Is it Thursday already? I'll be drawing a name this evening to give away a copy of J. Pedar Zane's The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. If you'd like the chance to win this book and you haven't already submitted your name (and your own top ten list, if you're feeling listy), please do so by 9 pm. I'll be compiling a list of all the favorites mentioned in comments in a few days--lots of great stuff I'm grateful to know about.
Until then, here are a couple lists from the book:
Margaret Drabble's Top Ten
1. Antony and Cleopatra. William Shakespeare
2. Emma. Jane Austen
3. Madame Bovary. Gustave Flaubert
4. The Three Sisters. Anton Chekhov
5. The Aeneid. Virgil
6. The Divine Comedy. Dante Alighieri
7. Germinal. Emile Zola
8. The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing
9. To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf
10. The Old Wives' Tale. Arnold Bennett
Kate Atkinson's Top Ten
1. Persuasion. Jane Austen
2. Alice's Adentures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll
3. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen
4. Middlemarch. George Eliot
5. The Portrait of a Lady. Henry James
6. Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut
7. Pricksongs & Descants. Robert Coover
8. Revolutionary Road. Richard Yates
9. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain
10. The Railway Children. E. Nesbit
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You are such a tease Susan! :)
ReplyDeleteI am closer to Kate Atkinson's list -- although score for Margaret Drabble on The Golden Notebook.
ReplyDeleteWhat's fun about these lists is that I recognize most of the books and know that I like them and am likely to share tastes with the author -- but then there are a couple I don't recognize, Robert Coover for example, and so I know that one might be a great one to chech out.
ReplyDeleteExactly. You trust them to lead you to something wonderful because of the ones you already know you like.
ReplyDeleteI'm closer to Atkinson, too, LK! I like that she chose Antony and Cleopatra as her favorite Shakespeare--I don't think anyone else does.
Does the book include a top ten list by Jane Smiley? She has published a book with her 100 favorites. I'd like to see how she whittles down that list.
ReplyDeletemd
No Jane Smiley. No Anne Tyler (the first list I looked for). No A.S. Byatt. I can't tell from reading the intro how many writers were originally asked to supply lists, just that the book contains the responses of 125.
ReplyDeleteI added this book to my wishlist after seeing a review on 'The Black Bookshelf' although I have to admit I'm a little frightened of the havoc it would wreak on my already voluminous wishlist!
ReplyDelete