Talking Points

Disclaimer: I've had a scorching bad headache for days, so all typo's, bizarre sentences and unintelligible writing can be blamed on that, not me. Okay, thanks.

After I wrote about my questions about the 100 list I did go back and read over the talking points. The page doesn’t answer and of my ‘how and why questions ’ about these books, but rather, ask more questions (thanks!) and leave it up to the readers, book clubs, intrepid (foolish?) bloggers and really anyone to provide their own answers to these questions.

Having lived in the world of academia for the last three years I’ve forgotten about the concept of “no wrong answers”. I spend most of my days working on school work and most of that time is working out what I think the teachers what as the right answers. I do this because my opinions on Philosophy and Religion are waaaaayyyy out there, and not going to win me any marks during my exams. (but that’s a discussion for another time, and probably a totally different blog)

The result of this is that I am a little wary of my own opinions about these books and am a little fearful of “getting it wrong”.

But when it comes to books and reading, there really are no wrong answers. I can read a book and love it, while my closest friend might hate it and that’s okay.

The Talking Point’s questions that’s stand out for me are the following.

1. Which books would you omit and which would you add to our list? What is your top ten, or top one hundred?
2.  Any list of "best novels" is open to debate. What do you think should be the criteria for judging the best novels of the century? What makes a book one of the best?
3.  Is it possible to compare books as different as Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World? Are there any features that unite these three books? More widely, are there any literary features that unite the best books as a whole? How would you compare one of the books on the list to your favourite book that did not make the list?
4.  There are eight women novelists represented on the list. Which other women novelists might have been included? Would there be more women novelists on a list compiled from books published in the nineteenth century? From a list of books published in the last fifty years?

Point one, is very personal opinion based. I would omit The Ginger Man, no doubt, because I didn’t like it. I would put 'Lord of The Rings' in my Top Ten because I loved it and think everyone should read it because it’s awesome. Pretty lame arguing points to be sure, but that brings about point 2 – by what criteria does one judge a book? In the last post I talked about Displaced English Majors method and I like it and suspect a similar criteria was used by the board members.

I would use a similar method as well. Adding in a question about how a book potentially changed writing styles and altered the way that people perceived writing. 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' altered forever the genre of Fantasy fiction and I would hazard an ill informed guess that they helped push the genre towards the mainstream. If I actually bothered to do some research I could probably find out for sure, but I haven’t and probably won’t.

I like point 3 the best. The list contains books that are unbelievably similar, see previous post, and books that are completely different – their examples of 'Ulysses' and 'Brave New World' are stand outs in this. I don’t think the two are comparable; yet coming to the next question in point three raises the question about the books as a whole. A question I don’t think I’m qualified to answer – yet. I’ll try to remember to get back to it when I’m finished the list.

Then there’s point 4 about women. There are a lot of great women authors missing from this list, Jane Austen for one and perhaps L.M Montgomery and Alice Walker.

After the Modern Library published their list, The Radcliff Publishing House also came out with their own list, which contains many of the same books and Authors, as well as including authors that are not American white males, which dominate the Modern Library list (also mentioned in the talking points). After I’ve completely this list – I think I’ll read that one! (it's has 'Winnie the Pooh' on it!!)

All of this babbling is coming to a point which it that I am now coming to the realization that having a list of WHY they chose these books would be counter-productive. The whole idea, as the said is to get people talking about books. It leaves it open for people to come up with their own reasons the books should or shouldn’t be on the list and creating their own lists.

I should have just listened to them in the first place.


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Footnote: The Non-Fiction list is some kind of Awesome too.





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