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.
Do NOT read Moby Dick. I have no idea how it has gotten the accolade of "greatest american novel". Shit needs an editor STAT. 80 Chapters about whale facts and the first of those chapters starts out with stating that whales are fish, so the facts aren't even real facts. There's a good book in there somewhere, but you gotta skip a lot of stuff. And also be fine with the book introducing a bunch of plot elements that then never get resolved.
Chapter 1 is a banger though. And the confidence scheme that the two captains run on Ishmael is funny. And the gay stuff with Queequeg is cool.