Australian bookseller Dymocks has come up with a list of the 101 best books ever published, according to Australian readers.
More than 15,000 people took part in the online survey and some of the results were pretty surprising.
Proving you can't beat the classics, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice topped the list, with classics accounting for a third of the 101 titles.
The survey also found that Bryce Courtenay is Australia's most popular author.
Here is the list in full:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings Series - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
4. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
5. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
6. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
7. Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
8. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
9. Magician - Raymond E. Feist
10. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
11. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
12. Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
13. Cross Stitch - Diana Gabaldon
14. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
15. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
16. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
17. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
18. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
19. Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin
20. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
21. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
22. The Bronze Horseman - Paullina Simons
23. The Bible
24. Eragon - Christopher Paolini
25. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series - Douglas Adams
27. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
28. Tomorrow, When the War Began - John Marsden
29. Ice Station - Matthew Reilly
30. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
31. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
32. The Life of Pi - Yann Martel
33. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
34. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
35. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
36. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
37. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
38. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
39. The Pact - Jodi Picoult
40. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
41. Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
42. April Fools Day - Bryce Courtenay
43. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Dernieres
44. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
45. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
46. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
47. Tully - Paullina Simons
48. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
49. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
50. A Fortunate Life - A. B. Facey
51. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
52. River God - Wilbur Smith
53. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
54. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
55. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
56. The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
57. Persuasion - Jane Austen
58. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
59. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
60. Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
61. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
62. Possession - A.S. Byatt
63. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
64. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
65. My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
66. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
67. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Dune - Frank Herbert
69. Emma - Jane Austen
70. Marley and Me - John Grogan
71. Middlemarch - George Eliot
72. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
73. The Count of Monte Christo - Alexandre Dumas
74. The Secret history - Donna Tartt
75. Chocolat - Joanne Harris
76. Dirt Music - Tim Winton
77. Looking for Alibrandi - Melina Marchetta
78. My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
79. The Ancient Future - Traci Harding
80. Belgariad Series - David Eddings
81. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
82. The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
83. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
84. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
85. The Stand - Stephen King
86. It - Stephen King
87. Northern Lights - Nora Roberts
88. The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
89. The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
90. The Outsider - Albert Camus
91. The Riders - Tim Winton
92. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
93. Across the Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn
94. Atonement - Ian McEwan
95. Circle of Friends - Maeve Binchy
96. Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly
97. Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
98. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
99. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
100. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
101. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Lord of the Rings
A recent holiday afforded me space to watch the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, followed by a re-reading of Tolkien’s original books on which the films were based. These two classic works share a common thread but differ significantly in depicting the journey of Frodo and his companions in the battle for Middle Earth. It is a difficult exercise to turn a classic and well-loved book onto the screen – the different media requires words to be translated into visual form. The screen offers in background formations that which the text may take many words to describe, while much background history and poetry of the book do not lend themselves easily to the screen. Peter Jackson’s rendition is a classic in its own right, but many significant and creative aspects of the book have been omitted.
The relationship between book and movie makes for an interesting reflection, particularly for those faiths which bear a strong relationship a book. The Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic faiths are themselves grounded in texts, much of which takes the form of story. The living out of the truths of these texts is itself an act of translation from one form into another – from the written word to the lived world. The balance to be struck between faithfulness to the text and relevance to the lived world is an enduring challenge of interpretation and application, between idealism and lived realities.
The lived world is never identical to the written world, yet the truths of one can readily be applied into the other. This challenge faces not only the film producer, but all people of faith - the battle between spirit of the text and the imagery and words. Judgements must be made about the supremacy and centrality of particular episodes within the text. It is impossible to translate any book to the screen in full satisfaction of every viewer. Words evoke different images and emotions, stories and events tap into different memories for each reader. What emerges is the fruit of a dialogue between imagination and memory, literal word and figurative meaning, subject to reinterpretation after each expression. Re-reading the books helped provide contexts for particular actions and differences in the movie – the death of Saruman in the movie obviates the need to explain the purging of the shire on Frodo’s return which the book details. The omission or reshaping of particular pericopes results in loss of imagery and context for particular actions.
Whilst the film-maker seeks to make a faithful retelling of the original story in its original setting, the life of faith seeks to incarnate the spirit of the text in an entirely different context. In this enactment, some stories will hold greater sway, and those which are overlooked pose new questions and challenges which might ultimately change one’s perspective. To relive the spirit of the whole text requires interpretive cues and frameworks which enable one to live faithfully, yet tentatively towards the ideal.
Far from being a stricture to the life of faith, the presence of a book provides a continuing interpretive and reflective resource for every believer. The life of faith is ever a dialogue between text and action, image and reality. In this dynamic tension lie the seeds of reflection on actual events and frameworks for future action and a basis for reflecting on what is, and for shaping what might be.
The relationship between book and movie makes for an interesting reflection, particularly for those faiths which bear a strong relationship a book. The Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic faiths are themselves grounded in texts, much of which takes the form of story. The living out of the truths of these texts is itself an act of translation from one form into another – from the written word to the lived world. The balance to be struck between faithfulness to the text and relevance to the lived world is an enduring challenge of interpretation and application, between idealism and lived realities.
The lived world is never identical to the written world, yet the truths of one can readily be applied into the other. This challenge faces not only the film producer, but all people of faith - the battle between spirit of the text and the imagery and words. Judgements must be made about the supremacy and centrality of particular episodes within the text. It is impossible to translate any book to the screen in full satisfaction of every viewer. Words evoke different images and emotions, stories and events tap into different memories for each reader. What emerges is the fruit of a dialogue between imagination and memory, literal word and figurative meaning, subject to reinterpretation after each expression. Re-reading the books helped provide contexts for particular actions and differences in the movie – the death of Saruman in the movie obviates the need to explain the purging of the shire on Frodo’s return which the book details. The omission or reshaping of particular pericopes results in loss of imagery and context for particular actions.
Whilst the film-maker seeks to make a faithful retelling of the original story in its original setting, the life of faith seeks to incarnate the spirit of the text in an entirely different context. In this enactment, some stories will hold greater sway, and those which are overlooked pose new questions and challenges which might ultimately change one’s perspective. To relive the spirit of the whole text requires interpretive cues and frameworks which enable one to live faithfully, yet tentatively towards the ideal.
Far from being a stricture to the life of faith, the presence of a book provides a continuing interpretive and reflective resource for every believer. The life of faith is ever a dialogue between text and action, image and reality. In this dynamic tension lie the seeds of reflection on actual events and frameworks for future action and a basis for reflecting on what is, and for shaping what might be.
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