Re: [acornlive] Top 10 books since 1950

wheewhit@postoffice.swbell.net (acornlive@dublinwriters.org)
Sat, 17 Apr 1999 11:24:01 -0500 

Definitel arbitrary! And, yes, subject to change as soon as I finish
reading The Shipping News! However, here goes.

My top ten fiction choices are (not in any order):

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
Angel of Repose, Wallace Stegner
The Diviners, Margaret Laurance
Where I'm Calling from Now, Raymond Carver
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
The Stories of Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Tom Robbins

I found it impossible to pick poets by book title, so I'm just listing the
poets:

Maxine Kumin
Andrei Codrescu
W.S. Merwin
Galway Kinnell
Tess Gallagher
Adrienne Rich
Barbara Kingsolver
Howard Nemerov
John Ciardi
Robert Pinsky




nessa@indigo.ie wrote:

> 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
>
> *==================*==================*
> Acorn Live Literary Mailing list
> The Dublin Writers' Workshop
> ***
> For list issues, contact: listmaster@dublinwriters.org
> To unsubscribe use the form at:
> http://www.dublinwriters.org/acornlive/




*==================*==================*
Acorn Live Literary Mailing list
The Dublin Writers' Workshop
***
For list issues, contact: listmaster@dublinwriters.org
To unsubscribe use the form at:
http://www.dublinwriters.org/acornlive/