Response Video: Top 10 Modern Classics You MUST Read!

[@KDbooks]

I am so ready for this onslaught 🍿

[@saintdonoghue]

Hah! But what will either one of us do when it comes to the 21st century? The canon hasn't even begun to form, and only a fraction of the century has happened yet!

[@KDbooks]

@@saintdonoghue it’ll be a glorious chaotic reaction that I assure you everyone will agree on

[@TK-kf8zc]

Generation difference in play here. Both bring a lot to the table. Vive la difference.

[@rishwiz9]

@@KDbooks Hey man, Steve’s grumpy. He just downright dismisses anything along the veins of Joyce, Pynchon or Rushdie. Basically anything offbeat, ground breaking and inventive.

[@KDbooks]

@@rishwiz9 and we love him for it

[@BrandonsBookshelf]

“You can’t write a better book than you have in you” that is really interesting to me and something id lobe to hear you expand on. Glad you made another response to Kieran! Was especially curious what you would say about Captain America. Also loved your list. A couple i need to get to still. I have already filmed my modern list and our only overlap was Kafka. Thanks for a great video

[@wildmanz8233]

My Top 10 Books from the 20th Century You MUST Read (that I actually enjoy), no particular order: 1) Hundred Years of Solitude 2) The Snow Leopard 3) East of Eden 4) Dune 5) Nostromo (1904, I checked) 6) The Gulag Archipelago 7) A Bend in the River 8) Book of the New Sun ( they're all short books so I'm counting as 1) 9) Satanic Verses 10) The Hero with a Thousand Faces I love comics and may make a Top 10 just for them!

[@KDbooks]

15:08 OMG YES 😂 The comic book industry rocking 2 top 10 MUST reads. I never thought I would see the day!

[@capturedbyannamarie]

Even non readers have heard of Agatha Christie. She is who I go to for a cozy fun read.

[@MarvinReads]

Steve’s List: 1) Magic Mountain 2) House of Mirth 3) Mrs. Dalloway 4) Dune 5) The Lord Of The Rings 6) The Mysterious Affair at Styles 7) The Metamorphosis 8) Wind In The Willows 9) Doctor Zhivago

[@edwardgibbon3760]

I will be patiently biding my time till the ‘Top 10 Nonfiction Classics you MUST read’ video Steve!

[@saintdonoghue]

Should I do a specifically nonfiction edition for all three time periods? That would be fun -

[@HannahsBooks]

@@saintdonoghue Yes!! (And you have to include Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.)

[@ThatReadingGuy28]

Steve, the title itself suggests you MUST do so!

[@edwardgibbon3760]

@@saintdonoghue Absolutely!

[@somebenfen]

The contemporary list is going to be carnage and I CAN'T WAIT 😄

[@saintdonoghue]

None of us will have any guidelines! Somebody could nominate a breakfast cereal box! "Carnage" is putting it lightly!

[@lf4227]

Superior 1900s Lit: • Ulysses by James Joyce • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison • Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko • Beloved by Toni Morrison • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka • We by Yevgeny Zamatin • Watchmen by Alan Moore • Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis • Negrophobia by Darius James • 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Honorary friends: • Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse • Italo Svevo - Zeno’s Conscience • Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

[@rishwiz9]

This is definitely a level up from Steve’s list ( I mean doesn’t Ulysses has the top spot in every modern classics list??). I wud replace We with 1984 ( clearer, precise and universal), Carpenters Gothic with The Black Prince and The Watchmen with From Hell ( the more definitive and richer Moore). I wud also make space for some Nabokov.

[@lf4227]

Nah, 1984 is just the downgrade from We. What makes We so special IS the dream sequences (and not being a shitty plagarize homework copy). 1984 in comparison is just limp. Also Nabakov is mad overrated and has no place in top 10. Top 50, sure.

[@rishwiz9]

@@lf4227 Nabokov overrated?? And We being great?? Also Carpenter Gothic over Frolic and JR🤭 Dude, stop reading books the wrong way. Start from the first page and don’t read it upside down.

[@mongolianqwerty123]

@@rishwiz9 Completely agree on From Hell. It's sadly overshadowed by Watchmen, despite being the crown jewel of Moore's career

[@derekgreen7319]

I can see in cold blood being of relative importance as it did help a bit with a new genre, of course I dont everything.

