What are Top Novels in the world according to BBC?

While browsing internet, I accidentally came across top 100 novel list of BBC. BBC did a survey a few years ago and it listed 100 most popular novels. In the first place, it was The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I think that the massive popularity of the movies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has something to do about the popularity of this novel. In the second place it is Pride and Prejudice and it is a novel that is read by millions of students who study English literature around the world. In the fifty ten places, JK Rowling has a number of them and you can easily understand why she has four books in the top 50 positions. Harry Potter is a very popular character and Harry Potter’s novels are liked by almost everyone in England.

In the list, I could find that there are some classic novels like David Copperfield of Charles Dickens, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm of George Orwell. A Christmas Carol of Charles Dickens, and Great Expectations of Dickens. I was a bit unhappy to see that there was no novel of Sherlock Holmes in the top fifty. I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes but I think that many people are not fan of detective novels. Anyway here is the webpage containing the list and check out how many of them have been read by you.

I have my own top ten list too: Ten Novels of English Literature that I enjoy a Lot

Hoping that you will like my list too. 

After Newspapers Will Novels Become the Casualty of Blogging?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion taking place in both newspapers and top blogs about the future of print newspapers. It seems that the newspaper industry is suffering a lot of financial loss and their future is at stake. Internet and blogs have made it very easy for most people to read news and get updated round the clock at free of cost. In fact, sometimes, major blogs break news earlier than newspapers or even in some cases earlier than TV channels. So, more and more people are depending on blogs as their news source. As a result, advertising revenue has decreased in the newspaper industry.

I was wondering today whether the novels would become the next big casualty. Of course, you cannot find any blog that publishes novels on a regular basis. Some hobby bloggers do that but they are not that popular. However, it is quite possible that soon, many aspiring novelists would want to do that and some of them will be successful in making a fan base. In fact, I have the same desire when I can find some more time to devote. I have good experience in blogging and I know how to get visitors or promote my work in Internet. So, if I can write a good novel then I am optimistic of having a decent amount of readership. The difficult part is the revenue part. Most people in Internet are not interested to buy any content. So, they will not be interested to buy a novel written by an unknown writer. Google Adsense and Amazon ads are good only when you have many visitors daily.

So, I do not thinks that novels will be the next casualty. However, I do think that it will eventually happen and will take time.

Ten Novels of English Literature that I enjoy a Lot

I think that I do not need to give you the definition of novel. It is now the most popular form of literature and we all like it. We all love to read novels and especially when we have nothing to do, it is indeed a very good way of passing our time and learning something new. Here, I’m going to talk about some of the novels of English literature that I have enjoyed a lot and if you have not read any of them then I would strongly recommend you read them because you will like all of them.

Gulliver’s Travels

You may be surprised to see that I have started the list with Gulliver’s Travels which is more of a satire than a novel. Well, I would like you to remind that the definition of novel is that it is a very long fictional prose work and according to this definition, Gulliver’s Travels should fall into this category very easily. I like it because it is a very strong statement and protest against colonialism and it is perhaps one of the earliest protests against colonialism in English literature. The writer is Jonathan swift and he has attacked the mentality of some English officials who wanted to colonize the people and oppress them in other part of the world.

Pride and Prejudice

It is a novel that is enjoyed by millions of people even today and I know that many of you will be delighted with this selection. Pride and Prejudice was written by Jane Austen and the main topic of this novel was love and marriage. However, it is much more than a romantic novel and it talks about the importance and role of money and wealth in marriage life. Thus, it is a realistic portrait of marriage and love and by reading it, we can see that love and marriage are not that romantic after all. Also I like the way that the author has analyzed and depicted the interaction of different characters in the novel.

Great Expectations

Any list of English novels will always be incomplete without the best novelist of all time Charles Dickens. I know that many of you are not a fan of Great Expectations but it is my most favorite novel of Charles Dickens because it portrays realistic point of view of life instead of romanticizing it too much. I particularly like the way the story develops. He was also good at characterization in this novel.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

It is perhaps my most favorite novel in English literature and it was written by George Orwell. Of course, most people are fan of Orwell’s two other novels Animal Farm and 1984 but to me, Orwell was at his best in this novel. Here, the hero is idealist and young and he declared war on money and he wanted to be a poet. Many of us have this kind of idealistic dream in our young age but just like the hero, we understand that life without money is meaningless and it brings us to the brink of disaster. Instead, we find comport in married life And even live with some decent amount of money and adore the middle class lifestyle. I like the heroine of this novel a lot. Her name is Rosemary. She is perhaps one of the most supportive female characters in entire English literature.

The Sign of Four

You may wonder that what a detective novel is doing in this kind of list. I am a very big fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite characters. I like the mystery presented in this novel and also the art of characterization by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The confidence of Sherlock Holmes here really amazed me.

The Sea-Wolf

Jack London is no doubt one of the most popular novelists is in English literature. The Sea-Wolf was a best seller right away after it was published and if you have read it then you should know the reason. If you have not read it yet then I would strongly recommend you to read it as soon as possible because if you have not read it yet then there is no doubt that you are missing something. The narrative is excellent and description of nature is also impressive. The characters are very powerful and lively and you will rarely find this kind of analysis of human characters in novel.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn enjoyed more fame than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer but I like the latter than the former. It is full of fun and excitement and there is something to learn too. We all want to be and perhaps a bit like Tom Sawyer when we were boys. He is very not very admirable but he has some human heart when we can find it with his dealings of the Negro slave and Huckleberry Finn. He is the source of all mischievous but at the same time he is also there for his loved ones.

