« Norwegian wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize | Main | Book Group Session 6: Book choice revealed »

Saturday, May 06, 2006

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


Editorial policy

Contact details


  • Reading Matters is edited by kimbofo, an expat Australian who resides in London, UK. She is a trained journalist who works in magazine publishing and has a slight book addiction which is beyond cure.
    You can find out more here.

    kimbofo also posts at London Cycling Diary and kimbofo.

    She also publishes photographs on smugmug.

    Click to email kimbofo

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter

    Categories

    Books read in 2009

    Book blogs

    Site admin


    • Top 21 Book Sites

    Blog powered by TypePad
    Member since 04/2004

    Copyright Notice


    • Creative Commons License
      This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You must not copy and distribute any of the reviews on this site without giving Reading Matters credit. Please note that original photographs on this site are also copyright protected.
    Bookmark and Share