[@heathergregg9975]

Surely coming soon somewhere, sometime, "Top 10 Twenty-first Century books you MUST colour in"....

[@mdavidmullins]

Ha! Sigh. 😔We are in a dark age of a sort aren't we? Never has so many great books been available to so many and yet read by so few.

[@etucker82]

Magic Mountain? You really are old school..... Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman Children of Gebelaawi - Naguib Mahfouz I Served the King of England - Bohumil Hrabal Red Sorghum - Mo Yan The Good Soldier Svejk - Jaroslav Hasek My Antonia - Willa Cather A Bend of the River - VS Naipaul Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Doblin The Death of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes Runners Up: Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole Graveyard of the Angels - Reynaldo Arenas The Leopard - Giuseppe de Lampedusa The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Got a lot to get to still...

[@vaclavmiller8032]

I know you'll hate this but here's mine haha (in no particular order): In Search of Lost Time The Magic Mountain The Ambassadors Ulysses Petersburg The Man without Qualities To the Lighthouse The Strudlhof Steps Parade’s End Pale Fire

[@jshaers96]

Is The Ambassadors 'modern'?

[@vaclavmiller8032]

@@jshaers96 It's post 1900 and stylistically transitional (it's the antecedent to something like Parade's End in my view).

[@jshaers96]

Weird, I could have sworn it was early-ish James, and it turns out I was completely wrong. I prefer The Good Soldier to Parade's End. I can appreciate what he was trying to do in Parade's End but found even the first two books a slog, let alone the much-maligned third book.

[@vaclavmiller8032]

@@jshaers96 Do you mean the fourth (famously omitted from the Bodley Head edition)? I was under the impression that critical opinion favoured the third. In any case, I seem to love this book more than many others do - even that strange, static, elegiac final volume. In fact, I think it's the major English novel of the 20th century, but I'm aware I'm in the minority haha.

[@jshaers96]

Sorry, I meant the fourth. I enjoyed the book the first time I read it, maybe I'll give it a go some other time. I find the same thing with The Good Soldier - sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don't.

[@theramblingreviewer5150]

A great list! And so much I've not read! I do love Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I really need to reread it!

[@arthurodell3281]

It was great to see so many personal favorites reflected on your list (not just Tolkien, but Christie and Grahame)! I was baffled by his choice of Captain America as well; if he wanted to emphasize Marvel, Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four would have been better choices, but if you're just picking a comic book character, the one to pick is the one on your list. I like the film Metropolis more than you do, but putting the novelization into a top 10 of anything is absurd.

[@HannahsBooks]

I had my fingers crossed that you would include House of Mirth! Great choice. And I find your choice of Wind in the Willows surprising but really fascinating. Still, I wouldn’t include many of your other choices on my own list…

[@saintdonoghue]

Don't tell me, let me guess: Southern authors? Hee

[@HannahsBooks]

@@saintdonoghue Perhaps a couple… but MR’s Housekeeping seriously might make my list, and definitely Toni Morrison. Maybe EM Forster. John Steinbeck for sure. Maybe Ralph Ellison? Orwell’s 1984? GGM’s 100 Years? Can I add my personally-beloved My Antonia?

[@susanalfieri4487]

Love your list, but I do also love MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. Additionally, I've read most Agatha Christie books many times over. She is someone whose stories I can return to again and again with no loss of appreciation. I agree her influence is wide and deep, and she deserves more scholarly consideration. Thank you for pointing this out. I work in a bookstore, and even today (many decades after her prime writing years) we have whole shelves dedicated to her titles.

[@voz805]

On Agatha Christie, I've only read a couple, someone mentioned to me they didn't care for her as much as other mystery writers since in so many of her stories, the murderer comes out of left field and the reader can feel let down that they never had a chance of figuring it out. That influenced me not to read more but I will try The Mysterious Affair.

[@frankmorlock9134]

Re Thea von Harbou. I haven't watched Metropolis in its entirety (but the excerpts I've seen are brilliant) and I didn't know she wrote a novelization of the screenplay, but I have seen a later work of hers: M, and I read the screenplay. M was about a child molester/ murderer on the loose. So far as I know M was not novelized. The screenplay was simply amazing. Without question it is a masterpiece. It uncoils like a beautiful, poisonous snake. Von Harbou may have been a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer but that does not detract from her talent as a writer.

