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jackconsidine 12 hours ago [-]
> Ulysses by Joyce => 264,258 words (16 hours 1 minute) with a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)
Don't want to know what difficult is
acabal 10 hours ago [-]
The reading ease algorithm we use is the Flesh-Kincaid algorithm, which works pretty well for regular prose books but clearly fails very badly on avant-garde prose like Ulysses or As I Lay Dying.
givemeethekeys 9 hours ago [-]
Were these books easier to read when they were written?
If not then it's like being forced to untangle the mind of a twisted person. Finally a job for the LLM's that we can all be thankful for outsourcing.
sebastianz 3 hours ago [-]
Using your mind to "untangle" is the whole point and pleasure of reading. Using llms to expand your understanding of it makes sense, but "Outsourcing" the reading not so much.
If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.
idoubtit 10 hours ago [-]
> I find this other list more deserving of this title
How is a list spanning over the last 40 centuries deserving of the tile "Books of the Century by Le Monde"?
Why would the "Epic of Gilgamesh" or the "Book of Job" be on a list of 20th century books?
> ... it starts with one of my favorite.
From that same Wikipedia page: “The books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way;”
The list is sorted by authors' name.
onli 17 hours ago [-]
What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?"
I agree, though the list contains "L'œuvre au noir", another wonderful novel by Marguerite Yourcenar.
I think some of the books on this list had very few readers, but were selected because of their relative fame among a list of 200 books. For instance, how many people have read the full "Gulag archipelago"? Or writings by Lacan or Barthes? Or the "Journal" by Jules Renard?
kergonath 15 hours ago [-]
> Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing
Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.
Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?
onli 12 hours ago [-]
Hm, you are right. Those lists can't be perfect and giving this a second look, I guess my comment was hasty. For the choices I thought weird I can mostly see the justification when researching the titles a bit more (and partly by checking for their names in my language -> properly identifying them).
For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but as mentioned in the other comments I was wrong about that, it's just listed with the numbers written out. Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french, but I never got the appeal. Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries, and regardless of that I think its just not readable. I would kick out two of the Lord of the ring books, one is enough and it's not like each of them had a different impact.
Maybe even more subjective, The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today? If not, which would be my opinion, should it be on the list regardless? And I'd consider replacing Thomas Mann Zauberberg with Tod in Venedig, just because I liked it a lot.
For missing books: Louis Begley is an author I felt to be missing, probably with Wartime lies, or About Schmidt. The first Harry Potter as well, but I understand that in 1999 it was too early for that judgement. Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre. Talking german literature with Thomas Mann above, Alfred Andersch Die Rote would have a place on my personal list, as well as Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer. Haruki Murakami is missing, though maybe with 1Q84 he better fits into a list of the current century. Stephen King? Paul Auster? Philip Roth? Though maybe that would be for The Human Stain, and that's from 2000.
As an aside, I was happily surprised to see The Master and Margarita on the list. It's one of the more known books that I thought had a very special charm, but not one I'd expect to see working on many, as one would have to have read Goethe's Faust and liked it...
kergonath 9 hours ago [-]
> Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french
It is very popular and a huge influence. I am not surprised (but then I am French and always found St-Exupéry fascinating).
> Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries
Me too, to be honest. Quite a few English-speaking authors are maybe unexpectedly quite popular (Hemingway and Fitzgerald are there, and I think it is deserved; Dickens and Mark Twain should have been), but I would not think about Ulysses.
> The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today
Crime is an important genre and Sherlock Holmes is quite popular (even though I would personally put something by Maurice Leblanc or Agatha Christie instead).
> Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre.
Sci-fi is underrepresented. I would put Neuromancer definitely, and at least something by Jules Verne. I cannot believe 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas did not make the cut.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll have a closer look at the books you mention I don’t already know :)
lostmsu 7 hours ago [-]
> Sci-fi is underrepresented
That's because "from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists"
Yes, I saw that, Der Zauberberg is the german title.
jdsnape 17 hours ago [-]
Out of interest, why does that seem a strange methodology?
onli 16 hours ago [-]
When reading "Books of the Century" I expected a list of the most important, most influential or just best books. Skewed towards the french perspective, given Le Monde as a source. But this was never the goal, just a "what stuck in your mind" question.
For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.
rorytbyrne 15 hours ago [-]
Ulysses was first published in Paris during the 20 years that Joyce lived there.
