Half-watching Little Women (1994) this afternoon, I was reminded of a UKTV website that informed of the top 20 classic books to read ‘before you die’ {x}. Interestingly, Little Women was not on their list. I looked around for a less dogmatic list, and one not broken by ITV (who co-own the UK TV channels). http://Amazon.com’s UnSpun have an Americanised list [x].
Here’s a list of novels which appear in both top 20s, along with the year of the most popular film production, according to IMDb (with more than 200 votes):
- [2] {1} Moby Dick <7.4> 1956, UK
- [1] {5} Pride and Prejudice <9.3> 1995, UK
- [7] {11} Crime and Punishment <7.6> 1983, Finland
- [3] {16} Huckleberry Finn <6.8> 1939, USA
- [11] {9} War and Peace <8.6> 1968, Soviet Union
- [12] {20} Wuthering Heights <7.8> 1939, USA
It is interesting to see that there have not been any satisfactory productions of Huckleberry Finn’s adventures.
I’ve not read any of the above books, and am quite daunted by most of them. Maybe watching the film first will invoke me into reading them…