The Guardian's 100 Best Novels of All Time: A Hot Take, with Phil Chaffee and Joseph Dance
When the Guardian drops a list of the 100 Greatest Novels in English it's time to drop everything to talk about it. Luckily pod-regular guest, journalist Phil Chaffee and Joseph Dance, host of the Curious Readers podcast, also had views, and were willing to get together on a Sunday evening to share them. You'll hear our hits, our misses, how many we’ve read, whether we should have read more and much musing on whether a list like this is the way to get people excited about reading. We explore the joys of the sub-lists – the contributor lists – all squirrelled away on a sub-section of the Guardian's website, that arguably provide more excitement and inspiration than the fairly canonical top 100. Which is the best Brontë? Which is the best Austen? Do we age into certain books? If you've read all seven volumes of Proust shouldn't that count for more than one entry? All this and much, much more. Enjoy – this was an absolute delight to make and I hope it makes you smile as much as it did me. Have your say: get in touch on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com, or head to our website for full shownotes. What would be in your top-10? Check out the Patreon for all kinds of extras, from our monthly book club to extra shows and Kate's reading diaries. Find it at patreon.com/thebookclubreview The Guardian’s List of the 100 Greatest Novels published in English, copied below for ease of reference. *underlined – the ones Kate has read Middlemarch Beloved Ulysses To the Lighthouse In Search of Lost Time Anna Karenina War and Peace Jane Eyre Pride and Prejudice Madame Bovary The Great Gatsby Bleak House Emma Mrs Dalloway Moby-Dick Nineteen Eighty-Four One Hundred Years of Solitude Persuasion The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Wuthering Heights The Portrait of a Lady Things Fall Apart Midnight’s Children The Remains of the Day Lolita Don Quixote The Trial The Brothers Karamazov Pale Fire Frankenstein The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie The God of Small Things David Copperfield Wolf Hall Great Expectations The Handmaid’s Tale Invisible Man The Age of Innocence Their Eyes Were Watching God Song of Solomon Heart of Darkness The Magic Mountain Housekeeping Giovanni’s Room The Golden Notebook The Leopard Vanity Fair The Metamorphosis A Fine Balance Wide Sargasso Sea My Brilliant Friend The Golden Bowl The Transit of Venus Orlando The Waves Mansfield Park The Sound and the Fury Disgrace Never Let Me Go Howards End The Rings of Saturn Half of a Yellow Sun White Teeth The Good Soldier The Color Purple The Master and Margarita The Man Without Qualities Blood Meridian Crime and Punishment Jude the Obscure Kindred Our Mutual Friend Austerlitz Nervous Conditions The Bluest Eye Dracula The Rainbow A House for Mr Biswas Go Tell It on the Mountain Rebecca Buddenbrooks The End of the Affair A Farewell to Arms The Talented Mr Ripley The Vegetarian The Turn of the Screw The Line of Beauty Ragtime The Left Hand of Darkness Jacob’s Room Life and Fate Sentimental Education Invisible Cities The Known World The Return of the Native Pedro Páramo Catch-22 The Road The Go-Between My Ántonia Particular books we touch on in the show Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Ulysses by James Joyce In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Villette by Charlotte Brontë Orlando, The Waves and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Middlemarch by George Eliot Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not and This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt A Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih The Princess of Clèves by Madame de Lafayette The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki The Trial and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley Moby-Dick by Herman Melville A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul The New Life by Tom Crewe Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs Oliphant The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope The Warden by Anthony Trollope The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil The Known World by Edward P. Jones See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
