Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

I have to commend the list for introducing me to books/authors I never heard of. I'm surprised there was no response to the comment awhile back about how this list should contain only those books originally written in English. I feel like some of the gems are by those international authors I've been introduced to. For example, I just finished Embers by Sandor Marai, which was a wonderful novel of ideas, especially when compared to Fateless by Imre Kertesz--both translations.

I don't expect to love every book on this list. I acknowledge we all see greatness or garbage in different ways. A Prayer for Owen Meany is in my top 5 favorite books, and it always surprises me when one of my closest friends says he/she couldn't get through it. But having said that, I've become a little gun-shy about the list because I have found so many to have no redeeming qualities. (Some of my least favorites so far have been Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker and Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon.) Many of them are entertaining to me but not something I felt I had to read before dying. (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an example of that category.) And, it seems that they picked a favorite or renowned author and just included everything they ever wrote. How silly is that? If anything, I think there should only be one book by each author--whichever most represents their style--so that if I find I like that author I will pick up others by him/her.

The newer list is more international in scope and greatly reduced entries by overrepresented authors. So, some may find it more enjoyable. I kind of like both lists. The original list is more of a traditional, Anglophile type list.

Some comments are mainly books the reader didn't particularly like. There was a couple of those as well, but I would try and list books that should not be on the list because they, in my opinion, simply don't deserve it.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewyczka - I would have categorized this book as reading for women, bordering on Chick Lit. No real insight of problems or life of economic immigrants from Eastern Europe in UK, no additional artistic value, just a simple story of one family. Nothing new, served in a mediocre way.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - Read it because it was a monthly read in this group and I just can't understand why it even earned a Man Booker Prize nomination. The book is a pastiche, not a true period piece, the prose is obnoxious. The first part is great, but even without the boring second part and an okay third part, it would have been an ordinary thriller/mystery set in Victorian England, without bringing anything new why it deserves to be included in the list. Also, the lesbian point? So weak and very poorly written, lack of character development, I felt offended for all lesbians for such a dreadful representation in literature.

The Elegance of Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - pseudo philosophy, this one was even worse than Coelho, because the book is a clear ego trip of the author: look at me, how educated and smart I am. Oh, another character knows the opening sentence of Anna Karenina! Her main characters are poorly written, two dimensional and guilty of the same hypocrisy they accuse their neighbours of. Throw in some weird introspectives and long passages of basic-level philosophy and you've got a weird mix without an artistic value.

There were books I didn't like, the books that bored me, but I at least could understand the inclusion in the list as I read up on their background, reception, historical context, etc. But not with these three. Rant over.

Norielle wrote: "The Elegance of Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - pseudo philosophy, this one was even worse than Coelho, because the book is a clear ego trip of the author: look at me, how educated and smart I am. Oh, another character knows the opening sentence of Anna Karenina! Her main characters are poorly written, two dimensional and guilty of the same hypocrisy they accuse their neighbours of. Throw in some weird introspectives and long passages of basic-level philosophy and you've got a weird mix without an artistic value."

^This. Of all the list books I've read, good and terrible, this one really doesn't need to be there. It's fake, and snooty, the characters are either hateful or stereotypes (all things Asian are smart and wonderful, by the way), and it all feels like one big "look at me!" gesture by the author.

I do wonder how many of the 21st century list books will stand the test of time, and which of them are mostly hype.

Norielle wrote: "Some comments are mainly books the reader didn't particularly like. There was a couple of those as well, but I would try and list books that should not be on the list because they, in my opinion, s..."

Well two of those aren't any more. I'm not sure about Fingersmith, I think it still might be. I've only read one of Sarah Waters works (previously on the list, now no longer there) and I thought it was terrible. However I was assured that Fingersmith was better.

House of Leaves.

I just finished reading Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and I'm not really sure it really belongs on the list. There's nothing that groundbreaking about it and I have read more emotionally resonant tales of WW I.

I humbly suggest that Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way is a much better candidate.

No ones posted in this thread in a long time, but I just finished reading The Time Machine by HG Wells and I did not like it at all. And almost never say that. It started off just fine but just went downhill. The story line had too many flaws in my opinions. And not that it’s so outdated and irrelevant in today’s world of technology either. Ugh! So disappointed!

Anna wrote: "I hate Paul Coelho !!!!!!
Same here. Those books are on very simplified philosophy of I-don't-know-what"

Amen.

H is for Hawk.
I don't like having to serve as an author's therapist.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewyczka. Nothing special and it has some uneven pacing or maybe ? lack of any pacing? It falls flat.
A Confederacy of Dunces. I wasted so much time on that book thinking that it just HAD to get better. It never did.
Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. Boring.....

I definitely agree about Short History of Tractors. I couldn't see anything 'must' about it.

I know a lot of people like Confederacy of Dunces. It isn't one of my favorites either, but humor is so hard to guage...what's funny to some is terribly not funny to others.

