My Top 10

I feel like attempting to write my own top ten favorite pieces of literature, mostly because it's important to know where your own writing comes from. Lolita was so well-written that it brings you back to a place you know, a place you long for: the books and texts that shaped your writing style and overall literary technique.

1) The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain deBotton
2) Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
3) Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
4) Hamlet by Shakespeare
5) 1984 by George Orwell
6) All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
7) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
8) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
9) Don't Lets go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
10)A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris

It's interesting to note (I'm not sure if it has been noted before in our class or not) that the Modern Library deemed Lolita #4 on its top 100 list, while Readers deemed it #34. What's also interesting is that the Modern Library just LOVES the classics, not giving newer literature a chance. That's something I'll never understand: if new literature is so awful, and the critics are so unforgiving, how can any of us be encouraged to write well or at all? If it's not in "the classics", it's not "good". I guess that's where the Reader's list comes in, showing that just because it was a classic doesn't mean it's going to be a well-accepted favorite. And for that reason, the Reader's list means more to me.
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html