30 Books to Read Before You Die (Pt. 39)

You really thought I was going to shut up, didn’t you? No, I’m not. Not yet anyway. I still have a while to go, and some more books I want to share with you. We may have spoken about a lot of topics with our last meeting concentrating on why it is important to read books from other cultures apart from the usual normalised racism that happens across the world. But, today I want to discuss the greatest book ever written, and what most websites, people, and book lovers think it is. This doesn’t depend on sales, but actually depends on the writing style of the text itself. Most of these sophisticated book websites state the same book as being the greatest book ever written, and that is Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

I have to agree with this decision, because of the fact that it is also one of my favourite books of all time. The writing style, depending on which translation you buy, is brilliantly poetic, and it seems to represent the Russian Upper Class in a way that no other novel, apart from Tolstoy’s counterpart—War and Peace—seems to. The other reason that I feel Anna Karenina was the correct choice for the greatest novel ever written is because so much time and effort must have gone into crafting that story from start to finish. Especially given the fact that we aren’t even introduced to the title character at the start of the novel, but instead the people around her. The novel opens with Anna’s brother’s infidelity towards his wife, and this breaks down their marriage—directly reflective of the state of Anna’s life during the rest of the novel. Every single thing in the book is symbolic of something, and everything that everyone says seems to be a direct result of either their reaction to their own feelings, or a reaction towards the unthought actions of others. The book is a cause-and-effect case. Everything adds up, and even after the train situations, there are still many other relationships that need mending.

Hopefully you can understand why I love Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and why everyone thinks it is the greatest novel ever written. It may be long and look incredibly big and intimidating, but if you haven’t read it yet, then I promise that you won’t be disappointed. If you pick up Anna Karenina, you probably won’t be able to put it down. It is definitely one of the most beautiful novels ever written, and I completely agree with the fact that it is the greatest novel ever penned. I love the way it makes statements and assumptions about the Russian Upper Class, but I also love the way it has transcended its own culture—even the fall of the Russian Upper Class couldn’t stop Anna Karenina becoming a force of nature.

Now that I’ve talked you to death with my opinions of Anna Karenina—I want to begin this article the same way we always have. I will go through thirty books I have read, and mark my personal favourites with an (*). I will talk about one or two intermittently, and if you haven’t had enough of me talking already then I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’ve made it this far! So let’s get on with numbers 1141-1170 without further introduction!

1141-1150

1141. Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham

1142. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

1143. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier

1144. The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck

1145. The Dry Salvages by TS Eliot

1146. Beyond the Wall of Sleep by HP Lovecraft

1147. Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories by Sheridan Le Fanu

1148. The Doll and One Other by Algernon Blackwood

1149. Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

1150. The Defence by Vladimir Nabokov

1151-1160

1151. A Haunted House and Other Stories by Virginia Woolf

1152. 'Private Lives' by Noel Coward

When I used to work at a theatre, they were putting a production of this play on, and though I’d read it, I had never actually seen it performed. To be honest, seeing it performed was a lot funnier than reading it on paper. It just proves to you that a play is meant to be seen, and not just read on the page. It was pretty brilliant.

1153. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

1154. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

1155. These 13 by William Faulkner

1156. The Waves by Virginia Woolf

1157. Light in August by William Faulkner

1158. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

1159. Shadows on the Rocks by Willa Cather

1160. Angel Pavement by JB Priestley

1161-1170

1161. The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene

1162. The Green Round by Arthur Machen

1163. Mary Poppins by PL Travers

1164. Thank You, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

1165. The Complete Journalism of George Orwell

1166. 'Murder on the Orient Express' by Agatha Christie*

Even though I love the book and have done for many years now, I was thoroughly disappointed with the most recent film of the book. Not only did it have bad casting but most performances were bland and made you not really care about what was happening. I feel like many of the cast needed replacing for better actors—but I guess that was all they could afford. The only person I liked was Dame Judi Dench. Everyone else was terrible.

1167. Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung

1168. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein

1169. Tarzan and the City of Gold by Edgar Rice Burroughs

1170. The Narrow Corner by W. Somerset Maugham