Chai With Priya The making of a great novel

I love walking through shelves and shelves of a bookstore and checking off books that I have had the pleasure and joy in reading while adding ones that catch my attention to my never-ending TBR list.

Likewise, when I see a list of Top 100 books like the one released by The Guardian recently, I can’t help but make a list from this list.

First of all, I counted how many I had read – 35.

Then I looked to see if I’d missed out on any by my favourite authors.

Then I couldn’t help but compare it to the BBC’s Top 100 books to read before you die list that was published more than 20 years ago.

There were some stark differences between the two lists. All my childhood favourites and books I had read during school days like Watership Down, Charlotte’s Web and the Harry Potter series were not present. This was a very ‘adult’ list of books.

Secondly, the list of books published by The Guardian felt like it was simply more of the same and not a reflection of what I would choose to read at this time of my life.

More than 170 novelists, critics and academics were profiled by The Guardian and asked for their top 10 books.

Stephen King, David Nicholls, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Elif Shafak were among those asked to compile their top choice in books.

Lisa Allardice, writing for The Guardian, said: “Never has such a list been more needed.”

“Dwindling attention spans, screens, Netflix; whatever we blame, reading for pleasure is a dying pursuit.”

Half of adults in the UK say they don’t read, and reading skills among children and young people is at its lowest in 20 years.

The UK’s Department of Education and the National Literacy Trust have this year launched the National Year of Reading 2026 campaign designed to help more people “(re)discover the joy of reading and make it part of their everyday lives”.

“Our list includes any book published in English, but originally written in any language,” The Guardian said.

“It is still partial – all lists are. Neither can we make a claim to being definitive – this is literature, not science.”

“Is the best novel one that changes the genre, society or the individual? One that captures the zeitgeist, or has an afterlife far beyond its pages.”

“Or a novel that scorches itself so deeply into your soul you can remember exactly when and where you were when you first read it?”

“None of these criteria on their own is enough.”

“My Proustian madeleine will be your raw potato. My Mrs Dalloway your Mrs Bridge.”

“But we hope that in asking those who devote their days to the craft and understanding of fiction from around the globe, the result is as authoritative, ambitious and far-reaching as possible.”

The “most striking difference” between this list and its predecessors is an increase in female writers: 36 out of 100 compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003, with only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the top 10 of both previous lists.

“The number of women rises as the decades go by; half of the contemporary writers are female,” The Guardian added.

“This might not announce the decline of the great white male, but it does signal a much-needed reset.”

Middlemarch by George Eliot took the top spot, followed by Beloved by Toni Morrison and Ulysses by James Joyce.

There was no surprise that other authors featured in the top 10 included Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy.

While I was proud of the number of books I’d read that featured in this list, many only did so because they were required reading during English Literature classes in Westside School or during an elective literature module at university.

It does not reflect the wide array of genres I have come to enjoy and to appreciate, or the many new authors from around the world who I have read and grown to love over the years.
“I’d say it’s a decent list but like all lists it has its limitations,” a friend said.

“It leaves out many works that were written in other languages and are only available in translation so it’s quite an Anglo-centric view of literature.”

“Still, if you read all 100 books here, you’d have a good grasp of what the novel form is capable of.”

“The top ten includes some real challenges for the reader: there’s Joyce’s Ulysses which ideally requires explanatory notes and great patience before you get to its Gibraltar-themed final chapter, Proust’s daunting multi-volume In Search of Lost Time and Tolstoy’s War and Peace.”

“The top spot is earned by Middlemarch and after plodding through it last year all I can say is that greatness is no guarantee of reading pleasure!”

And although the list of books features many authors, he suggests selecting a few favourites and reading their entire works.

A fellow book club member and bibliophile said: “I’ve read like 12 of these.”

“I think the list is a very limited snapshot of a very specific time, and it is also very Eurocentric so a bit presumptuous to call it the 100 best novels of all time.”

She said she found it “very surprising” that the authors asked to contribute to this were of all genders, races, countries and backgrounds.

“Then again you can argue that everyone is driven by their own internal biases,” she said.

“Shakespeare is known worldwide for his work for hundreds of years.”

“Stories told, adapted, written all over the world but why isn’t that the case for any other authors from across the world?”

“There is just no comparison, and this man came from a little island but we or society just don’t centre anyone or anything else.”

Another friend remarked on the lack of children books and books of genre fiction.

“It’s nice to see books by women, some non-Anglo authors and POC on that list, more than in the past I would say, but it is still very traditionally literary in its scope,” she said.

“Lists are good, but like everyone has already said, they are always Anglo-centric,” another friend said.

“I listened to the Rolling Stone’s best 500 albums of all time and just a couple weren’t English, American or English speaking,” he added.