Top Ten

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, there's the list I feel I should post (Ulysses,
Moby-Dick, Don Quixote, Madame Bovary, The Brothers
Karamazov, Remembrance of Things Past, Pride and
Prejudice, The Magic Mountain, The Heart of Darkness,
To the Lighthouse), the list I probably actually
should post (Gravity's Rainbow, The Lord of the Rings,
Dune, The Crying of Lot 49, 1984, The Man in the High
Castle, Solaris, Frankenstein, Molloy, Locus Solus)
and then there's this ...

1. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
2. James Joyce, Ulysses
3. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
4. Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities
5. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
6. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
7. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
8. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
9. Samuel Becket, Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable
10. Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus

Disclaimers: yep, all dead white guys but (knock on
wood) one, and, as much as I'd like to list it, I
never did finish the whole damn Proust thing, so ...
so no more than one per author, worth repeated
readings, worth reading up on, I've actually gone to
the trouble, ranked largely but how often and how
enjoyable it was, et cetera, et cetera.  Hon. mentions
to, off the top of my head, As I Lay Dying,
Petersburg, The Great Gatsby, Conducting Bodies,
Beloved, To the Lighthouse, The Confidence-Man, The
Counterfeiters, Emma, Finnegans Wake, Confessions of
Zeno, and, of course, The Crying of Lot 49.  But I
keep trying to start The Master and Margarita ...

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