6 years later in 2003, The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel. The #1 was the same as on the Waterstone's List. Pride and Prejudice was #2 (not a 20th Century book). Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire was #5. For me the book of the 20th century would either be East of Eden or To Kill a Mockingbird.
Thank you Jim! I knew the BBC did one but I couldn’t remember when! I’ll be looking that up. To Kill a Mockingbird would be in my top books of the 20th century too!
This is so brilliant. These kinds of lists are fascinating. It is always subjective, but usually you can see the jusitfication for book lists. Music lists are often more random haha
Thanks Gareth! All of the NYT chat brought this back to me and it was fascinating to look back at the list and remember how different reading and attitudes were then! I imagine music lists are super random as there is just so much variation in taste!
This was so fascinating! Wow, Orwell having two of the top three slots. Also, Heart of Darkness was published in 1899, so not sure that quite counts for the best books of the 20th century 😂
This was fascinating! It brought back so much nostalgia. You are right, reading life was so different then. I was explaining to my children just the other dayhow there were so few places to get book recommendations. It was either word of mouth or scanning library or bookshop shelves. ...or reading articles.
Exactly this! I’ve not really stopped and thought about it properly before but once I started considering it in this video, the differences were huge! Every Monday in the branch I worked at, you would guarantee several newspaper clippings from the weekend reviews would be presented to you by people looking for the books they read about! Our book databases in the shop were connected to the internet but they weren’t like Google or other search engines (in fact Google was only launched in 1998😵💫) but super basic and very old fashioned. It all amazes me now to think about it!
It’s hard to fathom it now but fantasy was not that well-respected at the time - even Lord of the Rings! I think it was a huge shock to the literary crowd!
I’m trying to think of who would make the top of the list. I can only think of American mid-century males like Steinbeck and Faulkner. Oh my! Love this video.
Hi Jack, I love how articulate you are! I remember quite a few of these books. I think this is a very English list. I couldn’t finish bonfire of the vanities and many of the others on the list that are similarly male centered. I don’t know who suggested I read Roddy Doyle, but his book the snapper made me laugh so much. I loved loved loved it. I also loved the name of the rose, which was controversial in that some people thought it was rubbish. Some people loved it like me . I agree that some books are of the time. This was an awesome video! Aloha friend.
Thanks Marilyn, this was a fun one to make. Agreed that the list is very English, white and male! The Snapper is hilarious and the list has made me want to revisit some books and authors like Roddy Doyle.
Great discussion, and really interesting to think about the two lists and how different they are in tone. I’ve read a fair few of these, and have many on my TBR. I also DNF’d Love in the Time of Cholera. I really don’t understand the hype around that book/author. I’m delighted to hear that LoTR was number one - that book is a bloody masterpiece. It gets my vote for best book of the 20th century.
@@Shellyish I know! I literally watched your video yesterday before I posted this and was like ‘no way!’ - I’d just talked about the fact no one mentions it any more! 😂
Brilliant idea to revisit this list. People couldn't Google or go to Goodreads to remind themselves of books so this was from their bookshelves and memory. I didn't stop to guess the #1 as I remember the controversy about it being LOTR. But my personal choice would be Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.
Funnily enough, I looked it up and Google was launched a year later than this list. The internet certainly wasn’t our first port of call for everything at that time. In fact, I didn’t get my first email address or home dial-up connection until the following year when I started at university! I think they collected postal votes and people could vote on cards in-store! It was so interesting to think back to that time and really remember what it was like - even having been there, it just seems like another world now! I remember that the first time I saw someone using a hands free headset to talk on their phone was in that shop and a woman was wandering around the shelves talking to herself, or so I thought, and I was very disconcerted as you can imagine. And when she emerged from one of the sections I realised what was going on but that really stuck with me. Such an everyday occurrence now! 😂 I was very surprised Woolf only had one on the list!
I loved Trainspotting. I have never finished the LOTR trilogy, although I love The Hobbit and re-read it quite regularly. It’s fascinating how publishing has changed and now we have all the different formats. I am old enough to remember Amazon when it was the first online bookshop. Readers loved it back then. For audiobooks you had to borrow them from the library, they were so expensive.
Trainspotting, both the book and the film, is brilliant. It may well make a top 100 of the 20th Century but not sure it would be top ten now. My brother had the ‘Choose life’ speech on a poster! Stopping to put myself back in the mindset of the nineties was fascinating - reading life really was so different! I remember the massive cases that audiobooks from the library would come in. I was gutted that I only remember Amazon during editing as I have a few thoughts on how it has changed publishing and reading!
