Tripods, Tripods!
I think I was reading the part where you said something to the effect of Lolita is unreadable and Slaughterhouse 5 is terrible, each of which was picked by you from a list of what people called the “greats” for reasons you just couldn’t figure out. Maybe I’m remembering wrong or something.
…oh. So this is a thread where you’re trying to figure out why people disagree with your opinion?
Jeez, cut him some slack, he obviously didn’t expect people to pick his every word apart and he doesn’t want to fight about it.
You got it.
I notice that his 10 greatest books are all fiction, too.
Depending on what is meant by “greatest,” it doesn’t surprise me at all that the books (or novels, if you want to focus on novels) that are considered the greatest are not necessarily the most popular. A truly great book may well be over the heads of most readers, and be capable of being fully appreciated only by a relative few. But, at least one valid way of defining greatness is to say that the greatest books are those that have the most to offer those who are able to appreciate them.
For example, I’ve read Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, or at least tried to. I didn’t get out of it nearly as much as I would have if I were a better reader of that sort of literature or if I were willing to put more time and effort into understanding it. I can see how it may well have taken genius to write, and I have at least some idea why the people who do “get” it find it so impressive.
Oh right… Dale Cooper is a character on Twin Peaks. :smack:
My guess is that you are misunderstanding what these top-100 type of lists actually represent. They do not try to list the “most enjoyable” books. The committees of judges that vote on these “greatest books” lists are voracious readers that have read thousands of books each. For example, one of the judges on the Modern Library list is Daniel J Boorstin. That guy used to work at the US Library of Congress.
These demanding readers want books with complexity, symbolism, allegory, multiple-interpretations, clever allusions, etc. While all of today’s best-selling authors (Stephen King, Clancy, Grisham, Crichton, Rowling, etc) do incorporate these literary techniques into their own works, they do not approach the unique combination of these qualities that Shakespeare and Tolstoy have achieved.
One of your lists has three Ayn Rand and three L. Ron Hubbard books in the top ten. Seriously?
Would you mind not replying to any of my threads ever again? Thanks.
There are 2 separate lists on the Modern Library page – “Board’s List” and “Reader’s List.” The L Ron Hubbard books are on the “Reader’s List” aka the “unwashed masses’ list.”
Because the compilers of these lists feel those books belong on their lists.
I always wonder how many of these 100 Best Books will still be regarded by anyone in a century. The History of Emily Montague and the entire corpus of William Congreve’s celebrated works are already vanished even from the most priggish compilations. The failed Joycean experiments seem to have the most to lose from this process, with Faulkner’s stylized kudzu next on the list. Not to say I didn’t enjoy what of their work I’ve read, just that linguistic drift will not be kind to the onionskin puns and the phonetic jumping-jacks.
It was not the least bit obvious. You put on the title The 10 Greatest Books of All Time. Then you said here’s my list. You never gave even a hint that the list was anything other than your list of the 10 greatest books. Mind reading is not part of our talents.
I just want to throw in that I think Slaughterhouse Five is one of the greatest books of all time. Pretty damn close to the greatest.
And THAT’S the problem with these things. They are so absolutely subjective and based on pure personal taste that they are almost completely useless. Unless you are planning a trip to the library and you want to try and check out something decent. Otherwise useless.
IMHO, FWIW, if you held a gun to my head:
The Bible
The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Aztec by Gary Jennings
Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
The Civil War by Shelby Foote
And “Hamlet” wasn’t really a book, and in its usually presented form is not actually entirely representative of what Shakespeare wrote.
Timeline?!?!?! Like the Timeline? We’re not talking about some other secret Tmeline that doesn’t suck, are we?
Timeline is the worst book ever written. You discover time travel, and the first thing that pops in your head is “Let’s start a theme park!”? Dude, Crichton, come up with a new plot. It doesn’t even make a little sense this time around. And that is not even getting into the fact that the “technology” has “flaws” that make no sense and would only exist in a world written by someone looking for cheap ways to rachet up the drama. Add to that the completely cardboard characters. And the fact that ever female acts like…well like a character written by a guy who evidently has trouble with women. And then you have the most mind-blowing waste of time ever. The only thing worse than Timeline the book is Timeline the movie.
I just don’t care if a book is considered “great” or not because of its “mastery of symbolism”. If it is not enjoyable to read, it is worthless. This is not to say that I don’t like the classics or that books without non-stop action can’t be enjoyable (I like Crime and Punishment and some books written primary to express philosophical themes, for example). But James Joyce can go in the bin with the Wal-Mart Romance novels for all I care (if you genuinely enjoy it, of course, then that’s fine with me).
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: I don’t think there is any meaning to “10 Greatest Books of All Time”. I could come up with 10 books that I like the most, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily the absolute greatest works ever to be put to paper, just that I happen to like them the most.
It’s perfectly reasonable to define “the best of all time” as “the most entertaining for me”.
Classics like “The Iliad” appear on lists of the best books of all time, which astounds me. Does anyone enjoy reading stuff like that?
The way I’d define the best of all time is “I enjoy them the most, and it would be hard to find a better example of it even within it’s own genre.” I like Atlas Shrugged (except the part everyone hates). I think Ender’s Game broke ground it isn’t recognized enough for. Huckleberry Finn is outrageously entertaining and timeless.
I don’t really have the motivation to make a list of 10, but I can’t think of many classics I actually enjoy reading. Books that people include in lists of “literature” that they insist are a separate category from “fiction” are almost universally unreadable to me.