Friday, July 30, 2010

Philip Pullman's six best books

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, named his six best books for the Daily Express.

One title on the list:
Middlemarch by George Eliot

The novel to go to once you’re well and truly grown up, once you’ve been married, you’ve had children, your parents have grown old and your hopes are beginning to look a little faded. It’ll remind you that this is the common experience of everyone and that everyone’s experience is strange, wonderful and unique.
Read about another book on the list.

Middlemarch also made John Mullan's lists of ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature, as well as Rebecca Goldstein's five best list of novels of ideas and Tina Brown's five best list of books on reputation. It is one of Elizabeth Kostova favorite books. While it is one of Miss Manners' favorite novels, John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

Also see: Philip Pullman's forty favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue