What's Missing from the Guardian's List of Books For Boys? Plenty!
The Guardian’s list of “160 Books All Boys Should Read” proved very disappointing to me. In fact, I consider it an absolutely terrible list, a compelling example of just how far afield we have traveled from the high standards of literature society once held.
There were just 7 books of the entire 160 that I had read. No, make that only 6, because my version of Kidnapped was, alas, not the “graphic novel in full colour” edition that the Guardian suggested.
But what was most significant was what the list left out. Here are just a few of the most serious omissions. There was, for instance, no Sir Walter Scott title that made the list. That’s right. None. And no Conan Doyle or Jack London either. No G.A. Henty. No James Fenimore Cooper, John Buchan, Jules Verne, or Edgar Allan Poe.
But that’s not all.
Watership Down didn't make the list, nor did Kon-Tiki, Raffles, Endurance, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Johnny Tremain, Robin Hood, Sink the Bismarck, The Iliad, or any of the Hardy Boys or Tom Swift mysteries. Even the Bible was absent!
James Barrie was missing from the list. So too were James Herriot, O. Henry, Herman Melville, Rafael Sabatini, and the Brothers Grimm.
And, it’s hard to believe, but their vapid, political-incorrect list of 160 books didn’t consider even Charles Dickens or Alexander Dumas!
Jonathan Swift wasn't there. H.G. Wells wasn't there. G.K. Chesterton, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Washington Irving were not there. A.E. W. Mason or H.E. Bates were not there. And even taller literary giants were inexplicably left cooling their heels in the Guardian's outer office — C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, Victor Hugo, Kenneth Grahame, C. S. Forester, and Horatio Alger.
Of course, you can guess by now that such sparkling historians as Winston Churchill, Samuel Eliot Morison, Walter Lord, Shelby Foote, and John Toland were not in the list. That’s a genuine crime. But there was also no Tarka the Otter; no Song of Roland; no Don Quixote; no Lorna Doone; no Neverending Story; no Prisoner of Zenda; and no Ben-Hur.
You've got to be kidding!
Realizing what literary standards have been so shamefully omitted from the list of “160 Books That All Boys Should Read” was very disconcerting.
So, I hope that this humble post (with its mention of so many wrongfully neglected works and authors) will be a reminder to others (like parents!) of what classic literature was once considered to be. And I urge Book Den visitors to remember what immense treasures are still there for boys (of all ages) to discover.
