Whenever these lists come out http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1578073,00.html and http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html - the lists are always James Joyce, Nabokov, Proust etc.
I have tried to read many ‘classic’ novels - LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov is unreadable, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut is terrible, Catch 22 is pretty good.
I always think the lists would be more eclectic and more ‘popular’. Recently I see Harry Potter joining the lists. I liked the first 3 books but would not consider them in my top 50. The 4th Potter book was bad and 5th terrible. I gave up on them at that stage.
Does anyone care to comment on why these lists always seem to favour the same ‘classics’? I do not really want to read people’s lists, but if you are so inclined- go ahead.
Here is my list in no particular order.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Timeline by Michael Crichton
The White Mountains by John Christopher
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships,by Jonathan Swift
The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes by Scott Frost
Well, Lolita is not unreadable and Slaughterhouse-5 is not terrible and Catch-22 is way more than pretty good. (I’ve read each of them more than once.)
OTOH you have some crap books on your list, and some others that are basic entertainment that could equally well be replaced by 10,000 other basic entertainments. How could anybody seriously mistake those for best or greatest or any other superlative?
Isn’t the definition of a best list those books which are not generic and interchangeable but those which are unique and irreplaceable? Narrowing those down to ten is individual and a silly exercise at best, and one I try to avoid whenever possible, but the point of the exercise is to refrain from saying, “I like these books a lot so they must be the best”.
Well, Dirk Gently isn’t even the best Adams wrote, so I don’t see how it is better than everyone else’s?
Ender’s Game is a mighty fine read. But I certainly don’t know that it is the best of its genre.
I think the Time list looked pretty good. I’ve read the top 7 - most of the multiple times. I think that an entrant on a top 10 list such as this ought to be justified not only on its individual merit - its readability, but also for the effect it had on writing within the context of the time it was written, as well as the lasting impact it has had since.
I often feel that many a great book - especially Joyce and Proust - are far more widely discussed than actually read, understood, and enjoyed. (Not to say no on can read them for enjoyment…)
You had to know when you posted the OP that it wasn’t going to go over well, right?
Anyway,
Because many many people read a lot of books and think about books a lot and a lot of them think that people like Nabokov and Joyce and Proust were good at writing books. Did you want a different answer than that?
The first reply reminds me of my suspicion that critics and writers will be pretentious and say Proust, James Joyce and Nabokov. Just like critics list of best movies is always Citizen Kane, Birth of a Nation, Third man etc. When the general public is asked the lists are headed by more current - more popular movies like the Dark Knight , Star Wars and ET.
I dunno about my full list, but I do know that The Count of Monte Cristo would be on it. A list without it is, in my opinion, flawed: I’ve heard it described as the best adventure novel ever written, and I believe it.
Went through the Modern Library lists.
Now I’m not a big Faulkner fan - to I realize he has a monster rep.
So I was skeptical when I saw he had 3 titles on the Board’s top 100.
But then I saw him listed 4 times by the readers!
Seriously, how many people do you think have read (and appreciated) 4 books by Faulkner.
No, I don’t want folks to pop in and say “I have!”
Of your circle of acquaintances and your understanding of peoples’ reading practices, how many folk do you think read and enjoy that much Faulkner?
Here is an interesting list made by the BBC. No mention of Proust, Nabokov or Faulkner. There are still quite a few classic books there. The list is http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
Hmm. I’ve read all but two on the first linked list, and all but a different two of the top ten of the second list, and I don’t think that more than a couple from the combined lists would make it to my personal top ten. So these lists usually go.
In order to be on some top 100 list or count as “great” a book has to be more than a mildly entertaining read you can pass the time on an airplane with. It should be something that changed literature, that did something no one else did or really could do. Many of the books on your list are pretty entertaining, and if the idea was to come up with a list of the top ten books that have entertained blinkingblinking, well that’s probably a definitive list right there. But except for Austen and Swift, none of those books do anything that hasn’t been done by a lot of other people.
Because you started it to call the “greats” unreadable and terrible, and those who call them great pretentious. And you treated everybody else’s opinion as subjective and wrong, and yours was presented as objective and correct. Then you asked whether anyone could think of a reason why the same books always showed up on such lists, given that they are so terrible.
And you were wrong. Lolita is not, in fact, unreadable. You can tell it isn’t unreadable because so many people have read it and claim to have enjoyed it, which why would they do that? (I know, because they’re pretentious).
Your BBC list is a list of the most popular novels. If by “great” you mean popular, that’s fine, but it generally isn’t what people mean when they do “greatest of” lists, and it certainly isn’t a commentary on the other two lists. So what’s your point, exactly? That Proust isn’t as popular as Rowling?
I thought it was obvious that I was just listing my favourite 10 books. That was part of my point.
Same with films- I acknowledge that Citizen Kane is one of the 10 most important films of all time but it is not in my top 10 films even though I like it.
I am not sure what you were reading but it was not anything I posted. I did not call the ‘greats’ unreadable and terrible. I said in my opinion ‘Lolita’ is unreadable and ‘Slaughterhouse-5’ terrible. They are what is called ‘examples’. I did say I suspected many critics of being pretentious in listing their ‘best’ books.
I’m no fan of SH5 - or much else of Vonnegut, but I’m sure my wife would insist it be on a top-10.
Similarly, I simply cannot understand why so many folk love and rave about Confederacy of Dunces.
Personal taste is a curious thing. But good reason why any purported “top” list ought to be based on something more…
Wow, Harry Potter is making greatest books lists now? I acknowledge that it was important in getting a generation of kids to read and occupying millions of adult dorks, but it is not a “great” book. I’ve read it. It’s not well written and not even particularly entertaining in my opinion. It’s not bad, but it’s airplane fodder.
I could never make a top 10 book list because I just read too damn much and my favorite book is usually the last exceptionally good book I read, but Catch-22 has stuck with me as outstanding even among outstanding books, and so has The Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (this one is actually borderline; wish I would’ve read it when I was younger) and a few others that are escaping me at the moment.
Birth of a Nation is important but not great IMO. Citizen Kane is my favorite movie, and I’m not a movie critic. I think a lot of people don’t like it because they’ve heard so much bullshit about what a technical acheivment it was and they’re staring at the screen looking for tricky camera movements and stuff, or they’re too busy trying to figure out what Rosebud is (neither of which could possibly matter less; nothing in the movie is technically impressive or relevant today, and what Rosebud is is quite deliberately irrelevant.) It’s a great story, damnit.
It’s not surprising that the lists are made by people with generally similar tastes, that’s probably most of it. There’s probably also some confirmation bias in that nobody wants to look like the idiot who doesn’t understand/appreciate a widely-acclaimed master. Still, it’s a mistake to imply that’s the only reason these books are repeatedly listed as great.
Just to make for an even comparison, by the way, the Modern Library list is only the 100 best english language novels of the 20th century, not the best works of literature ever, like the Time list is. Much as I like Hamlet, I wouldn’t put it on a list of “great books.”
By the same token, you’re mixing fiction and nonfiction and I probably wouldn’t do that either. My top ten fiction list looks like this:
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
Lolita (Nabokov)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (Chabon)
Midnight’s Children (Rushdie)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Darkness at Noon (Koestler)
The Maltese Falcon (Hammett)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Catch-22 (Heller)
If I were listing my favorite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would be high on the chart. It’s a very funny series of episodic diversions and jokes, but that isn’t the same thing as great writing. It’s very enjoyable and I’m more likely to re-read that than some of the books I’ve listed here (although I have re-read some of them).
My list has a lot in common with the ML list. I’ve read more than a third of the books on that list and found a lot of great literature that way. Although some of their other choices, I’ve really hated.
It’s actually possible to read and enjoy this kind of stuff because it suits your taste, not because you’re trying to impress somebody. There’s some remarkable writing in these books whether you find them “unreadable” or “pretentious” or not.
