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?





