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Books of the Century by Le Monde

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Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#51

Post by LucasOe »

throwforfeds wrote: post #29

The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close. I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes i…

I know it's subjective, but personally I think Nausea by Sartre is the much better "The Stranger", and it always saddens me a bit to see Camus so high up on every list while missing Sartre.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#52

Post by linehedonist »

onli wrote: post #2

What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mém…

For a French-leaning list I’m surprised not to see Memoirs of Hadrian, “often considered the best French novel of the 20th century”, per the recent LRB review. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/joanna-biggs/beneath...

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#53

Post by onli »

rawgabbit wrote: post #47
onli wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, you are right. Those lists can't be perfect and giving this a second look, I guess my comment was hasty. For the choices I thought weird I can mostly see the justification when researching the titles a bit more (and partly by checking for their names in my language -> properly identifying them). For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but…

40 is Mann’s Magic Mountain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde%27s_100_Books_of_the_...

Yes, I saw that, Der Zauberberg is the german title.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#54

Post by gausswho »

I'm surprised to see Brave New World amongst these. The idea it presents is indeed powerful and influential, but for such a smart guy it comes across stilted and craftless. Try reading it now and it just doesn't hold up to more nuanced fiction.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#55

Post by hammock »

tstenner wrote: post #21
hammock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting with only 200 titles in the survey, for a final list of 100, seems off to me for starters. Every book surveyed has a 50% chance of making “book of the century”

That makes it sound like 50 shades of grey would have had a 50/50 chance of getting into the top 100 if it only was included in the wider selection

Obviously 50/50 if random. But even if not random, I estimate 50 Shades would be 500-100,000 times more likely to be a book of the century using a list of 200 with it in it, vs an unaided open ended survey.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#56

Post by idoubtit »

rixed wrote: post #15

I find this other list more deserving of this title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokklubben_World_Library If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.

> I find this other list more deserving of this title

How is a list spanning over the last 40 centuries deserving of the tile "Books of the Century by Le Monde"? Why would the "Epic of Gilgamesh" or the "Book of Job" be on a list of 20th century books?

> ... it starts with one of my favorite.

From that same Wikipedia page: “The books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way;”

The list is sorted by authors' name.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#57

Post by _ache_ »

About IP. It's 70 years after the death of the author in France, so Camus (car crash in 1960) books will be PD in 2030. There is an exception for people who lost live from war (+30 years), so 2044 is the year the elevate to PD for "Le petit prince".

I don't understand that right is attached to local legislation. Like you will have access to these book before we do because of the local legislation of USA? That is a bit crazy.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#58

Post by fmajid »

Bayart wrote: post #42
throwforfeds wrote: post #29

The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close. I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes i…

Cormac McCarthy is decently translated (for having read him in both English and French) and is well known. But for the average French litterati, American literature harks back to Hemingway, Steinbeck, Salinger, Burroughs, Capote, Nabokov and so on much before McCarthy. Toni Morrison isn't well known here yet, if only because her writing is embedded with Afro-American reality which is off-phase with Europe culture. Fo…

Yep, I had never heard of Derrida until I read a mention of him in an American Physics journal of all places.

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#59

Post by idoubtit »

linehedonist wrote: post #52
onli wrote: post #2

What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mém…

For a French-leaning list I’m surprised not to see Memoirs of Hadrian, “often considered the best French novel of the 20th century”, per the recent LRB review. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/joanna-biggs/beneath...

I agree, though the list contains "L'œuvre au noir", another wonderful novel by Marguerite Yourcenar.

I think some of the books on this list had very few readers, but were selected because of their relative fame among a list of 200 books. For instance, how many people have read the full "Gulag archipelago"? Or writings by Lacan or Barthes? Or the "Journal" by Jules Renard?

Re: Books of the Century by Le Monde

#60

Post by kergonath »

onli wrote: post #40
kergonath wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect. Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would…

Hm, you are right. Those lists can't be perfect and giving this a second look, I guess my comment was hasty. For the choices I thought weird I can mostly see the justification when researching the titles a bit more (and partly by checking for their names in my language -> properly identifying them). For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but…

> Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french

It is very popular and a huge influence. I am not surprised (but then I am French and always found St-Exupéry fascinating).

> Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries

Me too, to be honest. Quite a few English-speaking authors are maybe unexpectedly quite popular (Hemingway and Fitzgerald are there, and I think it is deserved; Dickens and Mark Twain should have been), but I would not think about Ulysses.

> The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today

Crime is an important genre and Sherlock Holmes is quite popular (even though I would personally put something by Maurice Leblanc or Agatha Christie instead).

> Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre.

Sci-fi is underrepresented. I would put Neuromancer definitely, and at least something by Jules Verne. I cannot believe 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas did not make the cut.

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll have a closer look at the books you mention I don’t already know :)

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