I so agree with Coelho. I absolutely don't understand what people see in him.

I didn't like H is for Hawk much and it should not be on the list for the simple reason that it is non-fiction.

And I agree with A Short History of Tractors.

The Blind Assassin is one of my favorites though.
I once started reading A Confederacy of Dunces but quit after a with pages because I just didn't like it - I often have difficulties with humorous books. But my local library just gave away a copy which I picked up and will give another try. Maybe I'll like it this time.

I can understand why Coelho appeals to a lot of people, but I don't think he belongs on the list either. There's a lot of feel-good fiction out there--The Alchemist is in that vein, I think, but it's a contrived sort of feel-good, not organic.

It's sort of like Flowers for Algernon, which is a book that really socks it to me, because I'm an emotional milksop, but it's not on the list either, nor do I think it should be.

“...it should not be on the list for the simple reason that it is non-fiction.”

Huh???? This is a list of books that essentially one person felt that everyone should read, I assume to be considered well read or to improve one intellectually. Never having read the original books, I’m not sure what Boxall defines as the goal but certainly it has never been defined as a best fiction list and the notion that only fiction books are worth reading is kind of weird frankly. We can and will disagree as to which books should be included but to claim books shouldn’t be included “for the simple reason that [they are] nonfiction” strikes me as ludicrous.

James wrote: "“...it should not be on the list for the simple reason that it is non-fiction.”

Huh???? This is a list of books that essentially one person felt that everyone should read, I assume to be considere..."

I'm sorry James, but did you ever read the introduction or preface to Boxall's book? He clearly says that it is about "the story of the novel" and that it is about fiction. That is the reason why no dramas or poems are included. There are some exceptions to this such as Eugene Onegin which is epic poetry.
Peter Boxall writes that "there is no definite boundary that separates a novel from a short story" etc and that's why these exceptions are made.

Where I however personally see the boundary is when it comes to non-fiction. There are some works included which don't even come remotely close to a novel, e.g. The Rebel by Albert Camus. I'd be fine with autobiographical works - into which category you can put H is for Hawk. But I'm not ok with this when what a consider the single most important work of non-fiction of our time, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, is not included.

Also, Peter Boxall is just the editor of the book and it were more than 100 people who contributed to the book. So you cannot say it "is a list of books that essentially one person felt that everyone should read".

So please do your homework next time before calling someone else's opinion ludicrous!

There are plenty of nonfiction books on the list. Primo Levi immediately comes to mind but someone a while back even compiled a list (partial, I think) of such titles.

The Diary of Anne Frank should most definitely have been included. No doubt about it.

I’m sure that because you have done your homework you can explain why Boxall and his 100 assistants have included at least 28 non-fiction works on the lists. To me the common theme in these books is their relevance to the history and growth of the novel. In any case, it is Boxall (and his collaborators) whose opinion as to what belongs that matters. The best you can say is that if it was left up to you, you might have done it differently. And oh, I certainly can understand those who would have included Diary of Anne Frank but to me I think it was properly left off. It is a VERY important book as an artifact but it is not in my opinion one of the great works of literature of our time.

When you read through the book descriptions in Boxall's work you will (most often) find no explanation of why they were chosen. E.g. a while ago I read The Rebel by Albert Camus which is a fantastic book and explains half of the books on the list but is IMO one of the books completely misplaced on this list. I wanted to know why it had been included but was left just as cluesless as before.

This thread is about books that shouldn't be on the list. And all I'm saying is that Peter Boxall is self-contradictory in including non-fiction books. My guess is that he himself often doesn't know the books that were added, he just received a list with masses of titles from which he chose the ones mentioned most often. Then he probably went on with authors he or many of the contributors found important and added some of their work even when it is not the author's best work because they mainly focused on plays or poetry (Bertolt Brecht is one such example). Or else some auhtors were thought important because no book dealing with a certain topic had been added. This way obviously non-fiction works or works otherwise not fitting the definition of a novel were included. But this is just my guess so don't get me wrong here again!

I don't completely disagree with adding non-fiction books to the list. Some like Schindler's List or Out of Africa come very close to being actual novels. From the way they are written you might even think they are fiction if you didn't know any better. I just think that the list is biased in including non-fiction when in the introduction and preface Peter Boxall states that it is about fiction. That was my whole point when I said that a work should not be included because it is non-fiction.

Ellinor wrote: "I so agree with Coelho. I absolutely don't understand what people see in him.

I had a co-worker that begged me to read The Confederacy of Dunces, because it was his favorite book. So, I did, and I finished, but I was kind of meh about it. I don't see the appeal of it.

A couple of years ago, when I started working my way through the list, I found that I really didn't like the more contemporary books, so I started at the earliest books. I like the classics more. Of the time periods represented, I have read more Victorian era books than any other.

