The 70 book challenge
Apr. 20th, 2022 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe BBC and the Reading Agency have put together something they are calling the Big Jubilee Read: a list of 70 books from the last 70 years, ten per decade, from across the Commonwealth.
I am pretty much averse to anything to do with this jubilee: but dealing with it - dealing with almost anything - by making a list of books seems reasonable to me. It's an interesting list, if only because so much of it is unfamiliar: my reading is neither as literary nor as international as this.
Despite which, there are a couple of things things that I recognised enough to be surprised at. In the order listed: J.M.G. Le Clézio's Interrogation is listed under Mauritius, which, well, yes, I see that he does claim that dual nationality, and there's no reason why a Commonwealth reading list should be monolingual... Another Nobel laureate in the same period, Seamus Heaney, is included despite having made his position clear: "Be advised, my passport's green/No glass of ours was ever raised /To toast the Queen."
Given the way books vanish from print, I'm quite curious about how available the recommended titles are: but it's a purely abstract curiosity, I'm not tempted to go shopping for any of them.
If anything, the book it makes me want to read is one that, to my disappointment, didn't make the list: Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader.
I am pretty much averse to anything to do with this jubilee: but dealing with it - dealing with almost anything - by making a list of books seems reasonable to me. It's an interesting list, if only because so much of it is unfamiliar: my reading is neither as literary nor as international as this.
Despite which, there are a couple of things things that I recognised enough to be surprised at. In the order listed: J.M.G. Le Clézio's Interrogation is listed under Mauritius, which, well, yes, I see that he does claim that dual nationality, and there's no reason why a Commonwealth reading list should be monolingual... Another Nobel laureate in the same period, Seamus Heaney, is included despite having made his position clear: "Be advised, my passport's green/No glass of ours was ever raised /To toast the Queen."
Given the way books vanish from print, I'm quite curious about how available the recommended titles are: but it's a purely abstract curiosity, I'm not tempted to go shopping for any of them.
If anything, the book it makes me want to read is one that, to my disappointment, didn't make the list: Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader.
