the best books of the NYT readers
Two years after Le Monde reported on the list of the 101 favourite novels of [some of] its readers, which I found most fascinating as a sociological entry on said readers, rather than a meaningful ordering of literary monuments (!), even though it led me to read Damasio’s La Horde du Contrevent, as well as Jean-Philippe Jaworski’s Gagner la Guerre [To the victors go the spoils], The New York Times did something similar to celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary. If on a lesser scale, as it only produces
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- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 1984 by George Orwell
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
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as the top five books of the last 125th years, Lee’s, Tolkien’s, and Garcia Márquez’s appearing in both lists, if with a different ranking. (The nomination rules were not exactly the same, though, with only novels for Le Monde and only “recent” books and only one per author for the New York Times.) Here is a longer list of the 25 top contenders, from which NYT readers voted [an opportunity I missed!]:
- 1984 by George Orwell
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Ulysses by James Joyce
some of which I had never heard of. And not including a single Faulkner’s… Except for One Hundred Years of Solitude, first published as Cien años de soledad, all novels there were originally written in English. Sadly, the number one book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is also one of the most censored by school boards in the USA! (And so are books by Toni Morrison.)
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This entry was posted on February 9, 2022 at 12:22 am and is filed under Books, Kids, Travel with tags 1984, book list, book reviews, Catch, censorship, Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, George Orwell, Harper Lee, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings, J.R. Tolkien, James Joyce, John Steinbeck, Le Monde, list, Margaret Atwood, Nabokov, novel, The Lord of the Rings, The New York Times, To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morisson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
5 Responses to “the best books of the NYT readers”
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February 10, 2022 at 9:31 am
Ah ah, tu me rappelles que ton post m’avait fait acheter ‘La horde du contrevent’ ouvrage assommant jete a la poubelle apres 100 pages!
February 10, 2022 at 1:01 pm
Désolé!, j’avais aussi trouvé cela longuet avec une “chute torique” à la fin pire que tout…
February 9, 2022 at 4:00 pm
IB Singer of course and his great short stories. Missing names might be informative too, and Bayesians are often at ease with missing data problems!
February 9, 2022 at 12:17 pm
Thanks Christian for your refreshing post on the favourite NYT writers.
I was glad to see Orwell, Salinger, Steinbeck, Nabokov, Fitzgerald Irwing. Incidentally Ulysses by James Joyce is always top rated but
also so hard to read!
Is there a longer list than the one you showed?
What about Jim Harrison, Philip Roth, Bret Easton Ellis, S Bellow
among the list of the ones known in France and the tiny sublist that I read.
February 9, 2022 at 3:38 pm
Ah, yes, indeed, Jim Harrison is indeed sadly missing, I wonder why… Also missing is the unique world of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s books.