>I thought only the US ranks it high
Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.
onli 14 hours ago [-]
Right, Great Gatsby is another book one could highlight, where it's surprising that it is on the (french) list, while it would be on an US list. But I haven't read it, I do not know whether it is a good example for the difference between a good or important book and a memorable one.
jhbadger 9 hours ago [-]
If you found Ulysses confusing, what would you think of Finnegan's Wake? Ulysses is practically a children's book in comparison. As for the lack of 1984, Orwell was an important author sure, but not particularly a good one. People read 1984 and Animal Farm for the messages, not for the exquisite prose that someone like Joyce can manage.
onli 9 hours ago [-]
Sorry, I haven't tried to read that one. If it's even more, hm, abstract?, then I won't ever try.
Note that 1984 is listed, just as "Nineteen Eighty-Four". I missed it when searching, didn't think of searching for "Orwell" instead.
I'd disagree with you about its quality, I remember it fondly (well, as much as possible given the topic of having one's identity erased), it was a powerful experience - and I do remember it vividly, so when asked for books one remembers I'd absolutely mention it, and in a list of books of the century it does belong.
Joyce "prose" on the other hand did nothing for me but make me despise his book.
jkingsbery 16 hours ago [-]
1984 is 22 on the list.
onli 16 hours ago [-]
Upps. Searching for 1984 didn't turn it up.
shakow 14 hours ago [-]
> most influential
> "what stuck in your mind"
That's strongly correlated IMHO; and I don't really see any objective metric for the influence of a book anyway.
Guestmodinfo 15 hours ago [-]
James Joyce wearing his bottle bottom glasses (thick glasses) would like to have a word with you. You can call him genius, dirty, knowledgeable in many languages but certainly not gibberish. He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish. In our book club we often discuss for hours what he was trying to say on a page. Sometimes he says things in 3 different dimensions by writing a single sentence.
jpfromlondon 12 hours ago [-]
Woolf had his number, she was right on every count.
onli 15 hours ago [-]
Are you sure you are not just reinforcing my point? :)
RcouF1uZ4gsC 12 hours ago [-]
Yep.
> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.
My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.
mmooss 15 hours ago [-]
Ulysses was written in Paris, where James Joyce lived, and was published in Paris by the now legendary Shakespeare & Co. The US and UK banned it for being obscene.
When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).
onli 15 hours ago [-]
It's completely irrelevant where it was written, where it was published and where it was banned, I'm talking about how it is seen today. It is possible I am getting this wrong -certainly possible, since I'm taking this impression from English speaking sites like this, that I attribute to the US what should be attributed to England -, but I have seen no argument so far that even strives the point I made.
bondarchuk 12 hours ago [-]
What is your question? If you just want to know why Ulysses is seen as influential you can start with the wikipedia article. If you want to try again to read it you can try to read it with a guide of some kind, there are multiple, I used this one https://www.ulyssesguide.com/1-telemachus.
onli 11 hours ago [-]
No question. It's completely against my being to consider something as good if it can't be enjoyed without a guide. I hated the tendency in computer science to hide simple definitions behind jargon. I'm okay with stuff having hidden meaning, with texts being interpretable, I'm not okay with it just being gibberish when not studying it in closest detail.
I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.
bondarchuk 11 hours ago [-]
Since you have no question I won't venture to answer. :D
Karuma 16 hours ago [-]
1984 is N°22 on that list...
keiferski 15 hours ago [-]
1984 is listed at number 22 under its actual title, written out.
hammock 16 hours ago [-]
Starting with only 200 titles in the survey, for a final list of 100, seems off to me for starters. Every book surveyed has a 50% chance of making “book of the century”
tstenner 15 hours ago [-]
That makes it sound like 50 shades of grey would have had a 50/50 chance of getting into the top 100 if it only was included in the wider selection
hammock 10 hours ago [-]
Obviously 50/50 if random. But even if not random, I estimate 50 Shades would be 500-100,000 times more likely to be a book of the century using a list of 200 with it in it, vs an unaided open ended survey.
onli 12 hours ago [-]
If the question is "which book stuck in your mind" maybe it would've had a good chance to be listed as #1?
keiferski 15 hours ago [-]
How is this strange? It’s pretty much what I’d expect from francophone readers. What were you expecting?
Kinda ironic that standardebooks.org refuses non-English books but will happily promote a French ranking... I mean none of those books are actually available on standardebooks.org - at least not in their original French version.