[@omnipotentpoobah60]

Some interesting views on this subject from both Kieran and Uncle Steve. There probably needs to be a separate discussion and/or bunfight on whether genre fiction can be a classic, or a must read. So parking all the genre stuff the list below is in chronological order. The pedants amongst you will point out that the Conrad was serialised in 1899 and only published in 1902… Heart of Darkness Ulysses Great Gatsby The Sound And The Fury The Naked And The Dead Lolita Herzog The Magus One Hundred Years Of Solitude Money

[@saintdonoghue]

discussion and/or bunfight! HAH!

[@mdavidmullins]

I've went my entire life without hearing the term ‘bunfight’. Such a great word. I will have to find a place to use it.

[@frankmorlock9134]

I feel I have to make a comment here. While I am a firm believer that figures from popular culture should be included in lists of important cultural milestones--I am a bit too old fashioned and maybe too old to place them in a list of Great Books. Since the mid 1800's works of popular fiction have produced characters and stories that tower over literary works of their time. The Three Musketeers, Monte Cristo, Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman are a few examples. But the first five of that group are from popular fiction while the last three are from Comics which were looked down upon (and still are to some extent) by snooty literary types. Initially, so were the Musketeers, Monte-Cristo, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes despite their persistent popularity. Even enthusiasts for Graphic Novels still sneer at Dumas though his works have endured in popularity whereas the enthusiams of the literary critics have not met with such longevity. On a list of great characters all mentioned belong on that list and deserve recognition. But I have difficulty putting a comic book on a list of Great Books. Characters can come from places other than books, but to me, a comic book no matter how well done is simply not a book. But that's just me.

[@jakubhorbow5704]

I made my own, most read in polish translation, maybe more europcentric than yours :) 1. Swann's Way 2. Wright's Black Boy 3. 1984 4. Of Mice and Men 5. The Plague 6. The Trial 7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 8. The Master and Margarita 9. Portnoy’s Complaint 10. Catch-22 I thought it would be easier, but it became really hard. Saddly no women on my list.

[@geocraftsman]

Well if part of the fun of these lists is "Why did you include this and not this?" Then why not just include Meg? It's the greatest book of the last several centuries, and it's all subjective, anyway...

[@ayapotato7429]

31:32 There are 6 volumes of Akira. Dune feels less a sci-fi classic and more of a wistful longing for Kipling's Kim. Btw, Kim is a 1900 novel, can make the list. A better colonial novel than Dune, I think.

[@martins1964]

I agree with The Wind in The Willows being quite sad. It's one of my favourites, it was one of the first novels i ever chose to read.

[@susanalfieri4487]

Yes, the loss of (ideal) pastoral life should definitely be mourned. When lived right, it was simple and cozy, and neighbors helped neighbors. Then "evil" cities emerged. I can't even imagine cities like London filled with the black, poisonous smoke of early industrialization. The sounds, the smells. Not to mention child labor. Adults expoited by factories was bad enough, but children? It's unconscionable. I finally read THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS about five years ago. It probably feels a bit slow to modern readers, but I really liked it.

[@tarotenhajzer]

Do you think these first couple of decades of the new century (now) also have a similar quality to them that you mention about the last one? That people now also FEEL some kind of "beast" moving, some groundbreaking wheels turning? I don't know if this feeling is caused by the crises of the pandemic, wars, political polarities, or if it's something even bigger. But I definitely feel it now, so much so I had to pause this video and point it out immediately.

[@jamesholder13]

Now I want to read Akira!

[@KDbooks]

I do add in my caveats that these are not all my favourites. Therefore, I want to clarify, In Cold Blood is a mid book at best 😂 If this was a ‘favourite modern classics of mine’ video, the list would look vastly different.

[@JasperAntonelli]

I think I must be the only person left in the world to have read Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter but NOT the Lord of the Rings. I'm planning to fix that this winter after I finish God Emperor of Dune!

[@mongolianqwerty123]

If you find Lang's 'Metropolis' to be overrated, and can tolerate anime, I highly recommend Rintaro's 'Metropolis' from 2001. It is exceptional, and exceptionally underrated

[@LanaCelebic]

I've read 8 out of 10 of these books and I would put most of them on my list as well. I blame the fact that I was born in the country of Franz Ferdinand's assassination for not having read Wind in the Willows as a kid. I only heard about it in recent years. I also haven't read Doctor Zhivago, for which I have no excuse, since Russian classics have always been must-reads in my country.

