{"id":150,"date":"2005-10-17T17:26:44","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T00:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/posts\/2005\/100-best-novels\/"},"modified":"2005-10-17T17:26:44","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T00:26:44","slug":"100-best-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/posts\/2005\/100-best-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Best Novels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/restlessreader.com\/?p=438\">Restless Reader<\/a> (i.e. Molly), I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/2005\/100books\/\"><i>Time<\/i> Magazine&#8217;s All-Time 100 Best Novels<\/a> (published after 1923).<\/p>\n<p>Of the 100, I have read 17&#8230; not too bad, but not great either. But then again, these lists are sorta silly and whatnot anyway. I have read:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>Animal Farm<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Beloved<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Blind Assassin<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Catcher in the Rye<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Corrections<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Crying of Lot 49<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Gravity&#8217;s Rainbow<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Great Gatsby<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Lord of the Flies<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Mrs. Dalloway<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Neuromancer<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Slaughterhouse-Five<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Things Fall Apart<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>White Noise<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I am surprised to see that two Thomas Pynchon books (<i>Gravity&#8217;s Rainbow<\/i> and <i>The Crying of Lot 49<\/i>) were on the list. <i>Gravity&#8217;s Rainbow<\/i> is a great read, but it&#8217;s also one of the most difficult books I&#8217;ve ever read and not very accessible. Does that make it one of the best books? I&#8217;m not sure.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot think of any books that I would add to the list. My favorite book, <i>Glamorama<\/i> by Bret Easton Ellis is hardly a &#8220;best&#8221; book &#8212; I love it because it&#8217;s a fun read more than anything else.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, these lists are always fun and it&#8217;s neat to compare what I&#8217;ve read compared with what I &#8220;should&#8221; read in order to consider myself a well-read person. I will say, there are a few books I&#8217;m embarrassed that I haven&#8217;t read: <i>Catch-22<\/i> (which I own but haven&#8217;t read), <i>Infinite Jest<\/i> (which I own and have started reading twice but have given up both times), <i>Invisible Man<\/i>, <i>Lolita<\/i> (which, again, I own, but haven&#8217;t read), <i>1984<\/i> (which I always forget that I need to read), and <i>Tropic if Cancer<\/i>. Now I have ideas for next time I need books!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Restless Reader (i.e. Molly), I found Time Magazine&#8217;s All-Time 100 Best Novels (published after 1923). Of the 100, I have read 17&#8230; not too bad, but not great either. But then again, these lists are sorta silly and whatnot anyway. I have read: Animal Farm Beloved The Blind Assassin The Catcher in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/posts\/2005\/100-best-novels\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">100 Best Novels<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}