Bayart 11 hours ago [-]
It's a decent list of what readers in France think of as the books to read from the 20th c., in that it holds value. Including to myself, a French citizen with odd tastes.
The general debate on what's the objective list doesn't hold weight, and I'd rather see what each corner of the world values.
specproc 15 hours ago [-]
The sad thing is how many aren't available.
I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.
GeoAtreides 7 hours ago [-]
Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf
what wonderful surprises, i thought these amazing books were forgotten and lost
_ache_ 10 hours ago [-]
About IP. It's 70 years after the death of the author in France, so Camus (car crash in 1960) books will be PD in 2030.
There is an exception for people who lost live from war (+30 years), so 2044 is the year the elevate to PD for "Le petit prince".
I don't understand that right is attached to local legislation. Like you will have access to these book before we do because of the local legislation of USA? That is a bit crazy.
keiferski 15 hours ago [-]
What would be interesting is to cross reference this list with an Anglophone one and pull out the writers that are big in France but almost unknown amongst the public in America. Céline is definitely one such example, I think.
haunter 16 hours ago [-]
This should have an 1999 in the title even if the site and ebooks published are newer
throwforfeds 14 hours ago [-]
The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close.
I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.
Bayart 11 hours ago [-]
Cormac McCarthy is decently translated (for having read him in both English and French) and is well known.
But for the average French litterati, American literature harks back to Hemingway, Steinbeck, Salinger, Burroughs, Capote, Nabokov and so on much before McCarthy.
Toni Morrison isn't well known here yet, if only because her writing is embedded with Afro-American reality which is off-phase with Europe culture. For the same reason you'd hardly hear about Ralph Ellison in France if you're not in circles aware of post-colonial African diaspora writing.
To the same token, French authors who make it across the Atlantic aren't always the most valued here.
fmajid 10 hours ago [-]
Yep, I had never heard of Derrida until I read a mention of him in an American Physics journal of all places.
mmooss 11 hours ago [-]
It's interesting Nabakov is thought of as American. Yes, an American citizen beginning age ~46 (in 1945) but born in Russia, wrote in multiple languages, lived much of life in Europe.
Bayart 11 hours ago [-]
I write him down as American because that's his elective nation, although he's quintessentially European.
After all you might not chose where you live, but how you live and where you die can be up to you. And as far as I can I try to respect what people chose for themselves.
zwaps 14 hours ago [-]
Honestly, American lists are the same. Every decent English speaking author, plus some selections of other languages.
Any national worlds book list, and this explicitly includes US and UK lists, are heavily skewed and I mean ridiculously so
throwforfeds 7 hours ago [-]
Oh for sure, agreed. These lists do well to drive traffic and sell things, but I never put much weight in them.
lo_zamoyski 13 hours ago [-]
This is one of the criticisms[0] of at least some Great Books curricula. The skew tends too strongly towards the Anglo-American and the “canon” is too rigidly held.
I know it's subjective, but personally I think Nausea by Sartre is the much better "The Stranger", and it always saddens me a bit to see Camus so high up on every list while missing Sartre.
noads2000 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
gausswho 10 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised to see Brave New World amongst these. The idea it presents is indeed powerful and influential, but for such a smart guy it comes across stilted and craftless. Try reading it now and it just doesn't hold up to more nuanced fiction.
13 hours ago [-]
KnuthIsGod 4 hours ago [-]
Nice.
But very Eurocentric.
Where are Kalidas , Mahfouz , Soyinka or the Mahabharata?
testrun 39 minutes ago [-]
This is a very interesting point. Is there a similar list in India, Japan, Korea or any other country? Will be interesting to compare them and see if some of those books on the other lists are translated.
BiraIgnacio 14 hours ago [-]
I'm happy to see so many philosophy or philosophy-adjacent books on that list.
And I also wonder why that is.
yallpendantools 12 hours ago [-]
Why are some numbers skipped? E.g., 58 [59 60] 61 [62] 63 64 65 66 67 68 [69] 70
wackget 5 hours ago [-]
Kafka at number 3? Meh. It was incredibly dull and tiresome IMHO. I understand it's supposed to be written like a fever dream but to what end? It was simply tedious and difficult to follow.
