At this point with how many books you've been meaning to read for ages, I feel like you should make a 'Subscribers hold me accountable'-video where we get to pick which ones need to get off your really old TBR-pile first
I have officially read 2 books that Jack Edwards has not. This will do wonders for my ego. Also, Infinite Jest is a behemoth and I just kind of know you’d hate it despite its incredible writing and themes.
Honestly, A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the only one I've read that he hasn't and it made me feel great! I got 12/100 and I have an English degree!!!
as i counted along with you, i had to make sure i was only counting novels i *actually* read and not the novels i *pretended* to read for my degree lmaooo (42/100)
@@Gwydda completely agree, some of these are… not great lmao. i didn’t count anything i didn’t finish, but i wish i could, because i got like 400 pages into Infinite Jest before giving up 😭😭 which was the worst in your opinion?
@laura I know this is an unpopular opinion, but The Catcher in the Rye is definitely a book I don't like, and I wasn't even forced to read it as a teenager. But as it's short I'm not too upset about it. Moby Dick I'm definitely upset about, I read almost half of it before realising that I actually quite enjoy my life and could do a million things rather than read through the rest. How about you?
@@Gwydda omg so fair, i completely agree about Moby Dick; so long, so boring, and what cultural impact did it leave?? nothing, besides Starbucks lmao. besides Infinite Jest, i also never finished Don Quixote, it was just too long. The Red Badge of Courage was soooo boring when i read it in middle school, i hated it, but i did finish it. i also hated The Scarlet Letter (Jack calling it a perfect piece of art is… a choice), but finished it because i had an AP exam on it 🙃
I read 12/100. I realized recently that my high school English class curriculum was severely lacking because there are so many of these books that everyone else reads in high school that I was never given an opportunity to. These past few years, it has been my goal to change that, and watching Jack and Emmie's videos have really helped with that! I'm in the same boat as Jack when he kept saying he had books on that list that he hadn't read but are currently on your TBR. We'll get to them someday!
Anna Karenina is a lot less intimidating than other Russian lit in my opinion - it's large but easy and stunningly real to read, highly recommend! Also Grapes of Wrath (or any Steinbeck, for that matter) is super easy and beautiful, and has that metaphorical underlying nature that books like 1984 do in a strange way.
I agree! I did love the other huge novels such as War and Peace or Crime and Punishment, but Anna Karenina was definitely easier to read. I also found The Idiot easy, as it was almost only dialogue and very few philosophical run-ons.
@@musicgal365 it was a tv series years ago, we all watched it when we were at school and pronounced it like this because the title was in mosaic. Maybe your dad is around same age as me 😂
@@jennysterg322 The Romans didn't differentiate between U and V. U was created later. V was used for the /u/ sound and the /w/ sound (later /v/ by Medieval Latin). I've heard people pronounce it this way for fun but it seemed like Jack didn't recognize the name. It was just funny to me. It's not a dig against him.
as a Polish medical student (so no literature background really haha), I have read 13 of these, so i guess not bad! 1. Pride and Prejudice 2. Jane Eyre 3. Crime and Punishment 4. House of Darkness 5. Animal Farm 6. 1984 7. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe 8. The Catcher in the Rye 9. Fahrenheit 451 10. Lolita 11. To Kill a Mockingbird 12. Wide Sargasso Sea 13. Handmaid's Tale
as a polish highschooler I feel you! I have read 12 of them for school + 7 of those I wanted to read. I think we read a lot of classics in Poland which is good :))
I actually read Their Eyes Were Watching God because it was in one of your videos haha! It’s become one of my favourite book titles of all time, as well as one of my favourite opening lines of all time! Such a great novel. Can’t wait to see what you think whenever you get around to it, Jack:)
one hundred years of solitude is AMAZING. LIKE AMAZING. and without it and its contributions and being the book that essentially made magical realism a genre, we would not have so many of the amazing books we have today. besides it's so beautifully written and SO SO GOOD
I've got 42/100. That's an extremely Anglo-focused list. Not that it's a bad thing, it's an English speaking chanel after all. And I love those scratch off gifts like that. And of course a canon is a canon. Even though I haven't read most of them I at least heard about all but two of these books. The one that I'll probably never read: Wuthering Heights, I feel like I've missed the time to read it. There are some of my faves on here: Catch 22, One hundred years of solitude, Fahrenheit 451. Nice, it is so satisfying to scratch it off.
