Sunday, August 13, 2006

Penguin's Best

For their 60th Anniversary, Penguin compiled a list of the BEST books in different categories. I love books, and I love lists! What fun.

THE BEST CRAZIES
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest :: Ken Kesey
The Diary of a Madman :: Nikolai Gogol
Wide Sargasso Sea :: Jean Rhys
Crime and Punishment :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes From Underground :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

THE BEST SEX (I'll be looking these up!)
Story of the Eye :: Georges Bataille
A Spy in the House of Love :: Anaïs Nin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover :: D. H. Lawrence
Venus In Furs :: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The Canterbury Tales :: Geoffrey Chaucer

THE BEST VILLAINS
The Brothers Karamazov :: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness :: Joseph Conrad (I completely agree!)
Diamonds are Forever :: Ian Fleming
The Master and Margarita :: Mikhail Bulgakov
The Secret Agent :: Joseph Conrad

THE BEST LOVERS
A Room with a View :: E. M. Forster
Wuthering Heights :: Emily Brontë
Don Juan :: Lord Byron
Love In A Cold Climate :: Nancy Mitford
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof :: Tennessee Williams

THE BEST HEROES
David Copperfield :: Charles Dickens
Middlemarch :: George Eliot
She :: H. Rider Haggard
The Fight :: Norman Mailer
No Easy Walk to Freedom :: Nelson Mandela

THE BEST TEARJERKERS
Of Mice and Men :: John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence :: Edith Wharton
Notre-Dame De Paris :: Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure :: Thomas Hardy
The Old Curiosity Shop :: Charles Dickens

THE BEST SPINE-TINGLERS
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde :: Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula :: Bram Stoker
Frankenstein :: Mary Shelley
The Castle of Otranto :: Horace Walpole
The Turn of the Screw :: Henry James (This one freaks me out!)

THE BEST MINXES
Vanity Fair :: William Makepeace Thackeray
Lolita :: Vladimir Nabokov
Baby Doll :: Tennessee Williams
Breakfast at Tiffany’s :: Truman Capote
Emma :: Jane Austen

THE BEST JOURNEYS
On the Road :: Jack Kerouac
The Odyssey :: Homer
The Grapes of Wrath :: John Steinbeck

Three Men in a Boat :: Jerome K. Jerome
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland :: Lewis Carroll

THE BEST DECADENCE
The Great Gatsby :: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vile Bodies :: Evelyn Waugh
The Picture of Dorian Gray :: Oscar Wilde (I love this story)
The Beautiful and Damned :: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Against Nature :: J. K. Huysmans

THE BEST REBELS
The Autobiography of Malcolm X :: Malcolm X
The Outsider :: Albert Camus
Animal Farm :: George Orwell
The Communist Manifesto :: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Les Misérables :: Victor Hugo

THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION
The Time Machine :: H. G. Wells
The Man in the High Castle :: Philip K. Dick
The Invisible Man :: H. G. Wells
The Day of the Triffids :: John Wyndham
We :: Yevgeny Zamyatin

THE BEST VIOLENCE
A Clockwork Orange :: Anthony Burgess
Hell’s Angels :: Hunter S. Thompson
A Tale of Two Cities :: Charles Dickens
Another Country :: James Baldwin
In Cold Blood :: Truman Capote

THE BEST HIGHS
Junky :: William S. Burroughs
The Moonstone :: Wilkie Collins
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater :: Thomas De Quincey

The Subterraneans :: Jack Kerouac
Monsieur Monde Vanishes :: Georges Simenon

THE BEST SUBVERSION
1984 :: George Orwell
The Monkey Wrench Gang :: Edward Abbey
The Prince :: Niccolo Machiavelli
Bound for Glory :: Woody Guthrie
Death of a Salesman :: Arthur Miller

THE BEST CRIMES
Maigret and the Ghost :: Georges Simenon
The Woman in White :: Wilkie Collins
The Big Sleep :: Raymond Chandler
A Study in Scarlet :: Arthur Conan Doyle
The Thirty-Nine Steps :: John Buchan

THE BEST ADULTERY
Madame Bovary :: Gustave Flaubert
Thérèse Raquin :: Emile Zola
Les Liaisons dangereuses :: Choderlos de Laclos
The Scarlet Letter :: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anna Karenina :: Leo Tolstoy


THE BEST DEBAUCHERY
I, Claudius :: Robert Graves
Hangover Square :: Patrick Hamilton
The Beggar’s Opera :: John Gay
The Twelve Caesars :: Suetonius
Guys and Dolls :: Damon Runyon

THE BEST ACTION
Treasure Island :: Robert Louis Stevenson
The Iliad :: Homer

The Count Of Monte Cristo :: Alexandre Dumas
From Russia with Love :: Ian Fleming
War and Peace :: Leo Tolstoy

THE BEST LAUGHS
Cold Comfort Farm :: Stella Gibbons
The Diary of a Nobody :: George and Weedon Grossmith
The Pickwick Papers :: Charles Dickens
Scoop :: Evelyn Waugh
Lucky Jim :: Kingsley Amis

3 comments:

Laura Rose said...

Lady Chatterley's Lover...?? eh
War and Peace... now that I liked
1984... big brother eat your heart out
Death of a Salesman...I will die happy if I never lay eyes on it again
The Odyssey... one of my faves
And Stoker and RL Stevenson are well worn faves in this house!

Paula said...

The Cantebury Tales...The Best Sex?? I read this in high school. Must go get it and re-read it cause I seriously missed something. I found a lot on the list that I have never read, might have to check them out as well. I love recommended reads that have stood the test of time. Can't believe Moby Dick wasn't on the list, but I guess they didn't have a Best Villain category they could squeeze Captain Ahab into.

Unknown said...

I'm with you on The Cantebury Tales. Did we have to read an edited version in college?