Ranking the 3rd 10 Books

Thanks to the Alexandria Quartet, we actually had 14 books in this group!

I was surprised when I went back to look at the grades I gave the last ten books I read to see how many were in the A/B range. There were only a couple in this group that really blew me away...the rest were really just okay for me, dawg. Besides maybe the first two, there aren't any others in this group I see myself picking up and reading again in the future. The overall themes of this 3rd group were darker. We had the kids that lost it on the pirate ship, the teacher who wanted to take over the lives of her kids, the seedy side of Hollywood, and people under house arrest. It would be nice if the next group of books was more upbeat!!!

Without any further ado, here's this group's breakdown, from 1 (best) to 14 (worst).
1) A House for Mr Biswas
2) A Farewell to Arms
3) Scoop
4) Balthazar
5) Justine
6) Mountolive
7) A Room With a View
8) Brideshead Revisited
9) A High Wind in Jamaica
10) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
11) Kim
12) The Day of the Locust
13) Finnegans Wake

Ranking the 2nd 10 Books....

If I can say one thing about the 2nd ten books I've made it through on the list, it's this: The quality of writing got WAAAAAAYYY better. I had a much harder time ranking the books this go-round because I liked so many of them. Unlike the last ten books, where there are at least five I am all for throwing in the fire pit this upcoming summer, I can say I honestly enjoyed 7 of the 10 of this group. Even the bottom 3 weren't anywhere near as bad as The Magus. It gives me hope that things can only get better, which is why I started reading the list at #100 and working upwards. Hopefully that trend continues!

Unfortunately in the upcoming group of ten, we have the dreaded Finnegans' Wake, plus a Hemingway book (NEWS FLASH: I am not a fan of Hemingway). There are also two Evelyn Waugh books so if I don't love Brideshead Revisited I'm in trouble. So it should be an interesting couple of months.

Here's my ranking, 1 (best) to 10 (worst):

1 Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
2 The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett
3 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
4 The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
5 Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
6 The Call of the Wild, Jack London
7 A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
8 The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
9 Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
10 Loving, Henry Green

Ranking the 1st 10 Books...

Ten books in, I'm not quite sure I knew what I was signing up for when I started this blog. I know for certain that I would never have bought any of these books, or read them, had I not seen the Modern Library list and decided to do this, so for sure this challenge has opened my eyes to new literary vistas.

I think I also had very high expectations for this list....maybe too high. Several times I've begun a book on this list, expecting (hoping?) it will be this unbelievable tome of classic literature that will change my life forever, and then I've ended up disappointed and disillusioned by the end of it, always asking the same question: How the he** did this book get on a list like this? There have GOT to be better books out there from the last century than Under the Net!!!

What's been interesting is going to other sites like Amazon.com and LibraryThing.com and reading other people's reviews of the books after I've read them. It's so crazy how the same book can evoke such different responses in people. Here's a quote from a reader reviewing The Magus on LibraryThing.com: "It changed my life in so many ways and without my realising, pushed me into the career that I'm in. I've visited it again and again so many times." Not only do I shiver to think about what career path The Magus would inspire someone to start (cult member? porn star? flight attendant?), but I know for sure the only way I would ever visit The Magus again and again would be to use it as a doorstop. :)


Here's my ranking of the first ten books, from best (1) to worst (10).

1 Tobacco Road
2 Ironweed
3 Sophie's Choice
4 The Magnificent Ambersons
5 The Postman Always Rings Twice
6 Wide Sargasso Sea
7 The Sheltering Sky
8 The Magus
9 Under the Net
10 The Ginger Man