The Guardian's 50 books you must read

Yesterday The Guardian published a list of 50 books you must read. There's no explanatory notes about the list (that I could find), but having looked at it I've come to the conclusion that all the titles have been made into films. Hence, if I was to view this as a list of films you must see my score would be relatively high. Alas, as a reading list, my score is typically woeful.

Here's the list in full (I've highlighted the ones I have read and put an asterix next to the films I've seen):

1984 by George Orwell* 
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines 
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl*
Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and other stories by Annie Proulx
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Different Seasons (includes The Shawshank Redemption) by Stephen King*
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard* 
Fight Club by Chuck Pahluniak*
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard* 
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming*
Goodfellas by Nicholas Pileggi* 
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Jaws by Peter Benchley* 
LA Confidential by James Ellroy* 
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos*
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 
Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens* 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey* 
Orlando by Virgina Woolf*
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier* 
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally* 
Sin City by Frank Miller 
Tess of the D'Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy* 
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham*
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatjee* 
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles* 
The Godfather by Mario Puzo* 
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle* 
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling 
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett* 
The Outsiders by SE Hinton* 
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Railway Children by Edith Nesbitt* 
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro* 
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré*
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith 
The Vanishing by Tim Krabbé*
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
Trainspotting by Irvine Walsh* 
Watership Down by Richard Adams*   

That makes it 19 out of 50 for me for the books, and 32 out of 50 for the films. How did you do?

Comments

[Isabella]

Exact same numbers, different titles.

[cormerod]

A very odd list. The author seems to be a Hollywood producer- even though the Guardian put it out! Very interesting, the American slant continues with heavy doses of the Brits...Have you all been following the PEN conference in NY?....Orhan Pamuk gave the keynote...see http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1304 for lots of information...
And thanks kimbofo for having this site. I happened across it and am enjoying reading and thinking about books with others....

[Julia]

17 books 19 films 12 both

[kimbofo]

cormerod, think the list was compiled by a load of Guardian journalists, rather than one person. Thanks for kind comments about the blog - and the link to Pamuk's speech.

[Perry Middlemiss]

I got to 26 out of the 50 which surprised me enormously. This is quite a peculiar list. Even if Guardian journos got it together they are still heavily influenced by twentieth-century film. Watership Down? What's that doing there?

Well, at least one Aussie sneaked in.

[kimbofo]

Perry, have you not read Watership Down? It's a gorgeous read - granted I was about 12 when I read it!!

[dani]

i'm obviously very badly read. i scored 9 reads and 39 seen. i feel like a pleb.

[kimbofo]

Dani, I wouldn't worry about it... I always score very badly on these things, so my relatively high score on this one was a first!

[Ali L.]

Have you really never read Pride & Prejudice? (Wow.) Do.

[kimbofo]

Ali L, having seen about a million different TV/film adaptations I never felt a deep and abiding need to read the book. I know, I know. If this makes me a pleb then so be it. ;)

[Johnny]

Excellent list. I have not read them all, but there are some classics there. My famorites were the Outsiders, Empire of the Sun, and One Who Flew Over A Cukoos nest.