I agree with you - I don't like many of the more contemporary books. I also like a lot of the nineteenth century books and a few of the early twentieth century books

The Summer Book

It's hard to say what "shouldn't" be on the list, since I know that I'm not gonna like every book and that that's not what it's about. That's a struggle with the 1001 Movies list, too, which I've done a lot more of. Some of the movies are just brutal for me but I get that they're considered significant in the history of film.

The only list book I've hated so far has been Moby Dick. (To be fair, I liked the beginning, and the very end. But in the middle was like a gazillion pages of outdated information about whales. And I don't care how many people think I'm stupid for thinking that.) But I can't really argue that it doesn't belong on the list, despite my feelings about it.

Ellinor wrote: "My guess is that he himself often doesn't know the books that were added, he just received a list with masses of titles from which he chose the ones mentioned most often."

I most definitely got this impression as well, especially when he strays from the Anglo-Saxon canon.

For example, being Portuguese, I find it very odd that the Queirós book he picked was "The Crime of Father Amaro" when "The Maias" is almost universally known as his opus- at least by those who are familiar with Portuguese literature.

It is by far more influential and incorporates a of threads the author had been developing over the years.

It's not that "Crime" is not a good book but a collection of books that only picks one Queirós book would surely have gone with "The Maias".

However, "Crime" is better known in English speaking countries and I suspect Boxall did not consult with experts in Portuguese literature. Instead, he probably went with the title that his collaborators- English speaking ones- were more familiar with it.

In order to elaborate a list of this scope, actually consulting with those who know national canons in depth would probably be a good idea...and I very much this was done; at least not in any systematical way.

What I wonder is how The New World made it onto the list, as it is obscure and only written in Amharic (an obscure language spoken in Ethiopia). I sincerely doubt Boxall and his crew actually read this.

I agree that The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Catcher in the Rye, and A Confederacy of Dunces should not be on the list. I'm going to add Miss Lonelyhearts since I recently read it and could find no value in having it on the list.

All one has to do is read through the entirety of this topic to pick up a bit of perspective on what books should be on a list like this one. Quite a few of the books mentioned by other readers here as awful or not worthy of being on the list were among my favorites, and would be on my recommended reading list for solid reasons.
Some books though I've never really seen convincing arguments about, for what makes them books "everyone must read." On the top of my awful books list would be Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition. They are both just gross, and were meant to be gross. Ballard is over-represented on the List anyway, and it baffles me that those 2 were ever included. I also found The Swimming-Pool Library poorly written and not list-worthy, and the Tropic of Cancer, maybe also the Tropic of Capricorn, though at least the writing itself is better in those 2. Blue of Noon was pretty unconvincing, and there have been a few others where I really wonder who actually enjoyed them enough to include them on such a list.
The non-fiction and short stories bug me, and the books not actually available in English. There are many great novels left off the list, enough that it'd be hard to argue that they were running out of novels and had to start branching out into other forms of writing. But, when I read through all the info on the people who compiled this list, and realized that this is a list of books recommended by a bunch of academics working in a particular area in England, the list makes more sense. Many of the odd choices are just the sort of books that certain types of professors assign or wish they could justify assigning for their courses, not necessarily because everyone should read them, but maybe just because they fit the pet theses of those professors. Some of the odd choices would indeed be better if we were reading them and discussing them in the context of a class, too.

The Rabbit saga is horrible and I refuse to read after the first one. The whole saga does not need to be included. Especially considering only one of the Ferrante Naples series is included.
There is far too much Paul Auster as well. He is not as great as he thinks he is.

Diane wrote: "What I wonder is how The New World made it onto the list, as it is obscure and only written in Amharic (an obscure language spoken in Ethiopia). I sincerely doubt Boxall and his crew..."

Exactly!

I feel like most people hear are commenting books they hate or don't consider relevant enough (which is valid), but the one that came to mind for me was also "The New World" by Heruy Wolde Selassi.

Less than 20 people have ever read it on Goodreads- it is almost impossible to get your hands on (I had to use international inter library loan from my University for it to go from Sweden to Canada and when I did it couldn't leave the library because it was rare and fragile), and it (as far as I know) has only been published in the original Amharic (which the majority of 1001 readers can't read).

I'm not at all surprised it was phased out mid-edition run at some point.

(And yes, I am the person who said they were translating it a couple years ago and am at about half way because it has been intensive and it's not always what I want to do in my free time lol)

The list would be a lot easier to take seriously if each author was limited to one, maybe two representative works. So, whatever excess works don't pass muster, those are the ones that I consider to be bloat that doesn't belong.

Aubrey wrote: "The list would be a lot easier to take seriously if each author was limited to one, maybe two representative works. So, whatever excess works don't pass muster, those are the ones that I consider t..."

This, many, many times over.

I am trying to read as many list authors as possible, focusing on the women as opposed to reading several titles from the same author. I make some exceptions if I am very fond of a particular writer but still.

I mean, when you have something like the entire bibliography of an author and then have zero from some parts of the world...it becomes a bit absurd.

I agree.