Ohhhh another list’. This is great. 25000 people is impressive. Talking about how we read, what we read now compared to 1997 very interesting. Same with your comment about authors reading differently. 😊💙
Wow || we did not think The Lord of the Rings would actually win! || Jack i was watching whilst cooking, put on speaker for my Mum, my 9 yr old came in, and we basically sat round and listened like it was the Olympics for books 😂😂😂 || My son guess Charlie as the highest RD book and i was delighted Beloved was in the top 50, as well as Hitchikers. We then all cheered when Lord of the Rings was said! || Thanks this was so fun and thought provoking about how our reading has evolved! 💜📚
I’m so glad you all enjoyed the count down so much! Yay for LotR! I love that Hitchhikers got such a high spot on the list as well. This was a fun video to make and I’m so glad you and the family enjoyed it!
Your video is the third time this week I have seen the Gormanghast books mentioned. It’s so strange. So cool that The Lord of the Rings was number one even before the movies came out. As a fantasy reader from the 80s I feel incredibly vindicated!
@@BookishTexan I felt vindicated at the time as well! It was so great to see it at number one! I’m going to revisit Gormenghast at some point. It’s so well loved!
Bit silly to be making a list like this less than a quarter of the way through the century, but my favorite book of the 21st century so far is How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith. My favorite of the 20th century is probably Watership Down by Douglas Adams, but I will freely admit I haven't read widely of books published in the first half of the century. And I do think Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler deserves an honorable mention.
@@lindysmagpiereads To Kill a Mockingbird would have been my guess too! An absolutely brilliant book. I’ve never read Fall on Your Knees or heard of it and it looks brilliant - which is a perfect example of how the internet has opened up the world of international reading! That book was published in 1996 and I can tell you that it wasn’t promoted here at all. As a Bookseller from 1995-2001, I know that period in UK publishing very well and never came across it!
Guess: 1984 by George Orwell. My (probably unpopular) choice would be Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan So interesting. I wonder what people would vote for if they had to choose the best book of the 20th century now. The list probably also reflects the time spirit. I checked out the initial NT list, but I completely missed the second readers list. I read 16 of the author's list and 40 of the readers list. Lot's of that one are also on Shelly's list if I'm not mistaking. Some of my favourites are on it. I think I need to save it for inspiration. Btw, I've just finished My Brilliant Friend last week. For some reason It never appealed to me. But my brother was raving about the adaptation and I thought that If I were going to check it out, I needed to at least read the first book before watching it. And to my surprise I really enjoyed it a lot. So I can recommend. I've read 45 of the books of that 1997 list. And I wasn't far with my guess. My pick was nowhere to be found.Neither were some of the other ones I thought about. There is lot's still to read. Loved this video by the way. Who doesn't love a good list. :)
@@-ParisTexas- you were so close with your guess and I’m really glad you enjoyed the video! I think looking back at the 1997 list demonstrates how these votes are reflective of the moment and would be different if people voted now. But I imagine 1984 and LotR would still be on the top five at the very least. I’ve got My Brilliant Friend out of the library and it’s been sitting on my shelf since before the NYT list was announced. I’m surprised it hasn’t been reserved by someone else since the announcement, so I should prioritise reading it!
Thank you for sharing! This was fascinating. I actually think The Lord of the Rings would still rank #1 now. I was surprised there wasn't Hemingway and tragically Ellison's Invisible Man is missing. Also The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Thats true that fantasy wasn't mainstream yet back then though.😅
@@Dinadoesyoga I think it’s a very British-centric list which isn’t that surprising given the time and place but no Hemingway is a surprise for sure. I agree that I think LotR would still rank top and I think that would be much more acceptable now than it was then! Fantasy has garnered so much more respect in recent decades, which is great.
I thought Harry Potter came out a year or so before, so that was my first guess, but my second guess was Lord of the Rings. It's based on voting after all and these are books that are so loved and (even before mass online media) can mobilise a huge fan base. Such an influence on later writing and the acceptability of fantasy as well. I think a repeat of this list today would have less children's books on it, and some authors who have become more controversial would be dropped in favour of a broader range. But if it was voted for, I do think Harry Potter would be near the top!
@@tillysshelf well done Tilly! Interesting to think back to that time and I agree HP would be near the top now. I started taking notice of it when the second book was published - the first one was kind of a word-of-mouth success but by the time the second one came out it was huge news! I was very happy at the time that LotR won the vote.
