Best reads?

Time Magazine has just issued a list of the best 100 novels written in the English language from 1923 to present.

Some interesting picks. And I always feel a little under-read when I see lists like these. I've read a fair few but not even near half of this set.

There are actually a few that I've tried to read, but just found impenetrable. For example, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Posession by AS Byatt. As for Naked Lunch by William Boroughs, I couldn't even hack the film and walked out halfway through (after falling asleep a quarter of the way through). I wanted to walk out during the Lord of the Rings film just about the point where I put the book down (after the Hobbit party, yep that early on), but we'd paid London prices for the tickets.

Someone at work recently put a new spin on things for me regarding book lists - she said her partner had estimated how many books he had left to read (about 500) and that made him far more selective in his choices.

I reckon I've got about 630 spots left for quality books. So I won't be going back to pick up Mrs Dalloway or Lord of the Rings, no matter what Time magazine says. But there are a couple of must reads for me on that list, ones I'm ashamed I haven't actually read yet - like The Sound and the Fury and A Death in the Family.

See the full list.
Hat tip: Deliverance