The Times Literary Supplement's 100 Most Influential Books Since the War
I found it interesting to see how few I had read, yet I have probably seen the thought of many of them retailed by other writers. It doesn't say whether the influence was good or bad -- that's probably a "readerly" decision, as the postmodernists might say.
The ones I have read are:
- Albert Camus: The Outsider
- Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon
- George Orwell: Animal Farm
- George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four
- Norman Cohn: The Pursuit of the Millennium
- Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
That's not much out of a list of 100, only 6%, but I suppose "influential" means that the thought of those books has also permeated other books. I have, for example, read many books that cite Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, though I haven't read Kuhn's book myself.
I also don't know how the list was compiled, or who compiled it, though perhaps it says that elsewhere on the site.
Thanks for the link - looks like it was mostly put together by the politics and sociology faculty. It's interesting how few novels are cited here - Orwell and Solzenitskin, but no Kerouac, Heller, Coupland etc. There's also very little 'popular', mass-market stuff (e.g. the vast body of self-help literature)
ReplyDeleteI still reckon the Bible has influenced more people than any of these!
And if you're looking at mass-market stuff, wasn't James Bond hugely influential? Who didn't know about 007?
ReplyDeleteI have only read on that list...
ReplyDeleteI should think Orwell will become even more influential as we go on.
ReplyDelete