Books of the Century by Le Monde
73 points - last Thursday at 12:58 AM
Sourcejackconsidine
today at 7:57 PM
> Ulysses by Joyce => 264,258 words (16 hours 1 minute) with a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)
Don't want to know what difficult is
What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?"
Makes more sense like that.
kergonath
today at 5:00 PM
> Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing
Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.
Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?
Out of interest, why does that seem a strange methodology?
When reading "Books of the Century" I expected a list of the most important, most influential or just best books. Skewed towards the french perspective, given Le Monde as a source. But this was never the goal, just a "what stuck in your mind" question.
For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.
rorytbyrne
today at 5:31 PM
Ulysses was first published in Paris during the 20 years that Joyce lived there.
>I thought only the US ranks it high
Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.
Right, Great Gatsby is another book one could highlight, where it's surprising that it is on the (french) list, while it would be on an US list. But I haven't read it, I do not know whether it is a good example for the difference between a good or important book and a memorable one.
Guestmodinfo
today at 5:24 PM
James Joyce wearing his bottle bottom glasses (thick glasses) would like to have a word with you. You can call him genius, dirty, knowledgeable in many languages but certainly not gibberish. He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish. In our book club we often discuss for hours what he was trying to say on a page. Sometimes he says things in 3 different dimensions by writing a single sentence.
jpfromlondon
today at 8:34 PM
Woolf had his number, she was right on every count.
Are you sure you are not just reinforcing my point? :)
RcouF1uZ4gsC
today at 8:03 PM
Yep.
> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.
My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.
jkingsbery
today at 4:23 PM
1984 is 22 on the list.
Upps. Searching for 1984 didn't turn it up.
> most influential
> "what stuck in your mind"
That's strongly correlated IMHO; and I don't really see any objective metric for the influence of a book anyway.
1984 is N°22 on that list...
Ulysses was written in Paris, where James Joyce lived, and was published in Paris by the now legendary Shakespeare & Co. The US and UK banned it for being obscene.
When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).
It's completely irrelevant where it was written, where it was published and where it was banned, I'm talking about how it is seen today. It is possible I am getting this wrong -certainly possible, since I'm taking this impression from English speaking sites like this, that I attribute to the US what should be attributed to England -, but I have seen no argument so far that even strives the point I made.
keiferski
today at 5:32 PM
1984 is listed at number 22 under its actual title, written out.
Starting with only 200 titles in the survey, for a final list of 100, seems off to me for starters. Every book surveyed has a 50% chance of making “book of the century”
That makes it sound like 50 shades of grey would have had a 50/50 chance of getting into the top 100 if it only was included in the wider selection
keiferski
today at 5:30 PM
How is this strange? It’s pretty much what I’d expect from francophone readers. What were you expecting?
throwforfeds
today at 6:21 PM
The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close.
I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.
Honestly, American lists are the same. Every decent English speaking author, plus some selections of other languages.
Any national worlds book list, and this explicitly includes US and UK lists, are heavily skewed and I mean ridiculously so
noads2000
today at 6:44 PM
[dead]
yallpendantools
today at 7:52 PM
Why are some numbers skipped? E.g., 58 [59 60] 61 [62] 63 64 65 66 67 68 [69] 70
keiferski
today at 5:35 PM
What would be interesting is to cross reference this list with an Anglophone one and pull out the writers that are big in France but almost unknown amongst the public in America. CĂ©line is definitely one such example, I think.
The sad thing is how many aren't available.
I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.
This should have an 1999 in the title even if the site and ebooks published are newer
BiraIgnacio
today at 6:10 PM
I'm happy to see so many philosophy or philosophy-adjacent books on that list.
And I also wonder why that is.
I don't think I would place all of them in any 'top' list, but all the books I have read, ~60%, are great read. Weird list though.
raffael_de
today at 5:54 PM
pretty french heavy that list.
throwforfeds
today at 6:17 PM
well, it is a french newspaper surveying french people