Friday, July 25, 2008

The oxymoronic "new classic"

First, I'm not sure how I feel about Entertainment Weekly naming "new classics." But I found this post on Readers Read interesting enough to write about it here. These are books published between 1983 and 2008. The top ten are:

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)

Of these, I've read numbers 2, 5, 7 and 9. I like Haruki Murakami, however, and number 10 is on my to-read list.

A sampling of other books from the top 100, which I have read:

15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
16. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
20. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (Ooooh, this is so an EW list:^D)
35. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
37. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
50. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Hmm . . was Oprah consulted on this list? ;^D)
60. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
88. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
96. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

What are your thoughts?

No comments: