Top 31 favourite movies

Similarly to the top 100 book list, entries in no particular order except for the top 6 being a separate group.

I should point out that this (even more so than the books list) is a list of my favourite movies – not necessarily the best ones according to any sort of objective literary or artistic criteria. Thus, the list is rather a jumble of lowbrow and high…well, upper middlebrow titles, and no doubt includes a few fond memories that would not stand up to the test if I were to rewatch them today.

Leonard Cohen 80 years

So, in honour of Leonard Cohen’s 80th birthday, here’s one of his less well-known but still very…er….listenable (is that a word?) songs:

Top 100 Books (fiction)

A highly personal and subjective list of my favourite novels and plays, in no particular order beyond the top 10 being a separate grouping.

As the astute reader will quickly realize, the list is a very long way from containing 100 titles at the moment – it’s very much a work in progress, with new titles being added whenever I read (or remember) books that are worthy of inclusion.

Short stories (or collections of short stories) are not included, although novellas are, and occasionally a whole series of several books as a single entry.

Titles marked with a star* are those that are included on the list not entirely on their own merits, but somewhat more as ‘placeholders’ representing an author who deserves inclusion on the strength of their collected work.

Brand, Henrik Ibsen
Fortuna, Alexander Kielland
Sult (Hunger), Knut Hamsun
Richard II, William Shakespeare
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin
Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), Erich Maria Remarque

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It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw
Dyadya Vanya (Uncle Vanya), Anton Chekhov
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
Travesties*, Tom Stoppard
The Invention of Love*, Tom Stoppard
Leave it to Psmith*, P.G. Wodehouse
A Song of Ice and Fire (series), George R.R. Martin
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
The Sarantine Mosaic* (series), Guy Gavriel Kay
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Myortvyjye dushi (Dead Souls), Nikolai Gogol
Kleiner Mann, Was Nun? (What Now, Little Man?), Hans Fallada
Válka s mloky (War With the Salamanders), Karel Capek
Bondestudentar* (Farmer-students), Arne Garborg
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
Vildanden (The Wild Duck), Henrik Ibsen
Kongs-Emnerne (The Pretenders), Henrik Ibsen
Englandsfarere (A Boat for England), Sigurd Evensmo
The Fountains of Paradise*, Arthur C. Clarke
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
Zapiski iz podpol’ya (Notes from Underground), Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat, Steven Lukes
The Crucible, Arthur Miller
The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill
Ansichten eines Clowns (Opinions of a Clown), Heinrich Böll
Dokument rörande spelaren Rubashov (Documents concerning the gambler Rubashov), Carl Johan Vallgren
Antigone, Jean Anouilh
Hogfather*, Terry Pratchett