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About the Editor
J. Peder Zane is writer and editor who has worked at The New York Times and The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. His work has won several national awards including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He is a former member of the Board of the National Book Critics Circle. He has contributed to and edited two books published by W.W. Norton, "The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books" (2007) and "Remarkable Reads: Writers and Their Adventures in Reading" (2004). His new book, written with Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, is titled "Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology and Social Organization" (Doubleday). Peder teaches Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh. He is a graduate of the Collegiate School, Wesleyan University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Read his blog here.
New List
Claire Messud
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813).
2. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913–27).
3. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881).
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857).
5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877).
6. The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872).
7. Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (1923).
8. A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (1961).
9. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard (1983).
10. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988).
Classic List
Arthur Phillips
1. The stories of Franz Kafka (1883–1924).
2. Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec (1978). See below).
3. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924).
4. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962).
5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1600).
6. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913–27).
7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869).
8. The stories of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).
9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844).
10. The Odyssey by Homer (ninth century b.c.e.?).