The New Classics: Books
July 16th, 2008 | by Scott |I have a slight affinity for reading and dig a decent list. Recently, Entertainment Weekly listed the top 100 books of the last 25 years. They dubbed them the new classics.
As much as I read I’m a little surprised that I have only read 22 of them. I’ve placed in bold the ones that I have finished. (Note: I’m 95% sure I read Presumed Innocent several years ago, so I counted it.)
I can’t argue with The Road at number one but thought Parting the Waters should have been much higher.
I absolutely hated both The Corrections and A Prayer For Owen Meany but I know that puts me in a small minority. I’m pleased with the addition of Egger’s book simply for having one of my all-time favorite titles.
Reading Lonesome Dove made me very loath to ever use the “poke” feature on Facebook.
Some glaring omissions to me include: Middlesex, Oryx and Crake, The Time Traveler’s Wife and the Life of Pi.
Look over my list and give me your thoughts. How many have you read? What have I not perused that I need to pick up?
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)
16 Responses to “The New Classics: Books”
By hermit greg on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
What an irritating list. Do they have no respect for genre?
Anyway, read Oscar Wao, Gilead, and Bel Canto for sure. A Thousand Acres has a fan in our house, but I haven’t read it. And I can’t recommend the Stone Diaries enough.
By Terri on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
I’ve only read 8 of them. thanks for the list, I’ll start working on it. Give me your top 5 so I’ll have some where to start. I just finished The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg. I think I like him because he’s from Sweet Home Alabama.
By Scott on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
HG, you should do your own list. Admittedly it is a bit scattershot.
I’ll put your recommendations on my list. I’ve meant to read Gilead for a while but never gotten around to it.
Terri, my top 5 out of this list would be: The Road, Parting the Waters, Blindness, The Curious Incident, and The Year of Magical Thinking.
By hermit greg on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
I’d rather make a catalog than a list.
By Greg Brooks on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
Speaking of genre, I’m happy to see a graphic novel and a limited series comic in the top 20. The top 15, in fact. And another comic, Sandman, in the top 50, which wasn’t even a limited series except insofar as it did eventually end, and so in that sense it was in fact limited. I suppose one could say it turned out to be limited, but then don’t we all?
Also #53 uses the world of comics creators as its milieu, in large part. And I liked it. I also liked Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Both very emotionally engaging, I felt.
By hermit greg on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
Oh right. Read Maus and Maus II.
By happy on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
well like all list it’s well someone’s opinion. I’ve read 13 and have the Road next to the bed. Loved Owen Meany….so you might be right. Terri read more Rick Bragg. Gilead would be my recommendation and it should have be higher. Surprised White Noise was left off the list. I love Fever Pitch and a Long Way Down more then High Fidelity. And Krakauer did a wonderful job with Into the Wild and Under the Banner of Heaven and I’m leaning toward Wild more Then Thin Air. Not much non fiction on the list which is rather disappointing.
By Steve Allison on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
“Beloved” is marvelous, like nothing I’ve ever read before. Somehow you feel like she has conveyed what it feels like to have lived in the final days of slavery, what they felt and how they thought. “The Joy Luck Club” travels our minds to China for histories of young women who grow up and are socialized their, brought to America, and continuing to the next generation, their daughters who, born and raised here, have a foot in both cultures, mostly this one. No conflicts there, no. It interested me in the same way that Chaim Potok’s work bridges between generations born outside the U. S. and their children born here. Both books interest me because there is an overlap with issues between southern generations born in the teens, twenties and thirties, their political and religious inclinations and subsequent generations. “Neuromancer” is prescient in that it describes a future dystopia and, amazingly, an internet. When I read it in 1990, I had no idea how prophetic it would be. Those are my top three. Quick and easy reads but good.
By Scott on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
It would be hard to determine which Krakauer book was the most enjoyable for me. I can’t argue with Into Thin Air because that is the one that really posited him as a force to be reckoned with.
Steve, I need to read Beloved. I was turned off from it by a lackluster screen adaptation.
By Mark on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
I’ve only read 4 on the list. 26, 84, 92 & 100. I’ve gotten to where I prefer short story anthologies most of the time(horror and fantasy).
By Steve Allison on Jul 17, 2008 | Reply
I would never have thought it would be possible to make a movie from it that could convey feelings that the book does.
By matt elliott on Jul 19, 2008 | Reply
“The DaVinci Code” made the list. Hilarious.
Scott, three are on the list that I really love, and you haven’t read them. Be sure to read
“Angela’s Ashes” — you’ll enjoy getting to know Frank McCourt.
“The Poisonwood Bible” — a favorite of mine.
“Atonement” — excellent read, but give it about 90 pages to really take off.
Sorry I haven’t commented earlier on this. I’m wrapping up a mission trip in Cozumel this morning. About to start packing to come home!
By Scott on Jul 20, 2008 | Reply
I laughed as well when I saw DaVinci’s inclusion.
I loved the movie adaptation of Atonement. It’s been on my list to check out.
By Chad on Jul 23, 2008 | Reply
Clockers was excellent. Kind of a precursor to The Wire. His Dark Materials was awesome and I don’t see it but Middlesex was great.
Chad
By Scott on Jul 24, 2008 | Reply
I got about 100 pages into His Dark Materials and didn’t really enjoy it. I might try it again sometime.
Middlesex was great.
By Chad on Jul 24, 2008 | Reply
Book 3, Amber Spyglass, blew me away.