I've only read two books on the list - "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (#39) and Hexbear's favorite "1984" (#16!)
No Grapes of Wrath ๐ Any omissions you feel should've been included or works that are too high/low on the list?
At the bottom of the list is a "see all votes" list of the authors and other people asked to make a top 10.
I've read some? of The Metamorphosis recently, not sure how I got sidetracked or even if I finished it. Got a few pages into Catch-22 back in high school but I didn't connect with it.
Not even sure where to begin in filling in the holes in my classics and modern gems of reading. The classic Black writings of Walker, Baldwin, and Morrison maybe? Jump right into Moby Dick? Maybe some female writers?
I also struggle to read books like I used to as a voracious bookworm teenager; with phones, Hexbear, YouTube, and streaming taking up much of my free time when I'm not working or parenting. I'm currently past the halfway mark in East of Eden but I've been working on that for a couple of months now.
i really like cormac mccarthy so i'm always going to recommend the road and blood meridian, though they're both really bleak so fair warning i guess
han kang's the vegetarian is a fantastic book about women's bodily autonomy, and if her other works are as good or better then i fully get why she won the nobel prize for literature in 2024.
dracula is dracula, and would deserve to be on the list for its influence alone, but it's also very good in itself