Good Fiction Guide, Ed. Jane Rogers 2nd ed.
Oxford University Press, 2005.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3)
George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2)
Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1896)
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906)
D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913)
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Henry Green’s Party Going (1939)
Martin Amis’ Money (1984)
Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984)
Iain Sinclair’s Downriver (1991)

Okay, you already know that I’m a bit obsessed with this book of booklists, so you wont be surprised to see another selection from it (the additional titles in the section Valentine Cunningham has edited are also intriguing, so this is really just a teaser).

But isn’t it interesting? I mean, sure, Bleak House and The Jungle…they’re obviously books that take this subject into consideration. But don’t some of the others surprise you at first glance? And, then, you think about it for a few seconds (if you’ve read them, obviously it’s a really short thought if you haven’t) and suddenly you understand why they’re included in such company.

Any on here strike your fancy? Anything that you can say that would make me want to read a book by Martin Amis?