Top 100 books since 1982

[johnckirk]

Following sulkyblue's example, I see that there's another list of the "top 100 books". This time it's from The Telegraph, in conjunction with Waterstones; I'm not sure what the criteria for selection were. Anyway, I score about 12½ out of 100 from that list.

Comments

[rileen]

Remarkably, 12.5 for me too, with the same one counting as 0.5 :-)

5.5 in common, so between us we've got 19.5 covered, whatever that may mean.

[johnckirk]

Heh, that idea has potential - it would be the equivalent of a "phone a friend" support team for "Who wants to be a Millionaire", if we can work out the smallest number of people who've read the entire list between them :)

[rileen]

:-) - if everyone could contribute about 7 new books to the list, we'd only need 11-12 more people. But I guess the overlaps may increase with the number of people, and we may end up needing many more.

Of course one can now go on and make this much more complicated, but I guess I'll let it be :-)

[susannahf]

13, possibly 14, with 8 in common.
In the interests of the "can we read them all" theory, here are the non-intersecting ones:
The Lovely Bones: good, would recommend, if only for her depiction of heaven. Unfortunately my copy is still at home.
Memoirs of a Geisha: I enjoyed it. Don't know if you would but I could lend it if you like.
Bridget Jones' Diary: Trash.
The other half of A Brief History of Time for which I am now feeling unaccountably smug.
The Handmaid's Tale: Really good. Can lend.

I think I've read Notes from a small island, but I'm not 100percent sure. I know I've read bits of it, but can't remember if I actually read the whole book as it was quite a while ago. I can recommend Bill Bryson's writing generally though.

[johnckirk]

I'd be interested in borrowing the three books you recommended, thanks, although there's no particular hurry for them. Have you seen the film of "Memoirs of Geisha"? If so, how did it compare to the book?

Regarding "Bridget Jones' Diary", I suspect that I'm not exactly the target audience. (I might watch the films if they're on TV sometime.)

And as for "A Brief History of Time", erm, well I'm sure I've read more comics about Squirrel Girl than you have, so nyer ;-p

[susannahf]

You're welcome to borrow Memoirs and Handmaid (you may need to remind me). I don't know where my copy of Lovely Bones is: it might be in the Inaccessible Bookcase.
I haven't seen the film of Memoirs yet. I'm sort of loathe too, as I think it would be hard to do justice to the book.

[shuripentu]

I had to study The Handmaid's Tale for my IB English course, and it was one of the few books I enjoyed. Margaret Atwood is generally a good writer, although she is by all accounts a bit of a stuck-up person. She's a good reader, though.

[terpsichore1980]

I have read 12, with 6 distinct from you, but susz has read two of my other ones. Right - new reading list for me to start on then...