The Four Word Film Review Fourum
Home | Profile | Register | Active Topics | Members | Search | FAQ
Return to my fwfr
Frequently Asked Questions Click for advanced search
 All Forums
 Film Related
 General
 Classic/popular fiction to read/watch.

Note: You must be registered in order to post a reply.
To register, click here. Registration is FREE!

Screensize:
UserName:
Password:
Format Mode:
Format: BoldItalicizedUnderlineStrikethrough Align LeftCenteredAlign Right Horizontal Rule Insert HyperlinkInsert Email Insert CodeInsert QuoteInsert List
   
Message:

Smilies
Angry [:(!] Approve [^] Big Smile [:D] Black Eye [B)]
Blush [:I] Clown [:o)] Cool [8D] Dead [xx(]
Disapprove [V] Duh [7] Eight Ball [8] Evil [}:)]
Gulp [12] Hog [13] Kisses [:X] LOL [15]
Moon [1] Nerd [18] Question [?] Sad [:(]
Shock [:O] Shy [8)] Skull [20] Sleepy [|)]
Smile [:)] Tongue [:P] Wink [;)] Yawn [29]

   -  HTML is OFF | Forum Code is ON
 
   

T O P I C    R E V I E W
Sean Posted - 22/01/2011 : 04:58:53
This is one of those notes that spreads through Facebook, it's one of the more interesting ones so I thought I'd post it here for those who don't use FB (I put it in the Films section as it's also movie-related):-

Edit:- I hunted around for the source of this list (i.e., at the BBC), found nothing, but found this.
It's interesting comparing the BBC list with the FB list. There's nothing 'classic' about either, the BBC list was originally for a "nation's best-loved novel" search hence the inclusion of contemporary popular material such as Harry Potter among the classic works. So there's certainly nothing 'authoritative' about the list.

Edit 2: Thanks to lamhasuas, it turns out that this list has nothing to do with the BBC but is a result of a poll at The Guardian for World Book Day in 2007. 2000 people took part and each nominated 10 books they could not live without.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Instructions:-

Copy this into your NOTES.
Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or from which you've read an excerpt.
Underline any where you've seen the movie or stageplay.
Tag other book nerds, and tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D�Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler�s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker�s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma -Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli�s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid�s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones�s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight�s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno - Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte�s Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
15   L A T E S T    R E P L I E S    (Newest First)
SixFourian Posted - 25/01/2011 : 11:14:32
@lamhasuas:

My degree was in English and linguistics as well (and maths) but I didn't really enjoy the English, because/therefore it was my weak subject. I just got by on things I'd studied for A-level until my final year when I plumped for all Old English just to get away from the main part of the department, and to be more linguisticy, and that was a breath of fresh air.
ci�nas Posted - 25/01/2011 : 08:05:17
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n

Yep, I guess I could read LOTR three times (at least) in the time it'd take me to wade through the Bard's every word. But if I was stuck on a desert island with only 10 books then one of them may as well be the Complete Works.

I guess though - given this list is based on "books I can't live without" - numerous people would pick the Complete Works (why exclude anything and just list a play?) and the bible, even if they never got around to reading every word.


Absolutely. The list is completely misrepresented on FB.

As for asking people (especially people on FB) about what books they claim to have read:

http://www.examiner.com/book-in-national/top-10-books-people-lie-about-reading-and-the-10-authors-they-actually-are-reading



Sean Posted - 25/01/2011 : 02:36:12
Yep, I guess I could read LOTR three times (at least) in the time it'd take me to wade through the Bard's every word. But if I was stuck on a desert island with only 10 books then one of them may as well be the Complete Works.

I guess though - given this list is based on "books I can't live without" - numerous people would pick the Complete Works (why exclude anything and just list a play?) and the bible, even if they never got around to reading every word.
AC Posted - 25/01/2011 : 01:32:34
I've read all of Shakespeare, no doubt about it, in the course of my work. I can say so with certainty because my PhD thesis was based around Quarto-Folio variance so I read all sorts of variations on the same pieces (such as the many versions of 'Hamlet' and 'Lear'). I only finished the canon a few years ago, but it was a concerted effort to dig my way through the more obscure works, just so that I didn't get caught out at conferences. With that said, it is my specialty, so the point stands that most casual readers would never get the chance to read the canon or the Bible.
ci�nas Posted - 25/01/2011 : 01:21:31
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n

quote:
Originally posted by lamhasuas

Who on earth has read the entire Bible
I'd say it's a safe assumption that numerous Christians will have done so, some will have read it many times.
quote:
or the complete works of Shakespeare?


My Dad, for one (he's owned a copy for 50+ years. It's only 1229 pages, a mere 100 pages longer than LOTR. I'd also hazard a guess that AC also has.[quote]



Number of pages isn�t a guide to word count & of course has no relation to reading difficulty. Total word count for Shakespeare�s output (including the disputed ones but excluding the Sonnets & oddments like �The Phoenix and the Turtle�) is apparently c 929,000. Word count for LOTR is c 454,000. I�ve read about 2/3 of Shakespeare myself & of course complex Elizabethan blank verse demands a hell of a lot more concentration than Tolkien�s fantasy.