Robin Hood

I do not know of any novel written about Robin hood but I surely like the character and that is why I have decided to include his name in this list of top ten novels. Robin Hood was the person who helped the oppressed people and fought against the tyrants. He could collect some young men with his own ideas and then motivated them to fight for liberty and justice. He was an outlaw but still if he got a lot of respect from the ordinary people. In our own age, we consider him as a symbol of liberty and democracy.

Ivanhoe

I wanted to mention A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens but then I felt that I have already included something from Dickens. That is why I’m writing about Ivanhoe of Sir Walter Scott. Robin Hood is also present in this novel and that makes it perhaps more attractive to me. Here, more than history, I like the way that Sir Walter Scott has done the art of characterization. There are several important and major characters and all of them have different qualities and characteristics. Their differences are shown in a very beautiful way to.

King Solomon's Mines

Many of us have the mind of having some adventure in life and we cannot do it because of different reasons. For this kind of people, the next best thing to do perhaps is to read this novel King Solomon's Mines by Sir H. Rider Haggard.

Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet

Elizabeth Bennet is the central character of the novel Pride and Prejudice. I don’t need to remind you that Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular English Novels of all time and it is read around the world by millions of people each year.

Elizabeth is perhaps the best character created by Jane Austen. Elizabeth Bennet comes from an ordinary background but she is a strong personality. She is smart and intelligent. She is not as pretty as her elder sister Jane Bennet but she is attractive. She was an exceptional person compared to her age. While most girls would consider getting married as the only goal of life, Elizabeth did not like to run after men.

Mr. Collins wanted to marry her but she refused because she knew that Mr. Collins was a shallow and boring man. Mr. Collins had a stable good income. She got married with Darcy in the end but before that she made it sure that she was getting married with the right man.

As a daughter Elizabeth is more close to her father than her mother. Mr. Bennet likes Elizabeth most because he thinks that she is the best of her five daughters. So, he admires her a lot and he gives a lot of importance to her ideas. So, when Mrs. Bennet insists that Elizabeth must get married with Mr. Collins then Mr. Bennet came forward and said Elizabeth from a big disaster. Mr. Bennet said that if Elizabeth gets married with Mr. Collins then he will not have good relationship with her. In fact, Elizabeth wanted this thing too. So, this way Mr. Bennet only cleverly supported Elizabeth.

As a sister Elizabeth is a very influential person. She influences all the sister. She is two year younger than the eldest sister Jane but Jane always depended on her ideas. So, whenever Jane needed to discuss something she came to Elizabeth. Of course, Lydia was not such a fan of Elizabeth because Lydia was a dancing type of person. On the other hand, Elizabeth was a serious person and that was why Lydia was not fond of her.

Elizabeth has a very bold attitude towards life. She is not a gentle girl like Jane. She is not afraid to tell what she thinks. That is why, she has conflicts with some characters in the novel. She has conflict with her mother. Her mother does not like her and does not think that she is a pretty girl. She has also conflict with Darcy because Darcy insulted her with his pride. It took a lot of time for her to forgive Darcy. This shows that Elizabeth is a tough person with a tough mentality and when he gets annoyed with someone it take a lot of time for that person to get the forgiveness from her.

The mistake about Darcy is perhaps the most important thing in the novel. At first, Darcy insulted Elizabeth by refusing to dance with her and Darcy commented that Elizabeth was not that much beautiful. This offended Elizabeth a lot and it is natural because this kind of comment would offend any girl especially in a dance party. However, this bitterness blinded Elizabeth’s eyes about Darcy and she continued this prejudice against Darcy for a long long time. This only made her own life more bitter. Darcy proposed to her for marriage and she refused. So, this matter created regret in her later that she felt that she could have become the wife of a very rich person.

Elizabeth also did a mistake about George Wickham. She hated Darcy and she thought that Darcy acted badly with Wickham. In fact, Wickaham was a clever person and she pretended to Elizabeth that Darcy has done very big injustice with Wickham. However, Elizabeth did not try to investigate more and she got bad idea about Darcy and she continued her prejudice about Darcy for more time. This mistake proved to be very costly for Elizabeth. She later found out that Wickham was a very bad person and he even made Lydia crazy and Lydia foolishly eloped with Wickham. Wickham was not that much interested to get married to Lydia and then Darcy had pre-intervened and ensured that Wickham gets married to Lydia and this way the honor of Elizabeth’s family got saved with the help of Mr. Darcy.

The character of Elizabeth changed a lot from the beginning to end of the novel. At first, Elizabeth disliked Darcy and she disliked many things. Gradually, she tried to investigate and find out the reality about Darcy. This matter shows that Elizabeth was a smart and intelligent girl. She was not that kind of person who forms an idea and sticks to it. She tried always to update her views and ideas about the world and this makes her a very attractive character to the readers.