franny and Zooey form a charity store and really loved it. I hadn't read Catcher so went on to read it. Unfortunately, Holden Caulfield's character grated. I just kept thinking he has every advantage. I don't think I would have thought that way if I had read it when I was younger.
Franny and Zooey is terrific.
Sooo love Franny and Zooey!
Enjoyed listening to the list. I’ve read 52 novels on the list. Some of the others listed I had never heard of and others have me looking to read.
Thanks for reading then list. I,like you have Irish from Dublin and Cork, though I’m a Scot living in California.
Dracula impressed me as a contrast between them and now. Instead of being about killing vampires, it was about salvation. A real good versus evil.
Am I the only one who is troubled by the omission of Walter Scott ? He was certainly the most influential novelists of all time, and left many to choose from but my personal favorite is The Heart of Midlothian. And I would think that a novel by Smollet should be included as well. In modern times what about Anthony Powell' novels ?
I was reading his Music of Time series around the same time that I was reading The Prime of Muriel Spark's Miss Jean Brodie. I only got about half-way through that series but I think some of the novels should be on the list. And also what about Durrel's Alexandria Quartet ?
On the American side it seems to me there are 4 novels that should not be omitted.
First of all, James Fenimore Cooper whatever his faults was still a great novelist and
like Scott invented a whole genre of Frontier fiction. My favorites however are Myles Wallingford and Afloat and Ashore which are epic in nature. Next, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin which is a book that changed the world forever. That is, to my mind a major omission. I also think that Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe belongs on any list of great English novels. And finally Mitchell's Gone With the Wind which is probably a controversial choice these politically correct days, but it is still a very important book.
I never see Winston Graham's Poldark series on any lists. His writing is AMAZING. The writing demands that you live within the story. His character development is a steady growth throughout the series., and his characters stay true to their written characterizations throughout. I'm not speaking of the Masterpiece Theatre series on PBS - although that was well done. But reading Graham's words - he brings you into the Cornish landscape - you can hear the gulls, you can smell the sea. You can envision the angry, enormous waves crashing against the cliffs. He brings the French revolution and the resulting Napoleonic Wars, up close, as they effect the economy of Cornwall, the decisions made in Parliament, and the life of England's inhabitants - all while keeping the continental conflicts in the background. His descriptions of the ships, their crews, and the shipwrecks are palatable. His description of the 1790s - 1800s attire is well detailed. All in all, the writing is phenomenal! I highly recommend READING the books. Or, Audible has the entire series in an audiobook - the reader, Oliver J. Hembrough does a beautiful job changing his voice for each character.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Ruth. The Poldark books are, in my opinion, a perfect example of consistently excellent writing over all 13 of the books, and I think Winston Graham was seriously underrated as a writer. They really do suck you in to Cornish life at that time, and they are a magnificent accomplishment.
I am thoroughly enjoying listening to you. It's always nice to know, to recall how many books I have read this far in my life. I must have been quite a voracious reader when I wasvmuch younger. Such pleasure in being helped to recall this time. Thank you so much.
Funny, my husband thought I was watching a sporting match by my reactions to this video! LOL
I have read many of the books on the list and made a list of those I would like to read.
I absolutely agree with you about the Jane Austen pick. Persuasion is my favorite and then Pride and Prejudice. And I will definitely be reading Middlemarch due to your high praise.
I know it's not loved by the critics but how on Middle Earth is Lord of The Rings not in there? Personally my favourite book but that aside, just for the scale of its world building and lasting influence it should be there.
I laughed at Wind in the Willows being there ahead of it. I mean, I liked Wind in the Willows, but really...
'The Man Who Loved Children' by Christina Stead deserves to be on any top 100 list.
What a wonderful find you are have watched 5 videos straight off, was also surprised at how many of the "50" I had readwill undertake one of the lecture series also Thankyou so much
I like the chronology as it makes it easier to see the progression of language and culture.
Probably won't make you rethink Updike, but his short story "A & P" provides a glimpse at why he is so favored. Thanks for your work from a recent graduate in English Lit/Creative Writing - Long Beach, California. As for The Shining, careful viewing reveals that the only supernatural is Danny's ESP, while the book is rife with the supernatural.
A & P is a great story. I remember very little of what I read and I remember it.
Your words are so deliberate, it's entrancing
I don't understand why Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea isn't on the list. For Gothic, I just can't stop reading Melmoth the Wanderer, by Oscar Wilde's relative Charles Robert Maturin. Yep, another Irish. Got to read Clarissa! Thank you so much for this UA-cam page. It's bringing me back my love for fiction. For some reason the last years I have been solely immersed in non-fiction reading.
I’ve found re-reading books to be very enlightening, I’ve found that they have changed for me. I assume I have changed and forgotten!
I completely agree with you about Dharma Bums vs On the Road.
Your disappointment was so great that whenever you scolded the camera I felt guilty as if I'd compiled this (as it turned out) chronological list 😂
My own top 100 would be quite a bit different- I find the older I get the more annoying it is that the published lists pf great books reflect such a male bias. I do now own a copy of Lolita, and will get to it eventually, and I waded through a lot of other, probably similar works of men's literature in the course of reading my way through the Boxall 1001 Books lists (a project I may eventually finish). I finished 60 of the books on this top 100 list, so far, and most were at least ok. My personal favorites from the authors included in this list are often different (My favorite Steinbeck is probably still The Winter of Our Discontent, and my favorite Rushdie was The Enchantress of Florence.) but I can usually see why particular authors make these lists still. It is nice to see how other dedicated readers react to books on these lists. I may have to shift some of the remaining books I haven't read yet on this list into my TBR soon.
My favourite novel is 'Black Beauty' by Anna Sewell.