The Guardian newspaper recently published a feature on 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read and it has proved a quite obsessive discussion point for me and my friends The Family Moo, mainly regarding how many we had read and how aghast we were at the low number (Mummy Moo is currently leading with 170 something, but then as her name suggests, she is old enough to be our mother). And also expressing surprise/disgust at the ones they had chosen to omit.
They've split them into sections and I've worked my way through them systematically. While it was interesting to see which I had read, it was just as fascinating to see which of them I had bought but still had on my shelves (having just not got round to them). And then there was the list of those which I was supposed to have read, either at school or university, or for my Book Group.
The first section is War and Travel. I wasn't expecting much from this and this proved true. It broke down as follows.
Read
Nina Bawden - Carrie's War
William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
2 of these I read at school, and were I compiling a list of books that I think people should read, I would probably include Birdsong. It was one of those books which once I read I bought for quite a few people as presents. Books like these don;t come along that often.
Still on shelves
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Books I am supposed to have read
JG Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated
Laurence Sterne - A Sentimental Journey
Anyway, not exactly the most auspicious start - 6 books read out of a possible 117. And just as many that I was supposed to have read or still had on my shelves, intending to read.
And there is an oddity in this section. There's a book that I think I have read, but I can't actually remember. The book in question is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The reason I think I have read it is complicated. As a teenager I was a goth, and was obsessed with the messages (or run out etchings as they are apparently known) scratched into the centre grooves of vinyl releases by the Sisters of Mercy. On the 12inch of Alice, one of these messages was Im Westen Nichts Neues, which is the original German title of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It stands to reason that as an earnest goth I would have tried to read it and I vaguely remember borrowing it from the library. But as to whether I read it or not, I have no recollection.
Anyone, first category down. Perhaps I'll do better with some of the other categories. Although given that the next one is Science Fiction and Fantasy, I wouldn't hold your breath.
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