ஆங்கிலத்தில் ‘must read’ என்று ஒரு பட்டியல் போடச்சொன்னால், நீங்கள் பரிந்துரைக்கும் பட்டியல் தருவீர்களா எனக்கு? நவீன இலக்கியத்தில் தான் வேண்டும்.

என்று நண்பரிடமிருந்து கேள்வி. என்றாவது நேரம் கிடைக்கும்போது படிக்க வேண்டும் என்று நான் நினைக்கும் பட்டியல்:

1. Reservation Blues – Sherman Alexie (1995)
2. The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende (1985)
3. Money – Martin Amis (1984)
4. Bless Me, Ultima – Rudolfo Anya (1973)
5. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood (1996)
6. Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin (1953)
7. Collected Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges (1998)
8. Drop City – TC Boyle (2003)
9. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury (1953)
10. Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (1985)
11. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willia Carther (1927)
12. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler (1939)
13. The Fruit ‘N Food – Leonard Chang (1996)
14. Donald Duk – Frank Chin (1991)
15. A Murder is Announced – Agatha Christie (1950)
16. American Woman – Susan Choi (2003)
17. Fifth Business – Robertson Davies (1970)
18. Rockbound – Frank Praker Day (1928)
19. White Noise – Don DeLilo (1985)
20. The Red Tent – Anita Diamant (1997)
21. The stolen Child – Keith Donohue (2006)
22. A Yellow Raft on Blue Water – Michael Dorris (1987)
23. An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser (1925)
24. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison (1952)
25. Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich (1984)
26. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
27. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner (1929)
28. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
29. From Russia with Love – Ian Fleming (1957)
30. Inez – Carlos Fuentes (2000)
31. A gathering of Old Men – Ernest J Gaines (1983)
32. Dreaming in Cuban – Cristina Garcia (1992)
33. I Wish Someone were Waiting for me Somewhere – Anna Gavalda
34. Herland – Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
35. Three Junes – Julia Glass (2002)
36. Rites of Passage – William Golding (1980)
37. Our Man in Havana -Graham Greene (1958)
38. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett (1930)
39. The Puppet Masters – Robert Heinlein (1951)
40. Winter’s Tale – Mark Helprin (1983)
41. Goodbye, Mr. Chips – James Hilton (1934)
42. The River King – Alice Hoffman (2000)
43. Brave New world – Aldous Huxley (1932)
44. Deafening – Frances Itani (2003)
45. The Love Wife – Gish Jen (2004)
46. Dead Solid Perfect – Dan jenkins (1974)
47. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams – Wayne Johnston (1998)
48. The Healing – Gayl Jones (1998)
49. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong (1973)
50. Echo House – Ward Just (1997)
51. Andersonville – Mackinlay Kantor (1955)
52. Fateless – Imre Kertesz (1975)
53. Sometimes a Great Nation – Ken Kesey (1964)
54. Green Grass, Running Water – Thomas King (1993)
55. Animal Dreams – Barbara Kingslover (1990)
56. A Separate Peace – John Knowles (1959)
57. The Buddha of Suburbia -Hanif Kureishi (1990)
58. The Diviners – Margaret Laurence (1974)
59. The Gangster We All are Looking For – Thi Diem Thuy Le (2003)
60. Native Speaker – Chang-Rae Lee (1995)
61. The Call of the Wild – Jack London (1903)
62. Zami – Audre Lorde (1983)
63. Midaq Alley – Naguib Mahfouz (1947)
64. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy (1985)
65. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers (1940)
66. Beloved – Toni Morrison (1987)
67. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison (1977)
68. Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins Novel – Walter E Mosley (2004)
69. The Delta of Venus – Anais Nin (1969)
70. When the Emperor was Divine – Julie Otsuka (2002)
71. Kiss of the Spider Woman – Manuel Puig (1976)
72. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand (1957)
73. Joshua Then and Now – Mordecai Richler (1980)
74. Housekeeping – Marilyn Robinson (1980)
75. The Counterlife – Phillip Roth (1986)
76. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (1951)
77. The Killer Angles – Michael Shaara (1974)
78. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields (1993)
79. Prep: A Novel – Curtis Sittenfeld (2005)
80. In America – Susan Sontag (2000)
81. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark (1961)
82. Angle of Response – Wallace Stegner (1971)
83. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (1939)
84. The Bonesetter’s Daughter – Amy Tan (2001)
85. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole (1980)
86. Anatomy of a Murder – Robert Traver (1958)
87. Reversible Errors – Scott Turow (2002)
88. Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels – John Updike (1995)
89. The Hummingbird’s Daughter – Luis Alberto Urrea (2005)
90. Washington DC: A Novel – Gore Vidal (1967)
91. Slaughterhouse-Five : Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
92. Force Majeure – Bruce Wagner (1991)
93. Meridian – Alice Walker (1976)
94. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren (1946)
95. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh (1928)
96. The Day of the Locust – Nathaniel West (1939)
97. The Old School – Tobias Wolff (2003)
98. Native Son – Richard Wright (1940)
99. A Good School – Richard Yates (1978)
100. We – Eugene Zamyatin (1920)

இது ஒரு ஜாலியான பட்டியல். ‘அவசியம் படிக்க வேண்டும்’ அல்லது ‘மிகவும் புகழ் பெற்றவை’ என்பதை விட வெரைட்டி + வித்தியாசம் நிறைந்த லிஸ்ட்.

அவசியம் புரட்ட வேண்டிய புத்தகங்களுக்கு The Book of Great Books: A Guide to 100 World Classics: (W. John Campbell) போன்றவற்றையும் கவனிக்கலாம்.