So happy to see A House for Mr. Biswas and Wide Sargasso Sea here. Two amazing post-colonial, West Indian reads. Read Caribbean month is in June, it would be nice if you did a challenge to read Caribbean books in June.
I read it during lockdown and I absolutely hated it lmao. I don’t know if it was the isolation or the absolutely confusing plot and structure that did it for me. And it was in my tbr for a long time too!
@@anjuanand7685 I didn't like it too, some chapters were really good but some were sooo boring. It's definitely interesting but you can feel the experimental side of it which I didn't like.
I only read 9 out of these 💀 but on the other hand, I'm not British. I'm German and I read many German classics and not so many British ones which I feel like they dominate this list. But this is a really cool poster 👌
Interesting! I have a Dutch version of this poster and totally different books are on it! Wonder if there's an international one, like a worldwide version of the 100 most essential books or something along those lines😊
I only got 12/100 so I’d say you did pretty good!! Last year, I fell back in love with reading, but I’ve been stuck in my comfort zone (poetry, memoirs, art history biographies). Your channel has been very helpful at re-introducing classics and current releases 😊
I've only read 10 or 11 of these.....but in my defense, I did not study English lit in college and my high school English teacher loved to make us read the less famous novels by famous authors. I'm looking at you A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Hey Jack, inspired by your video, I started reading these books. I started with Don Quixote and it was a great experience. It took me about two something months to complete, but I stayed firm. I had read 14 books from this chart and now it's fifteen! When I finish reading all 100 of these, I'll be sure to comment.
That’s an interesting question because what we consider a classic vs a modern classic vs just a contemporary book fluctuates a lot. Before the industrial revolution, any book in the last 50-100 years would have been considered basically contemporary because things didn’t change that fast, but now a 50 year old book is easily considered classic. Slaughterhouse Five was written in the 70s, the bell jar and to kill a mockingbird were written in the 60s, these books in the scheme of things are relatively new but they’re not contemporary anymore, they’re classics, and not even modern classics. The idea classic basically is just that the book will be read a lot in coming years, which means if it’s popular for a reasonable amount of time-regardless of if it’s good or not-it becomes a classic. Some people argue that a book has to be 100 years old and still being read somewhat regularly to become classic, but I would disagree with this because I believe with the changes in technology it only has to be 50 or 60 years old to become classic. Books that were written before computers were common all have this completely different feel that we who have lived with computers our whole lives equate with the classics and so those books, despite not yet being 100 years old, are already considered by many of our generation to be classic. Examples include the sun also rises (almost 100 years old now, was written in 1926) gone with the wind, animal farm, of mice and men, I already mentioned the bell jar and slaughterhouse five, on the road. These are all books often considered classic and under 100 years old. On the other hand-and you might hate hearing this-twilight is around 20 years old and is widely considered a modern classic, but it’s my opinion that it will eventually phase out and people will stop reading it and it won’t ever truly become classic because even if people are reading it in 100 years those of us who grew up around it’s publication will so vehemently protest it being considered a classic that people won’t willingly call it that. Until those alive now die and other generations are allowed to make their own decisions about the book, it won’t be considered classic, and by then it will probably be so deeply scorned that they won’t want to label it so. Some people believe that that is the key to what determines how old a classic is: if most the people who were alive when it came out are no longer alive, and if the majority of living people were born after the book come out, then the book could be considered classic. With people living longer and longer lives, that makes it so that a book must wait longer and longer to “become” classic. But really, it’s all just a guessing game and there’s no real true definition for what is a classic, other than what readers and literature people decide gets the label.
@@raisavlogs8877 it’s just such an interesting topic because there’s no consensus on what constitutes a classic so there’s no real way to determine how old a book has to be in order to become one
I first read 1984 in high school and HATED it with a burning passion. The ending was a goddamn nightmare. Read it again last year, (almost a decade after first reading it) and absolutely loved it! It's truly a masterpiece, wild how opinions change as you get older
as someone who considers herself a voracious reader, the fact that I only got 8/100 is so embarrassing omg. That being said, some I didn't include like Don Quixote and the Metamorphosis because I only read excerpts. still too low hahahaha
I've read only 15 of these but most were when I was a child. I can't even in good conscience say I've read them because I remember nothing at all about them, except for my favourites. 😓
@@valeramirez9259 did you at least enjoy that one? Which one did you read? :) I think, if I had to pick one from that list, I'd read Pride and Prejudice or The Handmaid's Tale!
