From the Washington Post Book Club Newsletter
The New York Public Library is celebrating Valentine’s Day by releasing a list of “125 Books We Love.”... A team of NYPL librarians spent about a year on this project trying to choose exciting and enlightening books that have survived the test of time. They took into account “literary merit” and “popularity” — the Scylla and Charybdis of all such lists — and they aimed to include “diverse voices.” They only allowed one title (or series) per author, and only titles for adults were considered, except “Harry Potter,” which, they claim, “transcends age categories.”
Would you like to know how many of these books I have read? FIFTEEN! That's what I said.
Would you like to know the titles of these books? click here.
In fairness to myself, I should add that I have heard of most of them.
Eighteen here. (If I’d read all of Joseph Mitchell, it’d be nineteen.) It’s an odd list, because any such list made by committee is going to be odd, but also because it's made almost entirely of 20th-century or contemporary works in English. I spotted All Quiet on the Western Front and My Brilliant Friend as exceptions.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Michael. Another criticism is that it is made up almost entirely of books I haven't read.
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