Customer Reviews

One Hundred Best Books

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Since this book is in the public domain you know that it reviews books from many decades ago. Since I prefer older books, I was hoping to find a few suggestions here. Half of the books mentioned are still classics, but the other half have dropped completely off the map because they never achieved "classic" status. This book may be of interest to fans of older books just because they can see which titles survived the cut. I enjoyed some of the bios of the authors that were given, especially that of G.K. Chesterton.

This little book is quite interesting as it provides a snapshot of what can be regarded as a "Best Books" list from 1916. Remarkably, most of the books are still in what is regarded as the upper tier of literature. Not surprisingly it has a strong British emphasis. About 10-15% of the authors were "unknowns" in my eyes - either authors that represented classics from the "past" or "modern" authors that have passed into the hidden realm of time in less than a century. The latter gives me hope that the avalanche of many modern publications will be covered by the same eternal dust as a future reader looks backwards.

Regardless, a fun (and short) read for people interested in the perspectives of the western canon as viewed from 1916.