Wednesday 16 February 2022

100 Novels That Shaped Our World - according to the BBC


I love watching quiz shows and in one of the latest episodes the contestants had to name titles from this list. I hadn't heard of it so I became curious and had to google it.

All the panellists have some sort of literary background:
Stig Abell, Syima Aslam, Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal, Mariella Frostrup and Alexander McCall Smith.

So, here is the list of all the novels they chose. I have read a few.

100 Novels That Shaped Our World according to the BBC

Identity

Morrison, Toni "Beloved" - 1987
Barry, Sebastian "Days Without End"
Michaels, Anne "Fugitive Pieces" - 1996
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Half of a Yellow Sun" - 2006
Gyasi, Yaa "Homegoing"
Levy, Andrea "Small Island" - 2004
Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar" - 1963
Roy, Arundhati "The God of Small Things" - 1997
Achebe, Chinua "Things Fall Apart" (The African Trilogy #1) - 1958
Smith, Zadie "White Teeth" - 1999

Love, Sex & Romance

Fielding, Helen "Bridget Jones' Diary" - 1999
Blume, Judy "Forever"
Baldwin, James "Giovanni's Room"
Austen, Jane "Pride & Prejudice" - 1813
Cooper, Jilly "Riders"
Neale Hurston, Zora "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Kaye, M.M. "The Far Pavilions"
Şafak, Elif "The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi" - 2001
Winterson, Jeanette "The Passion"
Hamilton, Patrick "The Slaves of Solitude"

Adventure

Barry, Kevin "City of Bohane"
Follett, Ken "Eye of the Needle"
Hemingway, Ernest "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - 1940
Pullman, Phillip "His Dark Materials"
Scott, Walter "Ivanhoe"
Buchan, John "Mr. Standfast"
Chandler, Raymond "The Big Sleep"
Collins, Suzanne "The Hunger Games" - 2008 (Trilogy)
O’Brian, Patrick "The Jack Aubrey Novels" ("Master & Commander" - 1969)
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings"

Life, Death & Other Worlds

Martin, George R.R. "A Song Of Ice And Fire" (Game Of Thrones Series)
Okri, Ben "Astonishing"
Herbert, Frank "Dune" Series
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft "Frankenstein" - 1888
Robinson, Marilynne "Gilead" - 2004
Lewis, C.S. "The Chronicles Of Narnia" ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" - 1950)
Pratchett, Terry "The Discworld" (Series)
Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Earthsea" (Trilogy)
Gaiman, Neil "The Sandman Series"
McCarthy, Cormac "The Road" - 2006 

Politics, Power & Protest

Hosseini, Khaled"A Thousand Splendid Suns" - 2007
Huxley, Aldous "Brave New World" - 1931
Shamsie, Kamila "Home Fire"
Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
Blackman, Malorie "Noughts & Crosses"
Plunkett, James "Strumpet"
Walker, Alice "The Color Purple" - 1982
Lee, Harper "To Kill a Mockingbird" - 1960
Moore, Alan "V for Vendetta"
Shields, Carol "Unless"

Class & Society

Naipaul, V.S. "A House for Mr. Biswas" - 1961
Steinbeck, John "Cannery Row"
Coetzee, J.M. "Disgrace" - 1999
Dickens, Charles "Our Mutual Friend"
Dunn, Nell "Poor Cow"
Sillitoe, Alan "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning"
Moore, Brian "The Loneley Passion of Judith Hearne"
Spark, Muriel "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"
Ishiguro, Kazuo "The Remains of the Day" - 1989
Rhys, Jean "Wide Sargasso Sea" - 1966

Coming of Age


Montgomery, L.M. "Emily of New Moon"
Adam, Claire "Golden Child"
Atwood, Margaret "Oryx and Crake" - 2003
Maxwell, William "So Long, See You Tomorrow"
Narayan, R.K. "Swami and Friends"
O’Brien, Edna "The Country Girls
Rowling, J.K. - The Harry Potter Series ("Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" - 1997)
Hinton, S.E. "The Outsiders"
Townsend, Sue "The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾"
Meyer, Stephenie "The Twilight Saga"

Family & Friendship

Seth, Vikram "A Suitable Boy" - 1993
Streatfeild, Noel "Ballet Shoes" - 1936
Winton, Tim "Cloudstreet"
Gibbons, Stella "Cold Comfort Farm" - 1932
Smith, Dodie "I Capture the Castle"
Eliot, George "Middlemarch" - 1871-72
Maupin, Armistead "Tales of the City"
Proulx, Annie "The Shipping News" - 2003
Brontë, Anne "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" - 1848
Dahl, Roald "The Witches"

Conflict & Crime

Ellroy, James "American Tabloid"
El Akkad, Omar "American War"
Sidhwa, Bapsi "Ice Candy Man"
Maurier, Daphne "Rebecca"
Barker, Pat "Regeneration"
James, P.D. "The Children of Men" - 1992
Conan Doyle, Arthur "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
Hamid, Mahsin "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" - 2007
Highsmith, Patricia "The Talented Mr. Ripley" - 1955
Greene, Graham "The Quiet American"

Rule Breakers


Kennedy Toole, John "A Conferdacy of Dunces"
Melville, Herman "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Thompson, Craig "Habibi"
Smith, Ali "How to be Both"
Woolf, Virginia "Orlando"
Carter, Angela "Nights at the Circus"
Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty-Four" - 1949
Wodehouse, P.G. "Psmight, Journalist"
Rushdie, Salman "The Moor's Last Sigh"
Lorde, Audre "Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name"

So, what would be the novels that shaped your life, your world?

I was quite shocked to find a few mistakes on the BBC page (Tolkien ≠ Tolkein, Stephenie Meyer ≠ Stephanie). If there are more, I don't know the author.

10 comments:

  1. Only managed a rather shameful 17 of those! I do own around another 10 though... [grin]

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    1. Well, Kitten, it's not a competition. I did 36 but I doubt I have ten more on my TBR list or will read more than ten additional ones. We all should read what we enjoy. But I still love those lists because sometimes there are some ideas for more books there, not that I or anyone who blogs needs any.

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  2. Interesting list. I've read 15 of these novels/series (at least one book anyway). There are others on here that I've been meaning to read, but just haven't gotten to yet. I'm not surprised that you've read more than double the ones I have. Your tastes are more sophisticated than mine. Ha ha.

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    1. LOOOOOL, Susan. I didn't know there was sophisticated taste. I think we all should read what we enjoy but I love getting ideas about great books from this kind of list.

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  3. I wonder how long it took them to come up with this list! I mean, how would you even begin to choose from all the many books out there?

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    1. I know, Lark, I have trouble finding the ten best books I read last year because there are so many good ones. I only know two of the panellists and didn't even know one of them had a literary background. Anyway, as I said above ^^, the list gives me ideas, that's all.

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  4. The fact that The Outsiders has to share space on a list with Harry Potter and Twilight makes me want to vomit.

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    1. Honestly, I never heard about The Outsiders but have just looked it up. Sounds interesting. I have only read one Harry Potter book but am not a fan of that genre. Still, J.K. Rowling has done a lot of the literacy of children. I have seen a huge change when it came up, even kids who never even looked at a book, let alone touch one, started reading. For that, I give her credit.

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  5. Another interesting list. Although one wonders, as someone mentioned above, how they choose the books. It is quite individual I think. I have only read 22 of these books. Some of the others I would like to read, some of them I have never heard about.

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    1. Very similar, Lisbeth, there are a few I still would like to read but also quite some I never heard of. And yes, would be nice to know how they choose it. I doubt that Bridget Jones did any shaping of the world, for example.

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