THE BRIDGE TO SAN LUIS REY WAS LITERALLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS EVER! Sorry for the all caps 😂 But that book was so impactful for me and I wasn't expecting to see it on this list! I read it in 7th grade and it was one of the first classics that I ever fell in love with, it was just so unique to anything I had read at the time, and it just really made a mark on me for some reason. I actually haven't read it since then, but it's still on my bookshelf and I'm planning to reread it next month and see how much of it I actually remembered 🥰
I was really hoping there would be a comment about this book! I read it in a Lit class and I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of my favorite school essays I ever had the privilege of writing. I think Jack should read this one and he will hopefully like it. It isn't that long at all.
I've only read 10 of these. I want to say 11 but I can't remember if I finished Gilead. The Red Badge of Courage is a pretty short book and a famous American war novel. There was a film with Audie Murphy. I only remember this because we watched it the night before my brother was born.
im 12 years old, BUT that wont stop me from wanting to read all of this books! im looking foward reading 1984, war and peace, the great gatsby and some jane austen too. im really excited to get into literature, to be honest
You must read "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler!" Read it last year. It's so strange but also beautiful. Never read anything with a comparable structure.
Fun video! And, wow, I think 44 is great. I've only read 34 of them ... and I am considerably older than you! I was interested to see it's not just classics but quite a few modern books on the list, too. I just read Their Eyes Were Watching God in February and definitely recommend it - excellent! Sounds like you need to catch up a bit on your American Lit :) This was fun - thanks!
That was fun. Maybe you should be selling a poster like that with your picks.. American Pastoral was a nice read, but I think Roth's The Plot Against America is more of a must-read.
I've read 7 books from this list, 3 from my school - pretty pleased about that considering that I don't often read from 'classic' authors. Interested in reading a couple more from that list (100 Years of Solitude and Fahrenheit 451) but I have read quite a lot of other books that doesn't appear here and that's okay! Don't let this list define your reading accomplishments - its only one genre (well kind of - classic literature) and there's so many great books out there that isn't on here!
I got 10! Both my favorite (To Kill a Mockingbird) and least favorite (Great Expectations and Invisible Man) novels were on the chart, which is interesting. Best of luck with Invisible Man! It was definitely not my cup of tea (though it does have some important messages), but i I am excited to hear your thoughts!
I kept losing my place but I'm pretty sure I've read at least 47 of them. But I'm old (72). I started trying to read all the classics when I retired. I tried Infinite Jest but gave up. Too damn many footnotes! I still have Don Quixote and Middlemarch sitting around somewhere but haven't tackled them yet. (FYI - I googled this list and came up with what I thought was the same poster as Jack was reading from; however, some of them were not the same, so now I'm confused.)
I started pale fire like 3 times but i keep getting scared I'm not smart enough for it lol even tho i read house of leaves twice and wasn't put off by it at all so idk
OH MY GOD I'm losing it a little, The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Death Comes for the Archbishop are two books that me and one of my best friends read together last year and they are AMAZING, I cannot recommend them enough. I just reread Death Comes for the Archbishop yesterday, it is truly fantastic. Willa Cather's ability to describe a landscape is painfully beautiful, and Thornton Wilder's writing in The Bridge of San Luis Rey is also absolutely incredible. They are both really accessible as well, not a lot of long words or confusing sentences or anything, just beautiful short classic novels that I truly think everyone should read.
I've only read 8 😂 got all my essential amino acids though. But seriously, I feel so much pressure when I think about reading classics that I can't bring myself to do it. Need to try and knock one or two off this year! 😬
The heart is a lonely hunter is a book I read because of one of your videos and ugh it's so so so good the title is a bit bougie but it's soooooooo deep once you actually read the novel
I’m surprised At Swim-two-birds is on there. It’s a super obscure meta fictional surrealist Irish novel that’s so fun to read. Super funny and just so strange
Hi Jack, I found a theme in the books that I have personally read which you haven't and that's 20th century American literature. I'm not American but I did a class on it at uni and particularly love Southern gothic literature to this day. It would make a great video and I highly recommend reading the following. The Sound and the Fury Their Eyes were Watching God The Grapes of Wrath The Big Sleep The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Go Tell it on the Mountain Ragtime The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my all time favourite novels and I think you will really love it too. Be warned it will shatter your heart into a million beautiful pieces. Happy reading! P.S. I got 32.
