Newsweek Wants You To Read More

Newsweek is on a big literacy kick this month, publishing a series of articles on lists of books one should read for different reasons, writer's roundtables, the joys of re-reading, classics that are particularly relevant to our times, and other interesting subjects it doesn't really have the space to fully explore, though it makes a noble effort.

My favorite of these features is Newsweek's 'meta' list of the 'top' 100 books. Using an unusual methodology, Newsweek combined ten 'top books' lists and came up with this composite. It goes without saying that every list of this sort is subjective, and therefore a little bit silly in its attempt to be authoritative. (That one of the lists they include is the list of Oprah's Book Club selections, which tells you all that you need to know about Newsweek's failings as a magazine.) Because a number of the lists have a 20th-century focus, a number of classics published prior to 1900 (for instance, the King James Bible) are ranked lower than they otherwise might be, if not left off of the list entirely (Moby Dick); because a number of the lists are limited to books published in the English language, a number of European classics (like Proust's Remembrance of Things Past) are short-changed; because a number of the lists are limited to fiction, a number of non-fiction classics (like The Education of Henry Adams) are left off the list entirely.

Nonetheless, the counting is fun. If memory serves, I have read 46 of the books on the list. Ellen the Wormbook has read fifty.

How many have you read? Which books would be in your personal top ten, what's overrated, and what books should have been included, but weren't?

Thanks to Ellen for the tip.


*For the record, the list with which I most agree is the Radcliffe College Publishing Course's list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.