TIME's Best 100 Novels since 1923

Regular readers of this blog (short in number, but long on taste, haha) may remember a guest post by Jane Minett a while ago with a review of The Help.  She's just pointed me to TIME's list of the best 100 novels since TIME was launched in 1923.   It was picked by TIME's book critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo.  For me, it's a mixed blessing.  Thanks for the great recommendations. But no thanks for making me feel more behind on my reading than before.

Here they are, in alphabetical order, with links to their original reviews:

• The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
• All the King's Men (1946), by Robert Penn Warren
• American Pastoral (1997), by Philip Roth
• An American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore Dreiser
• Animal Farm (1946), by George Orwell
• Appointment in Samarra (1934), by John O'Hara
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
• The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
• At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O'Brien
• Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
• Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
• The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
• The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
• The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
• Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
• Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder
• Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
• Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
• A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess
• The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
• The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
• The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon
• A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
• The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
• Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
• A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee
• The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
• Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
• Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone
• Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
• The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), by John Fowles
• The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
• Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
• Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
• Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
• The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
• The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
• Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
• Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson
• A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
• I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
• Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
• Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison

• Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis
• Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies (1955), by William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Loving (1945), by Henry Green
• Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
• The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
• Midnight's Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
• Money (1984), by Martin Amis
• The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
• Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf
• Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
• Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
• Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
• Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 1984 (1948), by George Orwell

• On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey
• The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
• Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
• A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
• Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
• Portnoy's Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
• Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
• The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark
• Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
• Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
• The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
• Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell Hammett
• Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates

• The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
• Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
• Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
• The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
• The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
• The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre
• The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee
• To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
• Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller

• Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
• Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
• Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
• Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
• White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo
• White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
• Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys

Graphic Novels

• Berlin: City of Stones (2000), by Jason Lutes
• Blankets (2003), by Craig Thompson
• Bone (2004), by Jeff Smith
• The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2002), by Kim Deitch
• The Dark Knight Returns (1986), by Frank Miller
• David Boring (2000), by Daniel Clowes
• Ed the Happy Clown (1989), by Chester Brown
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), by Chris Ware
• Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003), by Gilbert Hernandez
• Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

TED Book Club Selection - Spark

Spark: How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein consists of a collection of anecdotes about creative people.  Despite the subtitle claiming it will explain how creativity works, I'm afraid I didn't find any great insights over the handful of stories I read.  It's true I haven't read the whole book, but I don't think I will.

Spark is the first book I've received through the TED Book Club that I've put down after starting the book.  I guess it proves that even the most wonderful selector, who has consistently selected books that I've loved, doesn't resonate with choices 100% of the time.  Heck, some people have even told me they can contain their enthusiasm about Makioka Sisters, which I talked up in a previous blog!

No stars for this one.

Still Alice

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, is a terrifying and touching book describing the onslaught of early-onset Alzheimer's. 

Alice Howland is a brilliant Harvard psychology professor, successful in her career, with a beloved and supportive husband, three children, a wonderful summer home - in short, a perfect life.   She manages a hectic and demanding schedule of teaching and international public speaking, and the day-to-day tasks like finding the car keys for her absent-minded husband.  But disconcerting things are happening.  She loses her train of thought in a speech she's given countless times before.  She can't figure out what something on her to-do list means.  She gets disoriented walking her familiar path from the university to her house.  She finds reasons for these lapses.  It's mere forgetfulness.  It's overwork.  It's stress.  It's menopause.  However, her doctor doesn't think so and sends her for assessment: suddenly she's confronted with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. 

The disease takes hold more quickly in those who succumb to it before 65 and Still Alice is absolutely terrifying as it describes the swift and brutal deterioration of an extremely talented and intellectually gifted woman.  Alice is smart, and devises all sorts of aids to continuing her life.  She even devises a memory test meant to signal when the situation has deteriorated so badly she should take her own life with the pills she's been hoarding.  We see different members of her family and her university colleagues struggle to find the best response; they range from denial, impatience, solicitude, avoidance, compassion, and constructive assistance.  

The author of Still Alice is Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard.  Because publishers thought this book would only appeal to the Alzheimer's community, Genova self-published and self-marketed.  It's hard to believe publishers couldn't see that for many boomers, Alzheimer's is a fear greater than death, and this book would be greeted with great interest, as well as huge trepidation.  The popularity of the book spread through word of mouth and an agent and a publisher appeared.  In the end, the book was Top 10 on New York Times and Globe and Mail best-seller list.  It's a gripping read, and no wonder it found an audience.

Genova's next book, Left Neglected, is the story of another highly successful, multitasking Harvard Ph.D. (notice a pattern here?) who loses the left side of her brain in a traumatic traffic accident.  I remember Jill Bolte-Taylor's riveting talk at TED where she described what it felt like to have a stroke that damaged the left side of her brain and the euphoria she felt as her analytic left side quit working.

TED Book Club Selections - September 2011

It's Christmas in September again.  The latest books from the TED Book Club have just arrived - bringing tips about philanthropy, the evolution of presentations and how to resonate with your audience, and the importance of explanation in human progress .  Since I haven't read them yet, I can't provide a review, but let me quote from the announcement letter.
 

In Give $mart, authors Thomas Tierney and Joel Fleishman peer into the decision-making process of major philanthropists.  Case studies highlight the many ways it's done right - and the ways it isn't.  This book is a short, fascinating read, filled with best-practice advice and guiding principles used by many philanthropists.

Nancy Duarte is no stranger to TED when it comes to creating great presentations - she has worked with some of the most effective speakers you've ever seen.  In her latest book, resonate, she talks about how to take your presentation to the next level, and how to establish and keep an emotional connection with the audience.

In his latest book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, David Deutsch argues that all progress is limitless and that it is fueled by our unique ability to form new explanations and drop bad ones in the the pursuit of knowledge.  It's a mind-bending book (in the best sense).