John L. Wellington, “Woman Reading a Book”
Wednesday
My cousin Rick Neumann alerted me the NPR list drawn up to determine America’s favorite novel. According to the NPR website, 100 titles “were chosen by the American public in a specially commissioned, demographically and statistically representative survey conducted by public opinion polling service YouGov.” Book lovers can vote daily up until October to choose a winner.
A quick perusal of the list indicates that “favorite” is not the same as “best” since there are some execrable books on the list, including Atlas Shrugged, Twilight, the Left Behind series, and Da Vinci code, a book with plot holes so large one can drive a mack truck through them. But I’m not complaining since readers’ love affairs with certain novels are often as mysterious as love affairs generally. As Bottom would put it, “reason and love keep little company.”
Still, I would have liked to see my own favorite novel on the list, which is The Brothers Karamazov (Crime and Punishment is there instead). I also can’t believe that Tom Sawyer, good though it is, has replaced Huckleberry Finn. George Eliot is missing (Middlemarch anyone?), as are novels for 18th century Britain (I’d take either Tom Jones or Moll Flanders). If I have to select from the options available, however, my top ten (in order) are:
War and Peace
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Alice in Wonderland
Gulliver’s Travels
Catch 22
Beloved
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gilead
Invisible Man
I will be depressed if the following books make it into the top ten (and suicidal if one of them wins it all):
Atlas Shrugged
Hunt for Red October
Twilight series
Clan of the Cave Bear
The Godfather
Da Vinci Code
Game of Thrones
Jurassic Park
Left Behind series
I’ve read 60 of the 100 novels and, unlike with Rory Gilmore’s list, don’t feel guilty for not having read more. But the fact that I want to quarrel and advocate is part of the value of the exercise. Anything that gets people talking about literature, even bad literature, is a good thing.