In wrapping up novels 101 – 200 I should point out a distinction between the first 100, which were all classics, and the second 100, which included some contemporary novels which cannot yet be considered classics – though they may still be considered “great”.
This post is rather longish, but if you just want to see the list...it's at the end, with hyperlinks to each individual review.
I began the second century of my quest on July 1, 2018 and completed it June 30, 2022 or four years to the day from the first page of Gadsby * to the last page of The Princess Bride. The longest amount of time I spent on one book was 75 days for The Tale of Genji; the shortest was a few hours to read The Little Prince. The average was 15 days per novel.
* not to be confused with The Great Gatsby, which coincidentally was the first novel of 1 - 100.
The longest book was The Tale of Genji with 1182 pages. The shortest was The Little Prince at 93. The total page count was 34,102, or an average of 341 pages.
The oldest book was The Tale of Genji, which some call the World’s First Novel, probably written very early 11th century. There were two novels from the 16th Century, three from the 18th, 30 from the 19th, 60 from the 20th, and four from the 21st century. The average year of publication was 1907.
There were eight novels by
Charles Dickens, four by Arthur Conan Doyle, and two each by A.A. Milne, Iris
Murdoch, Lewis Carrol, Ray Bradbury, and Truman Capote. There were also two completely different novels of the same title: Greenmantle and...of course Greenmantle by James Buchan and Charles de Lint.
I intended to show my trophy case here: bookcases in my home office with all 200 hardcover books, but I’ve moved recently, and most of my books are in storage ***sigh*** I miss them.
A few of my prized copies: I have a first-edition of The Little Prince. My edition of Ender’s Game is autographed by Orson Scott Card and my edition of Devil in a Blue Dress is autographed by Walter Mosley.
Covers: These do not all represent the version I read, but rather covers that I find emblematic of the story.
Ratings are not commentary on the “Greatness” of these works, rather they reflect my personal enjoyment of the read – very opinionated. Secondly, in order to differentiate amongst a group that are all considered “Great”, I set the bar very high for 5 or even 4 stars. 3.5 is above the median; still a good rating. If you plot my ratings on a graph, the result is a fairly standard bell curve, which suggests consistency in rating.
Average Rating: 3.8 stars
Top 10 Favorites
A Tale of Two Cities
The Little Prince
Watership Down
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Bleak House
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Of Mice and Men
The Old Man and the Sea
The Man Who was Thursday
Fahrenheit 451
Top 10 Dislikes
The Recognitions
Portnoy’s Complaint
The Tale of Genji
Journey to the End of the Night
Monkey: Journey to the West
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
The House on the Borderland
Phantastes
The Collector
Best Subtitles/Alternate Titles:
Gadsby: 50,000 Word Novel Without the Letter “E”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
The Oak Openings or The Bee Hunter
The Monkey King’s Amazing Adventures: Journey to the West
Oliver Twist or The Beggar Boy’s Progress
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version Abridged by William Goldman
Most Unusual:
Gadsby
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
The Princess Bride
Most Surprising:
The Man Who was Thursday
Most Underappreciated:
The Oak Openings
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Most Overrated:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Papillon
Candide
Happiest Ending:
Bleak House
Oliver Twist
Saddest Ending (in a good way):
A Tale of Two Cities
The Little Prince
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Saddest Ending (in a just plain ole sad way):
The Collector
Most Unexpected Ending:
The Man Who was Thursday
Most Satisfying Ending:
A Tale of Two Cities
The Oak Openings
Oliver Twist
Least Satisfying Ending:
The Collector
Favorite Hero:
Sydney Carton – A Tale of Two Cities
Hazel – Watership Down
Tom Sawyer – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Parson Amen – The Oak Openings
Dr. Watson – The Sign of the Four
Tom – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Pooh – Winnie the Pooh
Easy Rawlins – Devil in a Blue Dress
Favorite Heroine:
Arrow – The Cellist of Sarajevo
Dorothea – Middlemarch
Esther – Bleak House
Mina Harker – Dracula
Eliza – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Molly – Wives and Daughters
Best Villain:
Frederick Clegg – The Collector
General Woundwort – Watership Down
Perry Smith – In Cold Blood
Count Dracula – Dracula
Other Mother – Coraline
Manfred – The Castle of Otranto
Simon Legree – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Ratman – Ratman’s Notebooks
Fagin – Oliver Twist
The Six-Fingered Man – The Princess Bride
Most Interesting/Complex Characters:
Sunday – The Man Who was Thursday
The Little Prince – The Little Prince
Mike the computer – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Onoah – The Oak Openings
Charles Arrowby – The Sea, the Sea
Jake Donaghue – Under the Net
Moses Herzog – Herzog
Papillon – Papillon
Saleem Sinai – Midnight’s Children
Inigo Montoya – The Princess Bride
Favorite Quotations:
…the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right. ~ Uncle Jack from Go Set a Watchman
…she is, at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. ~ narrative regarding Arrow, from The Cellist of Sarajevo
“Adventures are all very well in their place”, he thought, “but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.” ~ Tristran Thorn
Best Film Renditions:
The Princess Bride (1987) – Just about perfect: perfectly written, cast, and acted. And although this part is not part of the book, at the end, when Peter Falk’s character says “as you wish” to his grandson played by Fred Savage…it just about kills me (in a good way).