[@khamzaliev3881]

Hello! I'm not a native English speaker but I'm learning English and from time to time some confusing questions come up all the time about English which is quite impossible to explain without a native English speaker. If you're by chance learning my native language I'll be glad to help you. If you don't mind I'd give you some my social media or something so we could keep in touch. I will be looking forward to your feedback!!!Wish you a good day!!!

[@ThatReadingGuy28]

Refreshing to see two Modern Classic lists without Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

[@NZAnimeManga]

Akira is only 6 volumes btw, you can read the whole thing in a day

[@antigaia1817]

Lord of the Rings is one of those books that had me at my school library AFTER school just so I had the quiet time to read it .

[@jshaers96]

Among the greatest novels of the 20th century I would put Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. It doesn't get mentioned very often, I think because it's so entertaining that people don't take it seriously, and they just think it's going to like A Clockwork Orange, which it isn't at all.

[@mdavidmullins]

That always confounded me, how some people say because a book is enjoyable that it must not then have depth. Rushdie was mentioned on this list and I think unfairly discounted. I wonder if part of the reason Rushdie sometimes gets shunted aside on lists like this is because he is so gosh-dang funny.

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

I can’t believe you say such terrible things about the film Metropolis! It’s obviously great! It has the best dance scene ever!

[@saintdonoghue]

Hah! Best dance scene ever? So you're going to tell me you really, honestly prefer that scene to the dance scene in "A Knight's Tale"? I DIDN'T THINK SO!

[@thespaminator]

@@saintdonoghue May I make an arrangement for the film “Stomp the Yard”?

[@mediumjohnsilver]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees _Metropolis_ as a mediocre movie. The plot resolution was ridiculously simplistic and the acting was bad. It had some cool special effects, but we deride contemporary movies that only have that going for them.

[@kimesch9698]

It sounds to me like K.D.’s list should be the most influential novels, not classics. Love your list. I’ve read them all except Dr. Zhivago.

[@adolphsanchez1429]

Having just watched the original video this one is a response to, I am not going to bother finishing this, but will repost my comment from the original. It amazes that someone who loves to read would not like Shakespeare. Regardless, I have no issues with the list as it's one's personal preference. I might have to make my own list at some point, but I would always start with the Epic of Gilgamesh due to its historical importance considering all the later stories/myths that borrowed from it. I just listened to Oedipus the King for the first time since college, and I enjoyed it, but I am not very impressed with Oedipus at Colonus which is wordier with very little plot. Romeo and Juliet is okay, but not in my personal top five Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Richard III, and King Lear are my favorites). I must disagree with the inclusion of The Castle of Otranto. It might be historically important as the first true gothic novel, but for casual readers not interested in the history of gothic literature, it is not going to be a fun read. I absolutely agree with Crime and Punishment. I do not always agree with Dostoevsky's personal philosophies, but his writing has no equal. I will say your list doesn't have many female authors, so I would add Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and possibly a Toni Morrison book (Sula is a personal favorite). I might also add Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and I would also include a postmodern book by Pynchon or the collected works of Jorges Luis Borges. Also, in the interest of having a well-rounded list, I would include a comedic book such as A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole or a book by Douglas Adams, and a graphic novel such as Maus by Art Spiegelman or Watchman by Alan Moore since it appears on Time's "Greatest 100 English Novels" list.

[@severianthefool7233]

I watch Kieran’s channel sometimes. I like his sense of humor, and when he lambasts the likes of Daniel Greene and other cringy BookTubers. I do find some of his takes to be, uh, curious, lol (Most notably his blanket dislike of Shakespeare. I also find his disregard for Cormac McCarthy to be somewhat misplaced, though I can understand people who don’t love his writing style.) Nothing wrong with a difference in opinion, of course. And I wholly appreciate his commitment to calling people out on their bullshit. A little bit goes a long way, when watching his videos, though.

[@someokiedude9549]

I disagree with the Captain America choice. I can see where he's coming from, but I would say that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four is far more influential on superhero comics today than Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America.

