1001 Books
Over the weekend I got the chance to begin dipping into 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. There have been some bad reviews as I mentioned last week, but I find the book to be quite good. First, let's start with the way it looks. This book is 2.5 inches thick. I don't have a scale but I'd guess it approaches 5 pounds in weight. Every single page from first to last, including the index, is heavy, glossy paper. Nearly every book has a drawing or photo of the author and quite a few of the books have full page color reproductions of either the cover of the original publication or an illustration from the book in question. Second, there's how it was put together. Peter Boxall is the general editor and he gathered a group of 100 people to write 300 word book "reviews" of books they thought people should read. The majority of contributors are British with Americans and Canadians following up and a handful of folks from other countries to fill in the gaps. There is a feel-good intro by Peter Ackroyd and an intro from Boxall. In his intro Boxall explains the title. He chose 1001 to connect it to The Thousand and One Nights in which each story Scheherezade tells saves her life for just one more day. The editor states that he is well aware that books have been left out. He does not claim the book is an exhaustive list, nor is he attempting to define a new canon. Instead he hopes the list conveys the spirit of the novel and a love for what the novel is and does. Maybe I'm gullible, but I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Third, the book choices. The book is broken up into sections. It begins with Pre-1700s and includes titles such as Aesop's Fables and The Golden Ass. In the 1700s We've got titles like Robinson Crusoe, Candide and Dangerous Liasons. For the 1800s there's several by Balzac, Dumas, and of course all the Brontë sisters appear. We also get Twain, Hardy, Tolstoy, and The Picture of Dorian Gray! The 1900s portion of the book accounts for half of the book selections. And finally the 2000s which goes up to 2005 and includes The Sea and On Beauty. The book is a pleasure to browse in. I loved the author photos. There is a picture of Tom Wolfe in the 1960s, looking youthful and already wearing his white suit. There is another photo of him in the late 1990s, still in his white suit and looking so un-aged that I wonder if he's got a very ugly portrait hanging in his attic. There is also a photo of Yukio Mishima posed as a samuri wearing hardly a stitch of clothing, a sword in his hand and his muscles bulging. And a teenage Franç Sagan dressed in a striped shirt and plaid skirt, proving that French fashion isn't always that fabulous. My only quibble with the book is that it doesn't include enough women. I didn't take an exact count, but I'd say that books by women make up only one-third of the total. Aside from that the entries are well written and each recommendation is noted with the contributor's name. There are authors and books here of which I have never heard alongside ones I've always meant to get to. Now if only reading these books would delay my demise by just one more novel...