Honorable mentions:
Of Mice and Men (1939)
Watership Down (2018 TV miniseries)
Bleak House (2005 TV miniseries)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Worst Film Renditions:
I want to say Breakfast at Tiffanys because it is not true to the book, Audrey Hepburn does not match the description of Holly Golightly, and there is terrible casting and offensive portrayal of a Japanese person, but if you just accept the film is not the book and ignore the Japanese portrayal, the film is iconic. Hepburn makes the film and the role her own.
So, my genuine answer for Worst Film Rendition is Ender’s Game. Though 90 percent of the film is pretty OK. It completely blows the all-important big reveal near the end.
Now what? 201-300 of course. I read other forms of literature, but predominantly novels. My TBR of novels alone is over 2,000 titles. I might even occasionally read something not on any of my lists, which could inspire a new list. I love lists. By the way a lover of lists is an albumiphile – a term I created. You read it here first (unless you first read it on my recap of the first 100 novels)
Quite obviously, I won’t finish my TBR in this lifetime. I have no idea what the Heavenly library is like, so I make no promise for the next. There are a few authors I hope to talk to though.
And finally...here are the 101 thru 200 Greatest Novels of all Time (hyperlinked to individual reviews)
101 Gadsby
105 Of Mice and Men
110 Middlemarch
111 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
113 The Idiot
116 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
117 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
118 An Antarctic Mystery (The Sphinx of the Ice Fields)
119 Watership Down
120 Bleak House
122 Wise Blood
123 Papillon
124 Candide
125 In Cold Blood
130 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
132 The Oak Openings
134 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
136 Coraline
138 Dracula
139 The Universal Baseball Association
140 Lost Horizon
141 Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance
142 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
144 Jude the Obscure
145 The Sea, The Sea
147 Fahrenheit 451
149 Phantastes
150 The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story
152 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
155 The Stranger
156 Ragtime
158 Something Wicked This Way Comes
159 The House on the Borderland
160 The Hound of the Baskervilles
162 Under the Net
163 Greenmantle
164 Greenmantle
165 Jonathan Livingston Seagull
166 Winnie the Pooh
168 Germinal
169 Big Trouble
172 The Country of the Pointed Firs
173 Herzog
177 Sybil; or, The Two Nations
178 Journey to the End of the Night
179 Hard Times
181 The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
183 The Loved One
184 Murder on the Orient Express
185 The Corrections
187 Rebecca
188 The Collector
189 The Haunting of Hill House
190 At Play in the Fields of the Lord
191 Ender’s Game
193 The Recognitions
195 Stardust
199 Oliver Twist
Wrap-up of Novels 1 – 100 HERE
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I love your blog. Wonderfully complete list of books. They are an impressive list to have read.
ReplyDeleteThanks...and thanks for the shoutout on G.R. !
DeleteThis is an excellent list of novels. You have helped me cut a couple of books from my TBR list...who has time for a disappointing novel? I'm eager to see your next 100.
ReplyDeleteGlad to be of service :)
DeleteWhat a great accomplishment! Not sure where it falls in the list of great books, but one of the most underrated books I have read is Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, which to me is comparable to Steinbeck’s East of Eden. -Terry from Catching Up with the Classics on Goodreads.
ReplyDeleteThanks Terry. I was not blown away by Kesey's better known work Catch-22, but I've got Sometimes a Great Notion on my TBR.
DeleteHow exciting, again! I remember your term albumiphile bc I am one, too. I enjoyed reading through your stats. I struggled w/ some of the books on your top ten favs, but I expect to try to read the Little Prince one day. I'm enjoyed Bleak House right now. Also I know how you feel about your books. Mine are in boxes, too, although the other day a thought seeped into my mind to just bring them all in and go through them to update my Book Crawler (which is just an excuse to see them all again). So I don't know what to do bc I don't have the room or shelves. What about you...do you not have the shelves, yet? Anyway, congrats on your accomplishment!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth...no, I won't have my shelves back for a year and a half yet. My wife and I, downsized DRASTICALLY, for my last 1+ year working in Virginia, and put most things in storage. When I retire in 2024, we'll be able to pull up stakes quickly and move to Michigan...close to kids and grandkids.
DeleteComprehensive & impressive list of stats. Bleak House is one of my all time favourite books.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Yes Bleak House is very good.
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