[@frankmorlock9134]

RE: Doctor Zhivago. I read Zhivago around the time it first became available in English in the U.S. I believe I was in Germany at the time. I was only a few years out of Law School and the memory of the great Russian writers Tolstoi, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky was very fresh in my mind. Zhivago was a disappointment. Being an American, I tend to expect the hero to be heroic, to take stand, fight for what he believes in (even if he fails). Zhivago is passive--horrified by the Revolution but unable to support or oppose it. He's more of a witness than a protagonist or actor. I felt the same way about Pierre in War and Peace. But Pierre eventually decided to do something to resist Napoleon for invading Russia. Pierre decides to assassinate him. He fails, but at least he tried. Zhivago, cannot even muster the courage to break off with his mistress. When it was filmed, the screenplay by British Dramatist Robert Bolt was a big improvement over the novel, but Zhivago still comes off as a witness, though much less obviously so.

[@johncrwarner]

These lists have the problem that they depend on perceptions of the list maker of later period reflecting on the literature of an earlier period with the hindsight of the history to come. I think if you looked at literature of the twentieth century in 1922 - the list would be very different from one written a century later. I am therefore wondering if a 21 century list will be possible with any degree of viewing durability. BTW I would certainly have included “The Feynman Lectures on Physics“ both for the quality of delivery and impact on teaching of the sciences.

[@saintdonoghue]

We can all check back on the durability of our lists when we watch them again in 2060!

[@ThatReadingGuy28]

Steve of course will still be 28

[@johncrwarner]

@@ThatReadingGuy28 But I will be 98 if I am still alive.

[@johncrwarner]

@@saintdonoghue When someone else digs this stuff out of the archive to do his PhD on "BookTube" LOL

[@derekgreen7319]

I agree with superman ,I actually thought the same thing.

[@aaronfacer]

Totally agree with you about Thea Von Harbou's Metropolis, but not when it comes to Fritz Lang's film (does that make me a dude bro now? If so, it's time for me to start growing the neck-beard...)

[@trishbovell9042]

I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a Stevestream. Those pesky editors must be getting in the way again.

[@saintdonoghue]

They are indeed! Earlier today, I downright LONGED for a Stevestream - but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow, maybe -

[@derekgreen7319]

I would say if lord of rings is on here then dune should be on here ( in the context of this list and the nature of it).

[@avoidbeing]

are you taking a KZbin hiatus after this or a video hiatus? are you getting bored with making videos?

[@ThatReadingGuy28]

December means a million deadlines for the world’s most sexy influencer

[@mdavidmullins]

Rushdie is a minor author?!? _Midnight's Children_ is certainly my favorite book.

[@rishwiz9]

I know, this was too outrageous a claim. He should definitely make a top 10 in any sane reading man’s list.

[@mdavidmullins]

@@rishwiz9 We love him for his opinions! I suspect he's right more often than wrong, and Rushdie might not ultimately be top of the heap, but I think 'minor' was a bit overstated.

[@susanalfieri4487]

It's in my top 5. Some passages are so lyrical & beautiful.

[@mdavidmullins]

@@susanalfieri4487 Yeah. He can be a gorgeous writer.

[@joleaoshman8731]

Good video!!!!!!!

[@christ5783]

Fritz Lang's movies he made when he emigrated to America without von Harbou are in many ways better. I've never read any of her novels so maybe they have something in the prose to elevate them. Thea claimed like fellow Nazi propagandist Leni Riefanstahl that she was never actually a true believer but I think you can see even from her pre-Reich penned films had a fascists streak.

[@saintdonoghue]

Oh my, I am LOVING all the Fritz Lang discussions I'm getting as a result to that one comment of mine! Hah!

[@derekgreen7319]

Oh you said dune! I swear I commented about dune before you said it!

[@rishwiz9]

No Ulysses?? No Lolita??? No Gravity’s Rainbow or Slaughterhouse 5?? This is a CRIME. Please Steve,start taking your medications properly.

[@peterg1646]

Well, you went and set Standfast off.

[@bigaldoesbooktube1097]

Great video Steve. I just wanted to say I’m a little disappointed in The Mysterious Affair at Styles as a conclusion, not as a catalyst for change but from a quality standpoint. Having read this in the summer as part of a Poirot injection to my reading plans I felt it lacking in supporting characters and coherent plotting. I hope there is better to come from Christie. I have seen glimpses of what I need in The Murder on the Links so am hopeful. I would like to salute the inclusion of The Lord of the Rings (a book of quality that outstrips the influence it asserts) and The Wind in the Willows, a classic that is truly lacking in cheerleaders. 🫡