I wasn�t seriously saying that nobody has ever read the entire Bible � I know at least one person who has � or the whole of Shakespeare; I was just making the point, by way of exaggeration, that these represent incongruously substantial accomplishments in an otherwise fairly straightforward list.




Sean Posted - 25/01/2011 : 00:45:14
quote:
Originally posted by lamhasuas

Who on earth has read the entire Bible
I'd say it's a safe assumption that numerous Christians will have done so, some will have read it many times.
quote:
or the complete works of Shakespeare?


My Dad, for one (he's owned a copy for 50+ years. It's only 1229 pages, a mere 100 pages longer than LOTR. I'd also hazard a guess that AC also has.
quote:


Here�s a Guardian article from the time:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/mar/01/topstories3.books

Ah, thanks. I thought it was the usual passed-through-many-hands hodgepodge. It makes sense now.
ci�nas Posted - 25/01/2011 : 00:17:15
The list derives from a British-sponsored World Book Day survey in 07 that asked people to list 10 books they couldn�t live without � rather different from the FB �Book List Challenge� (I�d hardly call it a meme) claiming that it represents a list of putatively important books people said they�d read or hadn�t read. Who on earth has read the entire Bible or the complete works of Shakespeare?

Here�s a Guardian article from the time:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/mar/01/topstories3.books

This explains the randomness of the quality of the books listed � James Joyce & Dan Brown on the same list: do me a favour � & the overlaps noted by AC above. It also explains the bias towards children�s books. Many adults seem to retain a sentimental attachment to stuff they read as kids.

I�d read 59 when I did the quiz on FB. Altho I've always read a lot & still average a novel a week, I�m sure my score would be quite a bit lower if it weren�t for the fact that my degree was in English & Linguistics, & the English component included what is nowadays called a module in America Lit. So, for example, I�ve read most of those massive nineteenth-century blockbusters, even Moby<sob>Dick. (In fact I did a dissertation on symbolism in nineteenth-century American fiction: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Crane, et al.)

Number of adapted books watched as movies is harder to quantify (Dracula? Sherlock Holmes?) but I make it 37 or thereabouts if all adaptations of a book count as one.

I agree completely with Salopian & BB about David Mitchell. With the possible exception of Dickens, who I suspect arrived here from another planet, I think he has the most extraordinary imagination of any author I�ve ever read.


BiggerBoat Posted - 24/01/2011 : 21:42:28
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian

I see that I'm the only one so far to have read Cloud Atlas. I hate recommending subjective things but I really loved it: it's my favourite modern book (We Need to Talk About Kevin being second). It couldn't be made into a film (please don't let someone try) but I'd like to see a high-quality television version.



Seconded. Fantastic book. The most amazing thing is that it jumps around from story to story, from time to time and, most incredibly, from writing style to writing style. In fact, some quarters accused the author of having others write different parts of the book because they couldn't believe that one writer could alter his style so dramatically. A must-read, especially if you have multiple personalities yourself yourselves.

Cheese_Ed Posted - 24/01/2011 : 15:21:06
Read Wuthering Heights? Hell, I haven't even watched it.

As far as I can recall:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D�Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler�s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker�s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma -Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli�s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid�s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones�s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight�s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno - Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte�s Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


23 read
48 seen
Sean Posted - 23/01/2011 : 09:26:40
Thanks mate.
demonic Posted - 23/01/2011 : 05:28:33
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
BTW demonic, do you happen to have a copy of that list with authors? I may use that as a better "books to read and movies to watch" list than the one I posted, so I'll be attaching authors at some stage.



I didn't write out the authors when I copied it originally - but I've found it's a list that's reprinted quite a few times online...

Here's one

As for the "next 50" - that was printed in the brochure they made at the time, and I thought extremely useful. I can't seem to find that reprinted anywhere else though.
SixFourian Posted - 23/01/2011 : 04:29:30
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian

Cloud Atlas... couldn't be made into a film (please don't let someone try) but I'd like to see a high-quality television version.

Yikes, although Portman is excellent casting for Sonmi~451.
Sean Posted - 23/01/2011 : 04:17:04
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian

Other big omissions, in my opinion, are Beowulf, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels.

Edit: This post was in response to some holes that Sean highlighted, but they've gone now!

Yeah, I deleted that part of my post as I was searching the thread by author, having forgotten that authors are not mentioned in demonic's list, only the titles. Sure, some of them will be missing but I'm not going to go through the list one-at-a-time to be sure. I was also unsure as to whether some of the authors were from pre-1900 (the list is 20th century I think).

BTW demonic, do you happen to have a copy of that list with authors? I may use that as a better "books to read and movies to watch" list than the one I posted, so I'll be attaching authors at some stage.
SixFourian Posted - 23/01/2011 : 03:55:10
Other big omissions, in my opinion, are Beowulf, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels.

Edit: This post was in response to some holes that Sean highlighted, but they've gone now!
Sean Posted - 23/01/2011 : 03:51:12
quote:
Originally posted by demonic


I was working in a Waterstone's bookshop when I left university around the time they published their "Books of the Century" list which always seemed like a pretty good one to me and kept me checking them off for a long time.

Now that's a damn fine list. How about we delete this thread and start again with that list?

The Four Word Film Review Fourum © 1999-2024 benj clews Go To Top Of Page
Snitz Forums 2000