Re: HIT: Top Ten Books

[Allison G Kaplan <akaplan@BRAHMS.UDEL.EDU>]

Netters,
 
Didn't think I'd get involved in this request but after seeing the
results I just felt I had to say something. I'm not sure if there were
special parameters given in the original request, but the resulting list
is disturbingly biased towards western literature. May I humbly add four
titles from the east to this list:
Ramayana (India) - great evening's reading
Mahabhrata (India) - don't let the beautifully done yet terribly
        confusing PBS version fool you, the book is not as confusing
Tao Te Ching (China) - Influenced millions of followers and many great
        thinkers
Tale of Gengi (Japan) - need summer reading? Written by a Japanese woman
        in the 10th century, Lady Murasaki.
All these titles were listed in my 1993/94 edition of Books in Print. No
flame intended, just my two cents worth.
 
Allison G. Kaplan
Education Resource Center
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716-2940
 
akaplan@brahms.udel.edu
 
 
On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Margaret Smith wrote:
 
>  Here are the titles that you folks said should be candidates for the top
> 10 books ever written:
> The number in ( ) is the number of times each title was mentioned.  As you
> can see, there is quite a diversity of opinion.
>
> The Bible (6)
> Iliad & Odyssey, Homer (4)
> Divine Comedy, Dante (3)
> Hamlet, Shakespeare (3)
> Pride and Prejudice, Austen (3)
> War & Peace , Tolstoy (2)
> Sun Also Rises, Hemingway (2)
> Paradise Lost, Milton (2)
> Shakespeare's Plays (2)
> The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevesky (2)
> Ulysses, Joyce (2)
> Madame Bovary, Flaubert (2)
> Moby Dick, Melvill (2)
> The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer (2)
> Jane Eyre (2)
> Emily Dickinson's Poems (2)
> Communist Manifesto, Marx
> Sound and the Fury, Faulkner
> Great Expectations, Dickens
> Herzog, Bellow
> Collected Poems, Frost
> Republic, Plato
> Walden, Thoreau
> Collected Poems, Yeats
> The Stranger, Camus
> Confucius, his works
> Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
> Don Quixote
> The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain
> Diary of Anne Frank
> Le Morte d'Artur
> A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens
> Rebecca, DuMaurier
> Centennial, Michener
> Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
> The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
> Farenheit 451, Bradbury
> I, Robot, Asimov
> The End of Eternity, Asimov
> We Don't Die, Martin
> The Drifters, Mitchner
> King Lear
> Dr. Faustus
> Shogun
> The Sea Wolf
> The Polar Express
> G.B. Shaw's Plays
> W.B. Yeats' Collected Poetry
> Philip Larkin's Collected Poems
> Collected poems of Wallace Stevens
> Wealth of Nations
> Free to Choose
> Diamond Age
> The English Patient
> The White Hotel
> Shipping News
> Survival, evasion and escape, by US Army
> The Trial
> Night
> Poe's short stories
>