I've found the Telegraph's equivalent list, also from last month:
[www.telegraph.co.uk]

Oh, ha ha, hmm. Only 100 titles as opposed to the Grauniad's 1000, and they've taken the risky step of actually rating them in order from 100 to 1. The journalistic content leaves a lot to be desired - barely one coherent sentence per novel ("A drug addict chases a ghostly dog across the midnight moors" = The Hound of the Baskervilles; "An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly" = Les Miserables). Still, my hit rate on this list is about twice as good as my hit rate on the other list.

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work is a vampire that sucks me dry
which is a metaphor
but still the reason I stuck a chair leg through my manager

Um, does an audiobook of ABHoT count?

And Skids, wouldn't it be awesome if Gormanghast were re-done! Pref keeping the same cast, but with a much MUCH bigger budget and up-to-date effects?

Who would you have for Steerpike?

I loved the tv series, but you are right, BK, abig budget re-make could be great. It cries out for the Peter Jackson treatment.

Johnathon Rhys Davies... I wouldn't change the casting at all!

I'm not sure they're all still alive, and I remember hating Celia Imrie as Gertrude Groan.

Well, at least one isn't... But a shovel and a ouiji board and we'll be right.

I'm liking it more and more all the time - just the right level of Gothic.

I think I need to see it again, I was quite young when it was first shown and I don't think I quite understood it.

Helps to have read the books first- one of the rare adaptations where that is the case, because it assumes you know how the characters think already.

I must admit that I haven't seen it and don't mean any offence to anyone who has seen it and likes it but if Kitten is correct and a film makes assumptions about having read the book(s) first, then I would count that as a poor film.

It wasn't a film. It was a series, but very short, considering the books, and really, needs the 3-4 hours per episode that the extended LoTR got.

And much MUCH more money.

Think of the old Narnia series, and you'll have an idea of what I meant. It was another series that assumed some familiarity with the books, but it wasn't a requirement for enjoyment.

I'm surprised Travels with my Aunt wasn't on the comedy list, or Monsignor Quixote, sad as it is, or, come to that, Daniel Pennac's Malaussène series (could be either comedy or crime) - and why no Robertson Davies, who on that list would qualify as SciFi? V odd selection of Robert Graves too. The Claudius trilogy should be up there, surely, and Goodbye to All That's essential reading about WWI. Think the Grauniad's hamstrung itself with its odd choice of categories - they've really had to shove to fit some of the books in, and some must have been impossible to get in.

Was also surprised they didn't have the whole Gormenghast trilogy instead of one individual book (unless I missed the others?), but that happened a lot, maybe depending on the writer? Very idiosyncratic. Surprised at how many of them I've read, actually... also surprised George Eliot got the Torygraph's No. 1 spot, but then I'm not a big fan.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2009 10:25AM by splat21.

I think you're right, I think the many of the idiosyncrasies on the Gruaniad list were caused by it being an amalgamation of several lists.
Would be interesting to see if we could come up with our own list of 100 that everybody agreed on.

Could we agree on whether the Next books or the Nursery Crimes books would go on though?

I'm guessing Gormenghast would go on.
I would dispute Goodbye to All That and offer you Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man instead.

Though all three of the above would raise the question of whether you would allow all of a series or just one book.

Agree? Nextians?

Flying pigs

Does the Count of Monte Cristo get six vote because it is a long book, about 6 times Animal Farm in length which gets one vote?

Allow series.

After all they expand/extend the original storyline in some manner, even if as happened with Hitchhiker's the later stories were far short of the original in concept and strength of writing. This would make the entire Known Space collection of stories one entry, but if you are trying to make a list of those stories that you consider most important to you then the collection as one is a way of getting it on the list. Similarly with the 'Stainless Steel Rat' series, or James Bond, the Saint, Jeeves, Biggles even, etc.

By allowing series it cuts out trying to pick which is the best story of the set.

Fantastic Mr Fox should DEF have been on it!

What about a list of the "100 best words"?

I think "extenuating" and "exhausting" are both handy when making up excuses when asked why I'm not doing anything at work. The boss who asks usually walks away quite bemused yet certain that I've answered in some way or other.

Come to think of it, "bemused" could be on the list too.

I like wheelbarrow: the concept of a mobile burial mound astounds me.

Indeed!