I have just uploaded the latest statisticsfor my website. I am not sure of the significance of any of it. Spain has overtaken Ireland into sixth place, as it should. There are also a few new entries. I really have nothing much else to say about them, except, of course, that I have read too few books by women authors but I am well aware of that. I enjoy browsing the stats of other bloggers so you may enjoy browsing mine.
TMN, I was perusing your lists of English and Irish writers and am surprised that you do not seem to have read anything by J. G. Farrell. Because you list Gravity’s Rainbow and The Recognitions among your top 20th century novels, I think you would like Farrell’s Troubles and The Singapore Grip.
I have a list of around 1000 (one thousand) writers whom I ought to have read but either have not yet read or read well before I started doing this site. Farrell is on this list. Will I get round to him sometime? I hope so but then I hope to get round to many of the other 1000. I would consider him English, rather than Irish, the same way Wayne Rooney is considered English (sorry for the horrible comparison), a man of Irish extraction, born in Liverpool.
TMN, I am grateful to you for this blog and The Modern Novel website. You have introduced me to many writers I had never heard of. Whenever I happen on a novel I think I might like, no matter how obscure, I have taken to checking your website to see what your thoughts on it were. I recommended J. G. Farrell to you because there is a great deal of overlap in our top novels lists, and Farrell’s Troubles is definitely on mine.
I appreciate your comments and I am certain that I will enjoy Farrell. Your comments remind me that I should push him further up the list, not least since he won the Lost Booker.