Disparate Groups 47 Picks In Sync

In middle age, women and men often grapple with the big questions of life: What does it all mean? What am I supposed to be doing on this Earth? Moods range from despair at the thought of aging to elation at the joy of living into old age.

Carol Kennicott, torn between helping society and helping herself, wondered one day: “Is all life, always, an unresolved ‘But’?”

Another woman, named Celie, looked in the mirror one day and realized: “My body just any woman’s body going through the changes of age. Nothing special here for nobody to love. Nothing young and fresh. My heart must be young and fresh though, it feels like it blooming blood.”

You won’t meet Carol or Celie anywhere in person. They live in novels. Carol resides in “Main Street” by Sinclair Lewis. Celie lives forever in “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker.

Both books recently made their way onto lists identifying the top 100 English-language novels of the century. Two different groups came out with two separate lists. The groups selecting the best novels had little in common.

A group chosen by The Modern Library’s editorial board compiled the first list. They were mostly white, male scholars and historians. The second list was compiled by mostly younger women, future book and magazine editors in a Radcliffe College publishing course.

The lists were published in the spirit of fun and literacy. And for passionate readers, the selections were delicious to devour. How many avid readers perused both lists with pen in hand, marking off the titles they’d read? How many refrigerators and bulletin boards are now decorated with the lists, reminders that great books wait patiently for us?

One surprise came in the fact that the two lists shared 47 picks in common, including “Main Street.” Both groups, different in age, interests and philosophy, agreed that “1984” and “Brave New World” offer insight into futures where humans count no more. And they agreed that “Catcher in the Rye” allows a painful immersion into an adolescent’s mind.

The lists, published in the summer, also kindled fond memories of summer reading programs sponsored by libraries. Memories of those warm, sunlit days when you could load up on books, sit under a tree and lose yourself in the written word. Luckily, the programs still thrive, introducing young people to the gift of reading.

So save those greatest-novels lists. Send them to others. Use them as a reminder to catch up on the classics you missed. The worlds of Carol and Celie await you.