Wow that bought back some memories. Trainspotting still remains one of my favourite books and I love both films but that speaks more to age than anything else. First we had "Just say No" as kids. Then we had Trainspotting as teenagers. Sophie's World had a 'moment' didn't it. I think you will realĺy like Deamon Copperhead.
Ha - yes the dichotomy of Just Say No and then Trainspotting! 😂 I’m looking forward to reading Demon, though a little nervous it won’t live up to the hype!
@@Vates104 I’ve heard of this and will add it to my wish list! Just had a look at Wikipedia and apparently it didn’t have a great English translation until after this list was published which might explain why it never made this list. Thanks for mentioning it!
This is a really interesting list. As an American bookseller, we can barely keep Perfume and American Psycho in stock. Same situation with Trainspotting, but the need is not quite as voracious, lol. Do you know of any lists that are specifically UK book or author focused?
How interesting about Perfume and American Psycho! Funnily enough, since mentioning that I’ve not heard anyone talking about Perfume in a long time, I’ve since seen another booktuber talk about it! I don’t know of any lists that are focused on British authors/books but another list I want to look at is the BBC’s Big Read list which was an even bigger survey conducted in the UK in 2003 of the nation’s best loved novel which wasn’t specific to a time period and had 750,000 votes so far outstripped this one in terms of size! Can you guess what won that?
I liked this discussion, especially when it comes to how times have changed and who the lists are for. I have jurassic park on my tbr and I need to read it! And I really love the film franchise as well. I thought long walk to freedom was very good. And roald dahl and george orwell definitely deserve to be on the lists. I was so bored in one day in the life of ivan though :/ And I didn't really like slaughterhouse 5 either too. I do think plath deserves to be there but it should be for ariel! And of course the handmaids tale deserves it. I know about perfume but haven't read it and I do want to try it. Heart of darkness does not deserve to be on the list at all!! I love beloved so much, and it should absolutely be there. As well as of mice and men. Lord of the flies, anne frank's diary, the stranger, the colour purple and the trial all deserve to be there too. I really don't like the great gatsby but even then am surprised it ranks so high. I hate the catcher in the rye. Oh dear, I have catch 22... I am surprised there is no Jane Austen? No Shakespeare?
This list was so fascinating and I really loved discussing the time and thinking back to how different it all was then as a reader. I found that I’d either loved or disliked lots of the choices that I had read - there wasn’t much middle ground on my feelings on them! Sadly, as it was limited to books published in the 20th century, neither Austen nor Shakespeare got a look in. I need to take a look at the BBC big read list from a few years later as that apparently pipped this in terms of voters and was the largest survey of its kind and I don’t think that was limited to a particular time period. I love what these lists tell us about reading tastes and habits from those times!
Guess my family's choices are || The Lord of the Rings/ The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm going for Beloved and Roll of Thunder hear my Cry, but i doubt it is either of those ||💜📚
Ok now reaction…. What?! Moby Dick isn’t even on there ? Or maybe I missed it. I love the Lord of the Rings and so understand why it’s high on the list. I think because children’s literature was on this list may have knocked some great books off such as The Good Earth and The Agony and the Ecstasy. I may have missed some as I was cooking while watching 😆 Great video!!
Thank you so much! It was definitely fascinating to revisit this list and remember just how different a time it was. I believe Moby Dick was published in the 19th century or it would probably have been quite high on this list! Glad you enjoyed this trip down memory lane! 😄
6 years later in 2003, The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel. The #1 was the same as on the Waterstone's List. Pride and Prejudice was #2 (not a 20th Century book). Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire was #5. For me the book of the 20th century would either be East of Eden or To Kill a Mockingbird.
Thank you Jim! I knew the BBC did one but I couldn’t remember when! I’ll be looking that up. To Kill a Mockingbird would be in my top books of the 20th century too!
I was a huge fan of fantasy during the 80s and 90s so I should have guessed the book of the century. This video was fun, Jack!
@@lindysmagpiereads I’m so glad you enjoyed it Lindy! It was such a fun, nostalgic list.
This is so brilliant. These kinds of lists are fascinating. It is always subjective, but usually you can see the jusitfication for book lists. Music lists are often more random haha
Thanks Gareth! All of the NYT chat brought this back to me and it was fascinating to look back at the list and remember how different reading and attitudes were then! I imagine music lists are super random as there is just so much variation in taste!
This was so fascinating! Wow, Orwell having two of the top three slots.
Also, Heart of Darkness was published in 1899, so not sure that quite counts for the best books of the 20th century 😂
@@katiejlumsden Ha! Good spot! Wonder how that managed to get on the list? I found it so fascinating and nostalgic looking back on this!
This was fascinating! It brought back so much nostalgia. You are right, reading life was so different then. I was explaining to my children just the other dayhow there were so few places to get book recommendations. It was either word of mouth or scanning library or bookshop shelves. ...or reading articles.
Exactly this! I’ve not really stopped and thought about it properly before but once I started considering it in this video, the differences were huge! Every Monday in the branch I worked at, you would guarantee several newspaper clippings from the weekend reviews would be presented to you by people looking for the books they read about! Our book databases in the shop were connected to the internet but they weren’t like Google or other search engines (in fact Google was only launched in 1998😵💫) but super basic and very old fashioned. It all amazes me now to think about it!
Wild Swans is incredible!
This was fascinating! It is so strange to see that there was a negative response to the top pick. I completely agree with it!
It’s hard to fathom it now but fantasy was not that well-respected at the time - even Lord of the Rings! I think it was a huge shock to the literary crowd!
I’m trying to think of who would make the top of the list. I can only think of American mid-century males like Steinbeck and Faulkner. Oh my! Love this video.
Hi Jack, I love how articulate you are! I remember quite a few of these books.
I think this is a very English list. I couldn’t finish bonfire of the vanities and many of the others on the list that are similarly male centered.
I don’t know who suggested I read Roddy Doyle, but his book the snapper made me laugh so much. I loved loved loved it. I also loved the name of the rose, which was controversial in that some people thought it was rubbish. Some people loved it like me . I agree that some books are of the time. This was an awesome video! Aloha friend.
Thanks Marilyn, this was a fun one to make. Agreed that the list is very English, white and male! The Snapper is hilarious and the list has made me want to revisit some books and authors like Roddy Doyle.
Great discussion, and really interesting to think about the two lists and how different they are in tone.
I’ve read a fair few of these, and have many on my TBR.
I also DNF’d Love in the Time of Cholera. I really don’t understand the hype around that book/author.
I’m delighted to hear that LoTR was number one - that book is a bloody masterpiece. It gets my vote for best book of the 20th century.
Absolutely - I think LotR would still win if they held a vote on the best books of the 20th century now.
I read Perfume back in college!
@@Shellyish I know! I literally watched your video yesterday before I posted this and was like ‘no way!’ - I’d just talked about the fact no one mentions it any more! 😂
Brilliant idea to revisit this list. People couldn't Google or go to Goodreads to remind themselves of books so this was from their bookshelves and memory. I didn't stop to guess the #1 as I remember the controversy about it being LOTR. But my personal choice would be Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.
Funnily enough, I looked it up and Google was launched a year later than this list. The internet certainly wasn’t our first port of call for everything at that time. In fact, I didn’t get my first email address or home dial-up connection until the following year when I started at university! I think they collected postal votes and people could vote on cards in-store! It was so interesting to think back to that time and really remember what it was like - even having been there, it just seems like another world now! I remember that the first time I saw someone using a hands free headset to talk on their phone was in that shop and a woman was wandering around the shelves talking to herself, or so I thought, and I was very disconcerted as you can imagine. And when she emerged from one of the sections I realised what was going on but that really stuck with me. Such an everyday occurrence now! 😂 I was very surprised Woolf only had one on the list!
I loved Trainspotting. I have never finished the LOTR trilogy, although I love The Hobbit and re-read it quite regularly. It’s fascinating how publishing has changed and now we have all the different formats. I am old enough to remember Amazon when it was the first online bookshop. Readers loved it back then. For audiobooks you had to borrow them from the library, they were so expensive.
Trainspotting, both the book and the film, is brilliant. It may well make a top 100 of the 20th Century but not sure it would be top ten now. My brother had the ‘Choose life’ speech on a poster! Stopping to put myself back in the mindset of the nineties was fascinating - reading life really was so different! I remember the massive cases that audiobooks from the library would come in. I was gutted that I only remember Amazon during editing as I have a few thoughts on how it has changed publishing and reading!
This is a great video. Loved 1984 and Matilda ❤ We didn’t like a lot of the same books on this list
I can imagine! Thanks Em!
This was, quite, brilliant. Thanks. Just subscribed.
@@ansk6850 thank you so much and welcome! I’m glad you are sticking around! 😁
Ohhhh another list’. This is great. 25000 people is impressive. Talking about how we read, what we read now compared to 1997 very interesting. Same with your comment about authors reading differently. 😊💙
It was so interesting to read through the list and think about that time!
hung on your every word here, what an awesome video Jack ♥
Thanks Amelia! I really enjoyed thinking about that old list and thinking back to that time!
Wow || we did not think The Lord of the Rings would actually win! || Jack i was watching whilst cooking, put on speaker for my Mum, my 9 yr old came in, and we basically sat round and listened like it was the Olympics for books 😂😂😂 || My son guess Charlie as the highest RD book and i was delighted Beloved was in the top 50, as well as Hitchikers. We then all cheered when Lord of the Rings was said! ||
Thanks this was so fun and thought provoking about how our reading has evolved! 💜📚
I’m so glad you all enjoyed the count down so much! Yay for LotR! I love that Hitchhikers got such a high spot on the list as well. This was a fun video to make and I’m so glad you and the family enjoyed it!
Your video is the third time this week I have seen the Gormanghast books mentioned. It’s so strange. So cool that The Lord of the Rings was number one even before the movies came out. As a fantasy reader from the 80s I feel incredibly vindicated!
@@BookishTexan I felt vindicated at the time as well! It was so great to see it at number one! I’m going to revisit Gormenghast at some point. It’s so well loved!
Bit silly to be making a list like this less than a quarter of the way through the century, but my favorite book of the 21st century so far is How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith. My favorite of the 20th century is probably Watership Down by Douglas Adams, but I will freely admit I haven't read widely of books published in the first half of the century. And I do think Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler deserves an honorable mention.
Absolutely love Watership Down. Agree that Octavia Butler should be on the 20th century list now!
My guess for best book of 20th century: To Kill a Mockingbird. My personal favourite of the 20th century: Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
@@lindysmagpiereads To Kill a Mockingbird would have been my guess too! An absolutely brilliant book. I’ve never read Fall on Your Knees or heard of it and it looks brilliant - which is a perfect example of how the internet has opened up the world of international reading! That book was published in 1996 and I can tell you that it wasn’t promoted here at all. As a Bookseller from 1995-2001, I know that period in UK publishing very well and never came across it!
@@spreadbookjoy Fall on Your Knees was chosen as an Oprah book club pick in 2002 and got a lot of attention outside Canada at that point.
@@lindysmagpiereads I’ve added it to my wish list!
Guess: 1984 by George Orwell. My (probably unpopular) choice would be Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
So interesting. I wonder what people would vote for if they had to choose the best book of the 20th century now. The list probably also reflects the time spirit. I checked out the initial NT list, but I completely missed the second readers list. I read 16 of the author's list and 40 of the readers list. Lot's of that one are also on Shelly's list if I'm not mistaking. Some of my favourites are on it. I think I need to save it for inspiration.
Btw, I've just finished My Brilliant Friend last week. For some reason It never appealed to me. But my brother was raving about the adaptation and I thought that If I were going to check it out, I needed to at least read the first book before watching it. And to my surprise I really enjoyed it a lot. So I can recommend.
I've read 45 of the books of that 1997 list. And I wasn't far with my guess. My pick was nowhere to be found.Neither were some of the other ones I thought about. There is lot's still to read.
Loved this video by the way. Who doesn't love a good list. :)
@@-ParisTexas- you were so close with your guess and I’m really glad you enjoyed the video! I think looking back at the 1997 list demonstrates how these votes are reflective of the moment and would be different if people voted now. But I imagine 1984 and LotR would still be on the top five at the very least. I’ve got My Brilliant Friend out of the library and it’s been sitting on my shelf since before the NYT list was announced. I’m surprised it hasn’t been reserved by someone else since the announcement, so I should prioritise reading it!
Great video!
Thank you! ☺️
Surprised how many of the books I have read. Funny I just finished Stephen Hawking’s book today 😉 Great video 👍
I was surprised at how many I’d read as well! Thanks, Elaine!
Thank you for sharing! This was fascinating. I actually think The Lord of the Rings would still rank #1 now. I was surprised there wasn't Hemingway and tragically Ellison's Invisible Man is missing. Also The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Thats true that fantasy wasn't mainstream yet back then though.😅
@@Dinadoesyoga I think it’s a very British-centric list which isn’t that surprising given the time and place but no Hemingway is a surprise for sure. I agree that I think LotR would still rank top and I think that would be much more acceptable now than it was then! Fantasy has garnered so much more respect in recent decades, which is great.
I thought Harry Potter came out a year or so before, so that was my first guess, but my second guess was Lord of the Rings. It's based on voting after all and these are books that are so loved and (even before mass online media) can mobilise a huge fan base. Such an influence on later writing and the acceptability of fantasy as well.
I think a repeat of this list today would have less children's books on it, and some authors who have become more controversial would be dropped in favour of a broader range. But if it was voted for, I do think Harry Potter would be near the top!
@@tillysshelf well done Tilly! Interesting to think back to that time and I agree HP would be near the top now. I started taking notice of it when the second book was published - the first one was kind of a word-of-mouth success but by the time the second one came out it was huge news! I was very happy at the time that LotR won the vote.
Wow that bought back some memories. Trainspotting still remains one of my favourite books and I love both films but that speaks more to age than anything else. First we had "Just say No" as kids. Then we had Trainspotting as teenagers. Sophie's World had a 'moment' didn't it. I think you will realĺy like Deamon Copperhead.
Ha - yes the dichotomy of Just Say No and then Trainspotting! 😂 I’m looking forward to reading Demon, though a little nervous it won’t live up to the hype!
A Suitable Boy or Wild Swans
@@abiwk04 either would be very worthy of being at the top!
Number 1! Wow! Love it! ❤
😁🤍
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset should be on the list.
@@Vates104 I’ve heard of this and will add it to my wish list! Just had a look at Wikipedia and apparently it didn’t have a great English translation until after this list was published which might explain why it never made this list. Thanks for mentioning it!
This is a really interesting list. As an American bookseller, we can barely keep Perfume and American Psycho in stock. Same situation with Trainspotting, but the need is not quite as voracious, lol. Do you know of any lists that are specifically UK book or author focused?
How interesting about Perfume and American Psycho! Funnily enough, since mentioning that I’ve not heard anyone talking about Perfume in a long time, I’ve since seen another booktuber talk about it! I don’t know of any lists that are focused on British authors/books but another list I want to look at is the BBC’s Big Read list which was an even bigger survey conducted in the UK in 2003 of the nation’s best loved novel which wasn’t specific to a time period and had 750,000 votes so far outstripped this one in terms of size! Can you guess what won that?
@@spreadbookjoy I can't! Will you do a video about that one?
@@onourpath I have been thinking about it! It’s a very interesting list!
I liked this discussion, especially when it comes to how times have changed and who the lists are for. I have jurassic park on my tbr and I need to read it! And I really love the film franchise as well. I thought long walk to freedom was very good. And roald dahl and george orwell definitely deserve to be on the lists. I was so bored in one day in the life of ivan though :/ And I didn't really like slaughterhouse 5 either too. I do think plath deserves to be there but it should be for ariel! And of course the handmaids tale deserves it. I know about perfume but haven't read it and I do want to try it. Heart of darkness does not deserve to be on the list at all!! I love beloved so much, and it should absolutely be there. As well as of mice and men. Lord of the flies, anne frank's diary, the stranger, the colour purple and the trial all deserve to be there too. I really don't like the great gatsby but even then am surprised it ranks so high. I hate the catcher in the rye. Oh dear, I have catch 22... I am surprised there is no Jane Austen? No Shakespeare?
This list was so fascinating and I really loved discussing the time and thinking back to how different it all was then as a reader. I found that I’d either loved or disliked lots of the choices that I had read - there wasn’t much middle ground on my feelings on them! Sadly, as it was limited to books published in the 20th century, neither Austen nor Shakespeare got a look in. I need to take a look at the BBC big read list from a few years later as that apparently pipped this in terms of voters and was the largest survey of its kind and I don’t think that was limited to a particular time period. I love what these lists tell us about reading tastes and habits from those times!
Guess my family's choices are || The Lord of the Rings/ The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm going for Beloved and Roll of Thunder hear my Cry, but i doubt it is either of those ||💜📚
@@ChattieTheMadChatter great guesses! Too early for HP unfortunately!
Ok now reaction…. What?! Moby Dick isn’t even on there ? Or maybe I missed it.
I love the Lord of the Rings and so understand why it’s high on the list.
I think because children’s literature was on this list may have knocked some great books off such as The Good Earth and The Agony and the Ecstasy.
I may have missed some as I was cooking while watching 😆
Great video!!
Thank you so much! It was definitely fascinating to revisit this list and remember just how different a time it was. I believe Moby Dick was published in the 19th century or it would probably have been quite high on this list! Glad you enjoyed this trip down memory lane! 😄
Matilda! Should be number 1! ❤
My absolute favourite Roald Dahl ❤️
@@spreadbookjoy mine too!!