Friday
Jan302009
1000 Novels Everyone Must Read
Friday 30 January, 2009
If The Guardian was in charge of the world, we would all have to read 1000 novels.
This raises a number of interesting computations.
Reading one novel per day (a feat within itself) it would take you 2.73 years to complete the list, or 2 years, 8 months, roughly. If we were to assume you had a life outside of the list (which is not implied in the Guardian's fascistic instructions) and say that you could complete a novel every week, then you are looking at close to 19.2 years of reading. Assuming that you fit these novels in amongst your normal reading habits, perhaps to the extent of one a month, you have an unenviable 83.3 years of perilous scanning ahead of you.
I'm not sure what this list is meant to achieve. The Top 100 Novels of All-Time is bad enough - at least that seems to be trying to rank the buggers. This is less a list and more a collection of books staggered amongst some wide-ranging and wholly inaccurate classifications (the 'State of the Nation' genre being my favourite). Perhaps I'll compile a list of 1000 Poems Everyone Must Read. I think I'll start with 'If'.
This raises a number of interesting computations.
Reading one novel per day (a feat within itself) it would take you 2.73 years to complete the list, or 2 years, 8 months, roughly. If we were to assume you had a life outside of the list (which is not implied in the Guardian's fascistic instructions) and say that you could complete a novel every week, then you are looking at close to 19.2 years of reading. Assuming that you fit these novels in amongst your normal reading habits, perhaps to the extent of one a month, you have an unenviable 83.3 years of perilous scanning ahead of you.
I'm not sure what this list is meant to achieve. The Top 100 Novels of All-Time is bad enough - at least that seems to be trying to rank the buggers. This is less a list and more a collection of books staggered amongst some wide-ranging and wholly inaccurate classifications (the 'State of the Nation' genre being my favourite). Perhaps I'll compile a list of 1000 Poems Everyone Must Read. I think I'll start with 'If'.
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