Penguin's 100 Top Reads

Penguin have announced the 100 Books you should read before you die. Naturally, all are published by Penguin...

Here they are - with my comments. If I have time and energy I'll put up my 100 Books to read.

Best Crazies
1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest — Ken Kesey
2. The Diary Of A Madman — Nikolai Gogol
3. Wide Sargasso Sea — Jean Rhys
4. Crime And Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Notes From Underground — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Best Sex
1. Story Of The Eye — Georges Bataille
2. A Spy In The House Of Love — Anaïs Nin.
3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover — D H Lawrence.
4. Venus In Furs — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch.
5. The Canterbury Tales — Geoffrey Chaucer

Best Villains
1. The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. Heart Of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
3. Diamonds Are Forever — Ian Fleming
4. The Master And Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov
5. The Secret Agent — Joseph Conrad

Best Lovers
1. A Room With A View — E M Forster
2. Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë - read a long time ago. Can't say it did anything for me
3. Don Juan — Lord Byron
4. Love In A Cold Climate — Nancy Mitford
5. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof — Tennessee Williams

Best Heroes
1. David Copperfield — Charles Dickens - I enjoyed this, but it was so long ago that I read it. May be time for a re-read.
2. Middlemarch — George Eliot
3. She — H Rider Haggard
4. The Fight — Norman Mailer
5. No Easy Walk To Freedom — Nelson Mandela

Best Tearjerkers
1. Of Mice And Men — John Steinbeck - Loved this one.
2. The Age Of Innocence — Edith Wharton
3. Notre-Dame De Paris — Victor Hugo
4. Jude The Obscure — Thomas Hardy
5. The Old Curiosity Shop — Charles Dickens

Best Scares
1. The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson
2. Dracula — Bram Stoker - Again, time for a re-read. But I think I liked it.
3. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley - Ditto
4. The Castle Of Otranto — Horace Walpole
5. Turn Of The Screw — Henry James

Best Minxes
1. Vanity Fair — William Thackeray
2. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
3. Baby Doll — Tennessee Williams
4. Breakfast At Tiffany’s — Truman Capote
5. Emma — Jane Austen

Best Journeys
1. On The Road — Jack Kerouac
2. The Odyssey — Homer
3. The Grapes Of Wrath — John Steinbeck
4. Three Men In A Boat — Jerome K. Jerome
5. Alice In Wonderland — Lewis Carroll

Best Decadence
1. The Great Gatsby — F Scott Fitzgerald - Loved this
2. Vile Bodies — Evelyn Waugh
3. The Picture Of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde - And this
4. The Beautiful And Damned — F Scott Fitzgerald
5. Against Nature — J K Huysmans

Best Rebels
1. The Autobiography Of Malcolm X — Malcolm X
2. The Outsider — Albert Camus
3. Animal Farm — George Orwell - Just read this recently and really enjoyed it.
4. The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
5. Les Misérables — Victor Hugo - Fantastic. It's long, but well worth it.

Best Sci Fi
1. The Time Machine — H G Wells
2. The Man In The High Castle — Philip K Dick
3. The Invisible Man — H G Wells
4. The Day Of The Triffids — John Wyndham
5. We — Yvevgeny Zamyatin

Best Violence
1. A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
2. Hell’s Angels — Hunter S Thompson
3. A Tale Of Two Cities — Charles Dickens - the only Dickens I've not been able to get into. But I do keep trying.
4. Another Country — James Baldwin
5. In Cold Blood — Truman Capote

Best Highs
1. Junky — William S Burroughs
2. The Moonstone — Wilkie Collins
3. Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater — Thomas De Quincey
4. The Subterraneans — Jack Kerouac
5. Monsieur Monde Vanishes — Georges Simenon

Best Subversion
1. 1984 — George Orwell - Fabulous, everyone should read this.
2. The Monkey Wrench Gang — Edward Abbey
3. The Prince — Niccolo Machiavelli - Great. Taught me all I know about trusting politicians.
4. Bound For Glory — Woody Guthrie
5. Death Of A Salesman — Arthur Miller

Best Crimes
1. Maigret And The Ghost — Georges Simenon
2. The Woman In White — Wilkie Collins
3. The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler
4. A Study In Scarlet — Arthur Conan Doyle
5. The Thirty-Nine Steps — John Buchan

Best Adultery
1. Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert - I enjoyed this
2. Thérèse Raquin — Émile Zola
3. Les Liaisons Dangereuses — Pierre Choderlos De Laclos - One of my favourites
4. The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne - Liked this too
5. Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy

Best Debauchery
1. I, Claudius — Robert Graves
2. Hangover Square — Patrick Hamilton
3. The Beggar’s Opera — John Gay
4. The Twelve Caesars — Suetonius
5. Guys And Dolls — Damon Runyon

Best Action
1. Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson
2. Iliad — Homer
3. The Count Of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
4. From Russia With Love — Ian Fleming
5. War And Peace — Leo Tolstoy

Best Laughs
1. Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Gibbons
2. Diary Of A Nobody — George & Weedon Grossmith
3. Pickwick Papers — Charles Dickens
4. Scoop — Evelyn Waugh
5. Lucky Jim — Kingsley Amis

I must admit that this list leaves me somewhat cold. And I don't feel the need to read many that I've missed, just re-read some that I've previously enjoyed.