Read Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century

today i finished #69:
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

don’t get me wrong: it’s not that doing these book lists is a chore, believe me. well – it’s not a chore all of the time, at least. i like the sense of satisfaction working through these lists is giving me and lately, when i’ve been just as hungry for books as ever but losing inspiration on what to reach for, it has definitely helped.

bweteen The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which i finished a fortnight ago) i read three or four books (um, not including the Sweet Valley Twins books that i bought in the charity shop the other day, haha!) before i attempted this. i’m glad i did. ploughing straight into The House of Mirth after Murakami’s obtuse novel might have made me swear off these lists entirely.

not that i didn’t enjoy this book: i did, kind of, in a bemused and slightly amused way. it felt almost as strangely fantastical as Wind-Up Bird – after all, both books are so far removed from my life that they might as well have been set on different planets. the lead, Lily Bart, is a stupidly head-strong woman with a seriously self-destructive streak. without giving away too much of the plot, there are several points throughout the novel when the heroine could easily save herself and rectify all her previous mistakes by admitting defeat, but she refuses to.

admittedly, her saviours come dressed only as suitors and she refuses to settle for a marriage like that. i’m not the type to advocate marrying for money or even safety, but the whole book seems to focus on her desire to marry for money but then watches her as she throws chance after chance to do exactly that away. alright, so she loves someone else, blah blah. it’s frustrating and it’s not as if this has never been written about before.

i think my favourite character was Carry Fisher. twice divorced and with half a dozen scandals trailing behind her, she whips society round her little finger and makes a fortune off of her own talents and skills at networking. surely the perfect PR woman, far ahead of her time! she tries to help Lily and the useless flailing girl just ruins everything with her contrary nature. yes, i can see that a lot of Lilys actions are driven by some twisted desire to be ethical and good but a lot of the time its misguided and ends up harming her further.

i can see why this book was listed on the Erica Jongs Top 100 list i’m reading – i can see where Lily is an almost proto-type feminist and i’m sure the way she pays for her beliefs strikes the chords of Jong’s readers, pupils and suscribers. i’m far more surprised that it was also included in Modern Library’s Top 100. i’m glad that it ticks two boxes off for me, but it seems an odd choice for Modern Library. still, i’m glad to be reading a womans work for once on that list!

i didn’t hate this book, nor love it. a love of dresses is something i can relate to, but the other flaws i see in Lily Bart i can sometimes see in myself and it unnerves me to read of her downfall. although i found this easy to read and i suppose quite liked it, this is not the book for me and i doubt i will ever read it again.

13 read. 87 left!

today i finished #65:
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t fat, stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you’ve got any yarbles that is, you eunuch jelly thou!”

this is another that has been sitting on my shelves for an embarassingly long time without being read. i’m glad i was spurred into reading it – it was amazing. withough a doubt, this one of the best and personal favourites that i’ve read since beginning these book lists.

12 down, 88 to go.

today i read #41:
Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.

“Simon looked up, feeling the weight of his wet hair, and gazed up at the sky. Up there, for once, were clouds, great bulging towers that sprouted away over the island, grey and cream and copper-coloured. The clouds were sitting on the land; they squeezed, produced moment by moment, this close, tormenting heat. Even the butterflies deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and dripped. Simon lowered his head, carefully keeping his eyes shut, then sheltered them with his hand. There were no shadows under the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness, so that what was real seemed illusive and without definition. The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted the runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leap-frog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back, saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood – and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition. In Simon’s right temple, a pulse began to beat on the brain.”

i should have read this book years ago.
it’s wonderful.

11 down, 89 to go.

today i finished #79:
A Room With A View by E.M. Forster.

i spotted a copy of this while i was browsing in a charity shop and remembered that it was one of the books on this list, so i bought it. it turned out to be a completely criminal waste of 25 pence.

i cannot begin to tell you how much i truely hated every single thing about this superficial book. every last little shallow comment and misogynistic statement pissed me off royally. i don’t want to write about it because any moment now i’m going to
descend into swear words and shake my fist.

a paragraph i especially detested, page 60:

“This [riding the electric tram alone] she might not attempt. It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their misson was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then depised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.”

this book is one of the worst books i have ever had the misfortune to read. it took me longer than it should of to
read this book because i hated it so much, but at least it’s over and is another one crossed off my list. to be honest, i’m
really sad that it even appeared on this list at all.

10 down, 90 to go.

today i finished #9:
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence.

it’s a very easy book to read and i read it quickly and pretty effortlessly, but i can’t say that i was sorry to finish it.
it’s not that i disliked it, because i didn’t, but i found very little in it to actually like.

one section i did like – page 228:
“He dropped down the hills on his bicycle. The roads were greasy, so he had to let it go. He felt a pleasure as the machine plunged over the second, steeper drop in the hill. “Here goes!” he said. It was risky, because of the curve in the darkness at the bottom, and because of the brewer’s wagons with drunken wagoners asleep. His bicycles seemed to fall beneath him, and he loved it. Recklessness is almost a man’s revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.”

it is one of the very few books that appear on both this list and the more frivolousbook list that i am also attempting but i really do think it is highly over-rated.

9 down, 91 to go.

started 1st january 2006. this is the serious to the frivolous. (books read are bolded.)

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

(for my own reference – books i’d read before starting:)

4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
13. 1984 by George Orwell
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys