必讀書單 (must-read books) 之若有所思

似乎每隔一段間就會看到類似的新聞報導，好比是「一生必讀的X本書」、「死前必看的X本書」，總讓人無法抑制那一探究竟的想望。

就在這幾天一看到 Newsweek 轉發了一篇 STACKER NEWS 的 100 monumental novels from literary history，馬上就蠢蠢欲動，於是把這一百本書點名一番，結論是：聽過76本小說，讀過28本小說。
至於其中的第53本是《追憶似水年華》的第一冊《斯萬之路》，再次希望大家切莫錯過啊！
https://www.newsweek.com/100-monumental-novels-literary-history-1539168
1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list

“Swann’s Way” is the first volume in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” which fictionalizes his youth in Belle Epoque France. Described as a “perfect rendering of life in art,” the book deals with the themes of childhood, involuntary memory, and the meaning of an individual life.

這份名為文學史上小說100強的書單，參考了Goodreads、各種得獎書單以及《紐約時報》暢銷書專欄，上從古老的美索不達米亞的《吉爾伽美什史詩》(The Epic of Gilgamesh)，下至伊拉克作家 Betool Khedairi 的《缺席》(Absent)，比較像是1998 年由知名的美國現代圖書公司 (Modern Library) 所選出的「20世紀百大英文小說」(Modern Library 100 Best Novels)；又或者像是多次修訂由費迪曼 (Clifton Fadiman) 及梅傑 (John S. Major) 合著的《一生的讀書計畫》。

但看完這些書單的下一步是什麼呢？我們窮其一生真的看得完這些書嗎？甚或相信這些書真的是死前必看？
以至於《衛報》(The Guardian) 在 2009 年曾經提供的 1000 本必讀的終極書單，是否就只是讓人打消讀書的熱誠呢？(如果到死也看不完，那還需要死前必看嗎？)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction
1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list

最後，關於書單這件事，還是要小小提醒，千萬不要陷入那些很容易撒謊讀過的書單，像是《一九八四》、《梅岡城故事》、《大亨小傳》……
https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/news/a29173/20-books-people-lie-about-reading/
The Top 20 Books People Lie About Reading

O.S. 什麼！沒想到你居然問我讀過的28本小說，有沒有上述那三本？那可能要等我確認你有沒有讀過，我再告訴你吧！


https://stacker.com/stories/4495/100-monumental-novels-literary-history
100 monumental novels from literary history

Almost 4,000 years ago, an unknown scholar in ancient Mesopotamia wrote the first known book on a series of clay tablets. The story was “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” a fictionalized recounting of the life of an ancient king of Uruk. While the art of telling stories dates back even further, this singular epic poem is in large part responsible for the development of literature as we know it today.
In the millennia since this story was first written down, there have been millions, if not billions, more books written and published. A voracious reader could charge through a stack a day and not even make a dent in the world’s literary canon. This truth poses a problem for many readers: How does one know which few thousand books to read in a lifetime? How do you determine which are worth the time and brain space, and which are not?
Today, Stacker helps readers solve this age-old quandary—at least when it comes to novels. We’ve dug through the literature of the world, using sources like Goodreads, awards lists, and New York Times Best Seller columns to round up 100 monumental novels everyone should read before they die. These books are important for a variety of reasons. Some made the list because of the powerful stories they tell. Some made the list because of the way their form or style changed writing as a whole. Some made the list because of the representation they give to underseen and undervalued cultures or identities, and some made the list simply because, like “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” their very existence changed the course of the world.
Two caveats to note before diving into the following pages. Only novels (including some ancient epic poems) were considered for the list. So many important and influential authors, like William Shakespeare and Niccolò Machiavelli, have been left out, not because their contributions aren’t great but because they never authored long-form fictional narratives. Also, for many of these works, especially the earlier ones, an exact publication date is difficult to nail down. In an effort to remain consistent, we consulted Goodreads for all publication years.
So, from ancient Greek epics like “The Odyssey” to modern hits like “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” read on to find out which novels Stacker considers must-reads.


100 monumental novels from literary history

The Epic of Gilgamesh

- Author: Anonymous

- Date published: 1800 B.C.

The Iliad

- Author: Homer

- Date published: 750 B.C.

The Odyssey

- Author: Homer

- Date published: 700 B.C.

The Panchatantra

- Author: Vishnu Sharma

- Date published: 300 B.C.

The Aeneid

- Author: Virgil

- Date published: 19 B.C.

Metamorphoses

- Author: Ovid

- Date published: 8 A.D.

The Satyricon

- Author: Petronius

- Date published: 66

Daphnis and Chloe

- Author: Longus

- Date published: 150

The Golden Ass

- Author: Apuleius

- Date published: 158

Beowulf

- Author: Anonymous

- Date published: 900

The Tale of Genji

- Author: Murasaki Shikibu

- Date published: 1008

The Song of the Cid

- Author: Anonymous

- Date published: 1140

The Arabian Nights

- Author: Anonymous

- Date published: 1315

The Divine Comedy

- Author: Dante Alighieri

- Date published: 1320

The Outlaws of the Marsh (水滸傳)

- Author: Shi Nai’an

- Date published: 1370

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

- Author: Unknown

- Date published: 1397

The Canterbury Tales

- Author: Geoffrey Chaucer

- Date published: 1400

Utopia

- Author: Thomas More

- Date published: 1516

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義)

- Author: Luo Guanzhong

- Date published: 1522

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities

- Author: Anonymous

- Date published: 1554

The Faerie Queene

- Author: Edmund Spenser

- Date published: 1590

Monkey: The Journey to the West (西遊記)

- Author: Wu Cheng’en

- Date published: 1592

Don Quixote

- Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

- Date published: 1605

Paradise Lost

- Author: John Milton

- Date published: 1667

The Pilgrim’s Progress

- Author: John Bunyan

- Date published: 1678

Robinson Crusoe

- Author: Daniel Defoe

- Date published: 1719

Gulliver’s Travels

- Author: Jonathan Swift

- Date published: 1726

Candide

- Author: Voltaire

- Date published: 1759

Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢)

- Author: Xueqin Cao

- Date published: 1791

Pride and Prejudice

- Author: Jane Austen

- Date published: 1813

Frankenstein

- Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly

- Date published: 1818

Dead Souls

- Author: Nikolai Gogol

- Date published: 1842

The Three Musketeers

- Author: Alexandre Dumas

- Date published: 1844

Jane Eyre

- Author: Charlotte Bronte

- Date published: 1847

Wuthering Heights (咆哮山莊)

- Author: Emily Bronte

- Date published: 1847

The Scarlet Letter

- Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

- Date published: 1850

Moby-Dick

- Author: Herman Melville

- Date published: 1851

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (黑奴籲天錄)

- Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

- Date published: 1851

Madame Bovary

- Author: Gustave Flaubert

- Date published: 1857

A Tale of Two Cities

- Author: Charles Dickens

- Date published: 1859

Les Miserables

- Author: Victor Hugo

- Date published: 1862

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

- Author: Lewis Carroll

- Date published: 1865

War and Peace

- Author: Leo Tolstoy

- Date published: 1867

Little Women

- Author: Louisa May Alcott

- Date published: 1868

The Brothers Karamazov

- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

- Date published: 1879

The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants(七俠五義)

- Author: Shi Yukun

- Date published: 1879

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

- Author: Mark Twain

- Date published: 1884

The Picture of Dorian Gray

- Author: Oscar Wilde

- Date published: 1890

Dracula

- Author: Bram Stoker

- Date published: 1897

Heart of Darkness

- Author: Joseph Conrad

- Date published: 1899

The Jungle

- Author: Upton Sinclair

- Date published: 1905

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

- Author: James Weldon Johnson

- Date published: 1912

Swann’s Way

- Author: Marcel Proust

- Date published: 1913

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

- Author: Agatha Christie

- Date published: 1920

Siddhartha

- Author: Hermann Hesse

- Date published: 1922

Ulysses

- Author: James Joyce

- Date published: 1922

The Magic Mountain

- Author: Thomas Mann

- Date published: 1924

Mrs. Dalloway

- Author: Virginia Woolf

- Date published: 1925

The Great Gatsby

- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

- Date published: 1925

Home to Harlem

- Author: Claude McKay

- Date published: 1928

Orlando

- Author: Virginia Woolf

- Date published: 1928

All Quiet on the Western Front

- Author: Erich Maria Remarque

- Date published: 1929

Passing

- Author: Nella Larsen

- Date published: 1929

A Farewell to Arms

- Author: Ernest Hemingway

- Date published: 1929

The Sound and the Fury

- Author: William Faulkner

- Date published: 1929

The Good Earth

- Author: Pearl S. Buck

- Date published: 1931

Brave New World

- Author: Aldous Huxley

- Date published: 1932

Their Eyes Were Watching God

- Author: Zora Neale Hurston

- Date published: 1937

The Grapes of Wrath

- Author: John Steinbeck

- Date published: 1939

The Stranger

- Author: Albert Camus

- Date published: 1942

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

- Author: Betty Smith

- Date published: 1943

Cry, the Beloved Country

- Author: Alan Paton

- Date published: 1948

1984

- Author: George Orwell

- Date published: 1949

Invisible Man

- Author: Ralph Ellison

- Date published: 1952

The Fellowship of the Ring

- Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

- Date published: 1954

Giovanni’s Room

- Author: James Baldwin

- Date published: 1956

Atlas Shrugged

- Author: Ayn Rand

- Date published: 1957

Things Fall Apart

- Author: Chinua Achebe

- Date published: 1958

To Kill a Mockingbird

- Author: Harper Lee

- Date published: 1960

Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man

- Author: U.R. Ananthamurthy

- Date published: 1965

Season of Migration to the North

- Author: Tayeb Salih

- Date published: 1966

One Hundred Years of Solitude

- Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

- Date published: 1967

Slaughterhouse-Five

- Author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

- Date published: 1969

Gravity’s Rainbow

- Author: Thomas Pynchon

- Date published: 1973

Petals of Blood

- Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o

- Date published: 1977

Midnight’s Children

- Author: Salman Rushdie

- Date published: 1981

The Color Purple

- Author: Alice Walker

- Date published: 1982

The Handmaid’s Tale

- Author: Margaret Atwood

- Date published: 1985

Beloved

- Author: Toni Morrison

- Date published: 1987

The Alchemist

- Author: Paulo Coelho

- Date published: 1988

The Remains of the Day

- Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

- Date published: 1989

Like Water for Chocolate

- Author: Laura Esquivel

- Date published: 1989

The Things They Carried

- Author: Tim O’Brien

- Date published: 1990

Jazz

- Author: Toni Morrison

- Date published: 1992

Stone Butch Blues

- Author: Leslie Feinberg

- Date published: 1993

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

- Author: Haruki Murakami

- Date published: 1994

Infinite Jest

- Author: David Foster Wallace

- Date published: 1996

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

- Author: J.K. Rowling

- Date published: 1997

The Kite Runner

- Author: Khaled Hosseini

- Date published: 2003

Absent

- Author: Betool Khedairi

- Date published: 2004