Time has mined its archives to provide a list of the best novels in English since 1923.
Toni Morrison? The Corrections? And two bloody Virginia Woolfs?
They’re obviously using a value of "best" that I’m unaware of.
Time’s Best Novels.
In
3 responses
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The interest is these lists it to look not a what’s obvious; Tolkein, Kesey, Orwell, Hemingway, Salinger, etc. but what’s in there that’s not so obvious…
…like the inclusion of several SF authors who wouldn’t get a look in on such a list over here thanks to the snobbery of literary set over here.
It’s actually nice to see authors like Vonnegut, Dick and Gibson getting a mention rather than the usual ‘well we might mention Ballard, he wrote a proper novel once’ crap we get over here. -
I’ll second Unity on that one, it’s a nice eclectic list. Sure, some of the choices may be off, and they’ve missed some books I rate higher, but the variety is good; it even includes Watchmen, which I really have got to get around to reading.
It really annoys me over here when a book gets labelled as ‘sci-fi’, ‘fantasy’ ‘crime’ or ‘horror’ and therefore written off as being not worthy. When a book that should be in those genres (most of Atwood’s work, Max Barry’s Jennifer Govt) is actually ‘good enough’ for the literary types, it gets filed under literary fiction rather than the genre it actually is, it’s too good to be a genre novel.
So, Tim, what would you have included to make up for what you’d take out?
Tim adds: Good question to which I don’t really have a good answer. I very rarely read “literary novels” as I find most of those I do boring beyond all belief. Like V Woolf and so on. I’ve actually got Lucky Jim on my desk to read next after being hectored into it. I might add Decline and Fall (Waugh) but just about all of the novels I enjoyed or admire don’t fall into the “literary” category. Michael Curtin, “The Replay” is something that I think everyone should read but “literary”? -
“Those Barren Leaves” A Huxley of that Ilk
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