I had considered myself well-read until.....

[catorman]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Aberforth's Goat" 
<Aberforths_Goat at Y...> wrote:
> Some oddities:
> 
> Catherine's right - where are the women?? (And which women would
> you all suggest adding? I'm stuck.)

Several that I can think of - you mention AS Byatt below, and I would 
certainly include at least Possession, and perhaps Fred in "Babel 
Tower" - I know she appears in some earlier books, but this is my 
favourite.  I also love Angels and Insects.    Also Iris Murdoch, 
Carol Shields (in particular Mary Swann and The Stone Diaries) Olivia 
Manning (her Fortunes of War sextet is wonderful), Maggie Gee, 
Isabelle Allende, Nancy Mitford, Jill Paton Walsh (I love "Knowledge 
of Angels") Doris Lessing, Annie Proulx and perhaps even Barbara 
Trapido.  I'd love to include Georgette Heyer and a host of others as 
well, but I don't suppose they count as serious fiction.  Also, 
considering there are children's books on the list, how come there 
wasn't a mention of LM Montgomery - no Anne Shirley? That seems very 
odd to me.

> Not that I miss Henry James. His late stuff bores me to tears.

Ditto, although I liked Turn of the Screw

> But he's not as bad as Ulysses, which is everywhere - and which I
> did force myself to spend a long time staring at. (I'm giving
> myself full points for that staring, even it *wasn't* exactly
> what I'd normally call "reading," since I had no idea what I was
> staring at ... )

Well, that made me Laugh out Loud!  I know exactly what you mean - do 
the same thing every time I open my taxbooks (or kind of drift into 
it gradually).

> James isn't as bad as Kafka, either. I started The Castle three
> times, Metamorphosis once and never finished the first chapter of
> either. Perhaps I ought to try it in translation. I have a
> greater tolerance for masochism in English.

Ack - had to read Metamorphosis and the Trial in German for my A 
levels, and I have to say that I cheated.  Too frustrating for words 
(in English and German).

> I also started one of Updike's Rabbit books once - and didn't
> like it well enough to read more than the first ten pages. There
> was something so brittle, clever and ironic about it that I
> almost got a sick stomach. Should I have begun with the first?

Yep, I'd agree with that as well.  I've never been able to get into 
John Updike.  I would have liked to see John Fowles on the list.  
Anyone read "The Magus" or "the Collector"?

> Also: Why'd they pick Italo Calvino over Uberto Eco? I've read
> one Calvino (not the one on the list), but I should think Eco's
> characters - in Pendlum or Name of the Rose - should have had
> dibs on a list of this kind.

That, I also don't understand.  Umberto Eco often seems to be 
overlooked in these kind of lists, and I've never been able to fathom 
out why.  I think that both Foucault's Pendulum and Name of the Rose 
are extremely clever and witty, and the character of William 
Baskerville in particular is a wonderful creation.

> BTW, there were quite a few of my personal naggs in that list -
> authors I think I might like but have never managed to try:
> Proust, Camus, Salinger, Kerouac, Faulkner, Amis and Naipaul. Who
> should I start with? (Yoo-hoo .. Catherine?) (And is Proust good
> or another of the illegible classics?)

Well, I'm probably not the person to ask on this because I'm not a 
huge fan of either Salinger or Kerouac, although I did manage to 
stumble my way through Catcher in the Rye and On the Road at some 
time or other.  I always feel guilty for not enjoying Catcher in the 
Rye - I just don't find it a sympathetic book.  I find reading male 
North American novelists a strange experience - I'm very hit and miss 
with them.  I've enjoyed Nabakov, Bernard Malamud, David Guterson and 
Robertson Davies (I know he's Canadian) and some of the gay writers 
such as Felice Picano, Edmund White  (both of whom I would have 
included on this list, btw), but I always find that I don't like many 
of the books I feel I should.  I've had Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" 
by my bad for ages - I keep picking it up and reading a few pages - 
then lose interest.

As for Amis - Kingsley or Martin?  I certainly prefer the latter - 
all of the earlier stuff such as Money and London Fields.  Again, 
with Kingsley, I was never very struck with "Lucky Jim" - did it as 
part of a course about the campus novels, which included Malcolm 
Bradbury, David Lodge, and AS Byatt, and prefered all of the others 
to Amis.  

> And finally, I'm glad Kazuo Ishiguro made the list. I've only
> read Floating World - found it lying about in a Swiss second-hand
> hand furniture shop - but it had something about it that tells me
> I want to read more.

I've read "Remains of the Day" and I have to say that it's one of 
those rare occasions when I preferred the film - perhaps because 
Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson worked so well together.  
Coincidentally, I feel the same way about EM Forster's novels - I've 
waded through them when at college, but generally preferred the 
Merchant Ivory adaptations. 

Catherine