More Literary Memeage

I can't resist this sort of thing. Apparently, members of the British Museum, Libraries and Archives Council have cobbled together a list of books that every adult should read before they die.

Like everything that has ever been produced by committee, the list is pure horse hockey. Nonetheless, I'm highlighting the ones I have read:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible - KJV only, of course.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien - I can hear Mom's sharp intake of breath from here.
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - I happen to think this one of the most over-rated novels ever foisted on high school kids.
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy - I've read a good deal of Hardy but not this one. I suppose it was chosen primarily because somebody made a fairly successful movie of it.
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne - Um...why would an adult be reading this, unless to children?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - No, but I've read Ben Jonson's play of the same name. And I'd wager that probably was the more worthwhile effort.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Half of these volumes will be completely forgotten in fifty years. Is there no room on the list for Homer? Or Virgil? Or Milton? Cervantes? Chaucer? Helloooo....

Or, if you want to get modern about it, Fitzgerald? Or Waugh? Hemmingway usually has a prominant place in this kind of list. I'm surprised he's totally shut out of this one. And where is Twain? How about Faulkner? Or James? Or Conrad?

Like I say, this sort of thing is usually worse than useless. Typically, the list combines a handful of books that the compilers have a vague idea "ought" to be read with, to the compilers, a much more important selection of personal favorites, most of which have very short shelf-lives. Unfortunately, I think such ego-centric pronouncements have the effect of undermining any consensus on what constitutes core literature, rather than strengthening it.

Mmmph.

Yips! to Rachel.