I've read only 15 from this list 😅, I love classics and I read a lot of them. But I usually read the mystery genre, or read multiple books by the same author. So if Sherlock Holmes was there, I could've scored higher. I also read all 6 major novels by Jane Austen, a couple of Joseph Conrad's novels (Almost 4), and many of his novellas. I also like to read George Orwell's memories and novels. I read a tale of two cities by Charles Dickins, which is weird that it wasn't part of the list.
I got 14 but my mum is a Literature lecturer so I've heard of most of them. The Shipping News is incredible, one of my favourite books ever, by the author of Brokeback Mountain. It's super interesting!
Jack, you HAVE to read don quijote (as a Spanish person myself) its literally the most famous book in my country and i heard that is the second most sold book in the world after the bible (ill have to look it up tho) its a must.
I've read 24 of those! The only ones that I've read, that you haven't are Anna Karenina (for a class on the "Rise of the European Novel", loved that one!), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Clockwork Orange! I've mostly read 18th century novels because that's what I'm writing my phd about! Once I'm done, I'll finally have the time to read some 19th and 20th century and some contemporary fiction!
Literally only just started to read some of the classics, so unsurprisingly i’ve hardly read any of these including the top row ones I should of read. But this was still helpful as I now know to buy + read jane eyre and wide Sargasso Sea together. Plus i’ll definitely include handmaids tale on my to read next list after your laudation.
Lmaooo I've only read 9/100, I only really got back into reading during 2020 and I hadn't willingly read classics since school, but I do looove them now. There were several of those I have copies of and haven't read yet, I'm literally in the midst of reading Moby Dick, there were some I want to read and don't have copies yet, And the majority of those I haven't heard of! Thank you very much for this list!
i had to read 'their eyes were watching god' for school and absolutely adored it! it's got one of the best opening lines i've ever read and i just know that you'd enjoy it :)
oh, well ive only read 8 :D but here are some other important classics ive read so i dont feel bad about that number: - A Room of One's Own, - The Three Musketeers, - The Stranger by Camus, - Les Misérables, - The Yellow Wall-Paper, - La vida es sueño (ok that one's a play), - A hundred years of solitude, - Die unendliche Geschichte - Alice in Wonderland - Candide by Voltaire
😀💕xx ‘I clavdivs’? Maybe I Claudius by Robert Graves?! The catcher in the rye has to be my all time favourite. I’ve read quite a few on the list. Great video.
It‘s only 22/100 for me, unfortunately. English is not my first language though. I‘ve got some more must-reads: The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), The Stranger (Albert Camus), Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) and finally Ham on Rye (Charles Bukowski), just because I love it. Thanks for your video!
I got this poster for Christmas 3 years ago, and I’m still making my way through it (interspersed with other books). I’m up to 40 so it’s going to keep me going for a while. But I like that it’s made me read loads of books I wouldn’t have that I really enjoyed!
16 of these! Not bad considering… also surprised at a couple of choices: I read Appointment in Samarra thinking it was so niche, surprised anyone thought it good enough to put on this list
I've read 19 of these! The two I've read that you haven't are Anna Karenina and Pale Fire. Pale Fire I read so long ago that all I can't really remember it. Anna Karenina I read last year, I had to pace myself but I did enjoy it!
jack!!!! i just finished big swiss and you absolutely have to read it, it's about 2 unhinged flawed women so it definitely sounds like it's up your lane
Wow! I have not heard of the majority of those. I have only read 5% of that list: "Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "Catcher in the Rye," and "To Kill A Mockingbird." When it comes to classics, I have mostly read Francophone and Hispanophone literature.
I have read a few of these? But really only the few. I AM trying to give myself a classic book quota. Last year, I read like four, which is also my goal this year. I'm two in. :) To be fair, I'm going more for genre classics. Which would be also an incredibly fun idea, if you are looking for future videos. You really could dig up some of the early superhero / pulp hero works, see how they compare to the new craze. So far, I LOVED The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Curse of Capistrano (The Mark of Zorro), and very much did not like Tarzan of the Apes. Imaro is next on my list. Arsène Lupin falls more in the detective category, but it's a blast.
