Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Top 100 books of all time?


Image from FreeFoto.com

The Sydney Morning Herald have released their list of the 'Top 100 books of all time'. Go and check it out! I was thrilled to see some of my favourite classics make the list - Persuasion, North and South, even Little Women, amongst others.

I suppose my only question is WHERE ON EARTH IS THE LORD OF THE RINGS??!!! I think it's ludicrous that they've listed Harry Potter at #1 but have excluded other children's fantasy classics such as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings.

EDIT: Since I first posted the link above, The Sydney Morning Herald have edited the article. Apparently, the list was compiled by Angus and Robertson books. 26 000 people took a poll, where they voted for their favourite books from a list provided by A&R. The Lord of the Rings may not have been on that list, hence people taking the poll would not have been able to vote for it; in which case it was a bit unfair of me to rant about LotR being excluded from the list. I am at least glad to see three Jane Austen books voted into the top 100 - it would seem the Janeite community is alive and well Down Under.

2 comments:

Theresa said...

What!? I reckon that's a bit 'hasty' as Treebeard would say. Harry Potter has not stood the test of time yet. Who knows? It might be like the Da Vinci code and fall away from popularity as soon as another book comes on the scene.
Mind you, Lord of the Rings... it's good for fans, but he does waffle on a bit and it's not THAT well written.
hmm.

The Editrix said...

I agree with you about The Lord of the Rings - much as I love the books and movies, I wouldn't call myself a genuine Tolkien fanatic - I've only read the books through once - once! If I were a true fan I'd read them every year, I guess. . . but nonetheless, fifty-odd years after they were written, The Lord of the Rings trilogy are still some of the most popular books in the world - I think they deserve to be called classics of their time and genre. As you say, Harry Potter has not yet stood the test of time. . .

Even though there were quite a few classics listed, I thought there seemed to be a bias towards recently published books - I mean, in all the hundreds of years that mankind has been writing books, it certainly seems a bit unrealistic to suppose that most of the world's best books were written in the last few decades; but that's what this list would have you suppose.

The "best books of all time"? I don't think so.