[acornlive] Top 10 books since 1950
nessa@indigo.ie (acornlive@dublinwriters.org)
Sat, 17 Apr 1999 11:45:31 +0100
Dear list members
There's a literary festival going on in Galway next week called Cuirt.
As part of the event, there's a launch of a new book called "Library:
the 200 best books in English since 1950" which has been partly
compiled by the Irish novelist Colm Toibin.
It struck me that that might be a good experiment to see what you
people would regard as your top 10 books [well top 200 would be a
bit onerous, wouldn't it] in English since 1950 - the ones that you
would insist on having in your desert island libraries, so to speak.
To start off, I'll give you mine [bearing in mind that this is probably
quite arbitrary - tomorrow's list could be quite different].
1. The Regeneration Trilogy - Pat Barker [three in one, I'm cheating]
2. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
3. The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
4. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis Le Bernieres
5. Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
6. Love in the time of the Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. The Butcher Boy, Pat McCabe
8. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
9. Underworld, Don De Lillo [because I managed to finish it]
10. Last Orders, Graham Swift
To my amazement, I've noticed these were all novels - and me a
poet - so here's my top 10 poetry books (since 1950)
1. Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes
2. The Annals of Chile, Paul Muldoon
3. The Ledger of Fruitful Exchange, Peter Sirr
4. The Gaze of the Gorgon, Tony Harrison
5. The Spirit Level, Seamus Heaney
6. Pillow Talk, Paula Meehan
7. The Ghost Orchid, Michael Longley
8. My Black Horse, Tess Gallagher
9. A Farewell to English, Michael Hartnett
10. Crossings, Gwyn Parry
As I said, it's a matter of personal taste - but it would be fun, and
fascinating, to see your top 10 lists - feel free to give your reasons,
if you like.
Nessa
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