> Ulysses by Joyce => 264,258 words (16 hours 1 minute) with a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)

Don't want to know what difficult is

I find this other list more deserving of this title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokklubben_World_Library

If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.

What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?"

Makes more sense like that.

The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close.

I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.

More clean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde%27s_100_Books_of_the_...

Why are some numbers skipped? E.g., 58 [59 60] 61 [62] 63 64 65 66 67 68 [69] 70

What would be interesting is to cross reference this list with an Anglophone one and pull out the writers that are big in France but almost unknown amongst the public in America. Céline is definitely one such example, I think.

The sad thing is how many aren't available.

I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.

This should have an 1999 in the title even if the site and ebooks published are newer

I'm happy to see so many philosophy or philosophy-adjacent books on that list. And I also wonder why that is.

I don't think I would place all of them in any 'top' list, but all the books I have read, ~60%, are great read. Weird list though.

pretty french heavy that list.

Infinite Jest?