Then again I also hated the episode of The Sopranos which has an extremely long dream sequence.
orwin 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think I would place all of them in any 'top' list, but all the books I have read, ~60%, are great read. Weird list though.
pcasca 17 hours ago [-]
Infinite Jest?
raffael_de 14 hours ago [-]
pretty french heavy that list.
throwforfeds 14 hours ago [-]
well, it is a french newspaper surveying french people
Don't want to know what difficult is
If not then it's like being forced to untangle the mind of a twisted person. Finally a job for the LLM's that we can all be thankful for outsourcing.
If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.
How is a list spanning over the last 40 centuries deserving of the tile "Books of the Century by Le Monde"? Why would the "Epic of Gilgamesh" or the "Book of Job" be on a list of 20th century books?
> ... it starts with one of my favorite.
From that same Wikipedia page: “The books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way;”
The list is sorted by authors' name.
Makes more sense like that.
I think some of the books on this list had very few readers, but were selected because of their relative fame among a list of 200 books. For instance, how many people have read the full "Gulag archipelago"? Or writings by Lacan or Barthes? Or the "Journal" by Jules Renard?
Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.
Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?
For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but as mentioned in the other comments I was wrong about that, it's just listed with the numbers written out. Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french, but I never got the appeal. Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries, and regardless of that I think its just not readable. I would kick out two of the Lord of the ring books, one is enough and it's not like each of them had a different impact.
Maybe even more subjective, The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today? If not, which would be my opinion, should it be on the list regardless? And I'd consider replacing Thomas Mann Zauberberg with Tod in Venedig, just because I liked it a lot.
For missing books: Louis Begley is an author I felt to be missing, probably with Wartime lies, or About Schmidt. The first Harry Potter as well, but I understand that in 1999 it was too early for that judgement. Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre. Talking german literature with Thomas Mann above, Alfred Andersch Die Rote would have a place on my personal list, as well as Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer. Haruki Murakami is missing, though maybe with 1Q84 he better fits into a list of the current century. Stephen King? Paul Auster? Philip Roth? Though maybe that would be for The Human Stain, and that's from 2000.
As an aside, I was happily surprised to see The Master and Margarita on the list. It's one of the more known books that I thought had a very special charm, but not one I'd expect to see working on many, as one would have to have read Goethe's Faust and liked it...
It is very popular and a huge influence. I am not surprised (but then I am French and always found St-Exupéry fascinating).
> Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries
Me too, to be honest. Quite a few English-speaking authors are maybe unexpectedly quite popular (Hemingway and Fitzgerald are there, and I think it is deserved; Dickens and Mark Twain should have been), but I would not think about Ulysses.
> The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today
Crime is an important genre and Sherlock Holmes is quite popular (even though I would personally put something by Maurice Leblanc or Agatha Christie instead).
> Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre.
Sci-fi is underrepresented. I would put Neuromancer definitely, and at least something by Jules Verne. I cannot believe 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas did not make the cut.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll have a closer look at the books you mention I don’t already know :)
That's because "from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde%27s_100_Books_of_the_...
For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.
>I thought only the US ranks it high
Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.
Note that 1984 is listed, just as "Nineteen Eighty-Four". I missed it when searching, didn't think of searching for "Orwell" instead.
I'd disagree with you about its quality, I remember it fondly (well, as much as possible given the topic of having one's identity erased), it was a powerful experience - and I do remember it vividly, so when asked for books one remembers I'd absolutely mention it, and in a list of books of the century it does belong.
Joyce "prose" on the other hand did nothing for me but make me despise his book.
> "what stuck in your mind"
That's strongly correlated IMHO; and I don't really see any objective metric for the influence of a book anyway.
> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.
My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.
When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).
I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.
The general debate on what's the objective list doesn't hold weight, and I'd rather see what each corner of the world values.
I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf
what wonderful surprises, i thought these amazing books were forgotten and lost
I don't understand that right is attached to local legislation. Like you will have access to these book before we do because of the local legislation of USA? That is a bit crazy.
I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.
To the same token, French authors who make it across the Atlantic aren't always the most valued here.
After all you might not chose where you live, but how you live and where you die can be up to you. And as far as I can I try to respect what people chose for themselves.
Any national worlds book list, and this explicitly includes US and UK lists, are heavily skewed and I mean ridiculously so
[0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2023/05/great-books-e...
But very Eurocentric.
Where are Kalidas , Mahfouz , Soyinka or the Mahabharata?
Then again I also hated the episode of The Sopranos which has an extremely long dream sequence.