I just found this list of EW's New Classics: Books from 1983-2008 at Okie's blog. I'm bolding the ones I've read - which ones have YOU read?
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)
7 comments:
You've read more of the "new classics" than I have...but hopefully next year I'll be able to 'bold' much more on this list. :)
If I counted right, I've read 16 of them.
I got 15-- some great reads on there!
Really? These are the new classics? Do we really have to add Bridget Jones to a canon? I'm wary. I'll check and see how many I've read. And seen movies of. :)
I've read 9, seen movies of 12. Thing is, there are probably 3 on there I actually care to read. Again, who makes up these lists?!
I thought I would give you my thumbs up thumbs down on the ones I have read that you haven't read yet. Did that make sense?
#11 Into Thin Air-loved it-have you ever wondered why someone would want to climb mount Everest and risk their lives trying to do it? I have and this is the book that explained it-kind of-Krakauer swears a bit too much for me, but if you can ignore that it is an amazing account of a true story. I have an edition of the book with a lot of pictures and it is a lot cooler than the mass media pb. Nova had a team on the mt filming and there is a video from the same period. I have it if you are interested. loved it.
#25 Joy Luck Club-hated it
#27 Possession-my book group did that this year-the first 100 pages are brutal-if you can hold out through those it is a good book. About present day fictional english scholars studying fictional Victorian poets involving mystery, intrigue, romance and poetry of course. good book
#29 Bel Canto-chic lit-fun easy read, romance, I liked it
#67 The Kite Runner-I may be slayed for saying it but I maybe the only person in the western world who did not like this book. It begins with a horribly violent sodomy of a little boy. I could never get past that image. The effects of the event are felt throughout the story and it just haunted me. Maybe because I have boys, I don't know. The prose was beautiful, but I could not enjoy the book. I would not recommend it to anyone, especially not to a mother of little boys.
#73 A Prayer for Owen Meany-good book-long...but well written. I can't believe you didn't have to read it in school. About a special boy.
#78 Eat,Pray,Love-don't waste your time or money on this one. Here is the take home-selfish woman, divorces husband, feels sorry for self, has to...find herself (always one of my favorite moves!), is able to spend months self indulgently laying around in Italy, then spends months in India at an ashram being enlightened by saying rote prayers over and over for hours and eating strange foods, then moves on and takes lover and lives on beach. thats the book. pass on it, ok
#92. Presumed Innocent- a good legal thriller/murder mystery-definitely not literature :)
So, I am embarrassed to say I think I have only read 21 of the books listed :(
I remember seeing this list when I was just starting the classics challenge. I think some of the choices are interesting, but it's fun to see which ones you've read. We have some of the same reads in common!
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