The Shakespearean Remembrance Of Things Past still sounds far better to the ears. In Search Of Lost Time sounds like H.G. Wells or a Fabio-adorned romance novel.
Except that In Search of Lost Time is a more accurate translation of the French title. I know there are varying opinions on how accurate a translation should be, but Remembrance of Things Past seems semantically very dissimilar in this instance.
But look at Proust's original, which quotes Shakespeare's sonnet. Translating his French translation back into some bastardized English version shows us the perils of translation, even those that try to be "faithful."
I got 17 and from those I missed I only knew one more. I enjoyed the inclusion of non-English authors (language, not nationality) and especially the presence of Bulgakov. His book is a masterpiece (no pun intended).
While we're talking about translations, faithful or otherwise, the first published translation of M&M in English turned "dentist" into "Dante scholar." You definitely don't want one of those pulling your teeth.
Interesting list. The Magic Mountain is a meisterstuck; I need to read more Mann; someday when I retire, I hope to do more reading than I currently do.
Same I have hardly read any of the classics (I read though, just not famous books, I think animal farm is the only one I can think of ow and the clockwork orange but no pride and prejudice etc) but I knew 12 though missed a couple. I ve read sophie's choice and I believe unbearable lightness of being (the translation).
I think it's named that because Candide is supposed to represent a philosophy called "Optimism," advanced by Leibniz (the same one who co-invented Calculus). From what I can tell, the philosophy was popular for part of the 1700s, until Voltaire absolutely ROASTED it in "Candide."
You should tell that to pre-20th century people. There are 6 women on the list. If you want half of the list to be female, that would be an overrepresenation compared to how many women were allowed to produce great literature so far.
To quote Virginia Woolf, who is part of this list: "[G]enius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. [...] How then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power and custom"? (A Room of One's Own, Chapter 3)
I didn't think I was especially literary (I've only read like a third of these), but I found this quiz really easy. Apparently I've been paying more attention than most, even though I haven't actually been reading that much!
Got 21 and I have only read one of these books ( Vanity Fair ) and seen movies of about five or six . You don't have to have read a book to have heard of it.