Greatest Books algorithm

I came across this list of books https://www.librarything.com/bookaward/Greatest+Books+algorithm (This list is generated from 128 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others. I generally trust "best of all time" lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists.). Its not complete and I have been working on it by adding to CK, the list goes into the 500's.

I thought it would make good reading in this group because I noticed that in the top 100 there are so few modern works in fact I don't think any from the 21st century. I think The Handmaid's Tale is the latest one. I would be interested to know how many books have our members in their catalogue.

I have only 16, mainly because I have read/owned few classics and none of the non English ones

That is a good list. I’d have to count up how many I’ve read, as the check marks aren’t accurate for me. They aren’t showing books I know are on my shelves, and won’t show books I read decades ago, and never added to my LT catalog.

One thing, would you change the listing for Little Women to the original, rather than an adaptation?

I have read 69 of the first 100 titles, though I gave up cataloguing books on here years ago when i decided that my life was too loaded up with left-brain activities.

There are maybe five more books on the list that I am interested in reading.

Does the algorithm weight titles by how much people liked them?

Like everybody else my age with an advanced degree in literature, I read and enjoyed my share of Dead White Male Europeans. But when i see Proust and Joyce at the top of any list, my sense is that people are just showing off. I found both of them tiresome and, in Joyce's case, just about unreadable.

So I think it would be interesting to see the list of top books in people's libraries vs. the list of books people actually like.

>2 2wonderY: Done

What an eclectic list. I've counted 83 that I remember reading, some of which go back to middle school days.

I'm not sure that each of the Harry Potter books deserve to be listed separately, or at all for that matter.

I’ve counted about 50 of the 208 on the list that I’ve read. Why is the numbering so weird on the right side?

I’ve read 53 of this list and own others that are not yet read.

Certainly a good list! I've read 89 of the first 100, and therefore they are catalogued. However, I have discovered that at least in 3 cases, where I have tagged a book "read but unowned" LT isn't picking up on the read portion.

I've got at least 86 from the complete list. But there are vagaries to be encountered in counting, Must one have read every last one of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson? What if I've read Dante's Inferno but not the Purgatorio or Paradiso? And other similar maybes. I tried to count half of the maybes in my favor and half not.

Like many, if not most, of commenters, I've read a lot more (90+) and no longer own a lot more on the list than I've entered into my LT's personal library.

Like someone posted. . .I find plenty of the titles on the list not to be the "best" books IMO. Perhaps "the most well known and I feel like I've read them" selections, or "saw the movie and that's the same thing, isn't it?" responses. Vanity Fair, to my way of thinking, belongs WAY higher on the list; Ship of Fools by Katherie Anne Porter should displace any book below #10. The Name of the Rose and Baudolino are far better books than Little Women. If the latter is so good, Anne of Green Gables is that good, too.

How the original lists determined what qualifications for "best" is beyond me. Most copies sold? Most often 'taught'? Most often attempted but never finished because. . .? I freely confess that there are plenty of titles that I'd put in that last category, starting with Don Quixote!

After all my whining, I'm surprised that I actually read so many on the list and thought so many of those were damn good.

>10 Limelite: Yeah, we've all got our opinions about certain "classics" and often fudge what we've actually read cover-to-cover. Hence my question about whether the algorithm weighted books based on the ratings they got. Even then, though, some people are hinky about not rating the literary "sacred cows" highly enough.

I read Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy" years ago. Tangentially, one of his points was that there is a "pool" of literature that every generation adds to. And every generation takes out of the pool what it needs. I liked that idea because it puts literature in the service of readers and not in the hands of the academy.

Instead of handing down the canon and the received opinions to defend it, give students the critical tools to analyze what they are assigned and let them decide what to make of it.

Lists are only important as a reflection of the people who read them.

>11 nohrt4me2: Well said. And I am unanimous in that.

To the many many people who complain that James Joyce is just incomprehensible...

First, pretend Finnegans Wake doesn't exist.

Then get a copy of Dubliners, his wonderful collection of short stories which are written in a conventional style. If you don't love Dubliners, stop there.

If you do like it, proceed to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but be aware that the first chapter or so is seen through the eyes of a baby/toddler, and then it normalizes.

If you like Portrait, you can do Ulysses but you have to be willing to let it wash over you -- you don't have to understand absolutely everything you encounter. It's inconsistent and irregular, like life. But it will help a lot that you already encountered these people and their world in Dubliners and Portrait.

Now, keep pretending Finnegans Wake doesn't exist, unless you're a Ph.D. candidate in English.

Moral: Don't start at the wrong end of the Joyce canon just because it's more famous.

>11 nohrt4me2: Amen to giving the students the tools to analyze! (history prof here)

I must admit that this list is more to my liking than the 1001 BTRBYD list--of which I read about 120, of which 75% were horrible--IMHO.

>13 Crypto-Willobie: Boy, I couldn’t agree with you more about Joyce and how to approach him. You’ve described exactly how I read him and now he’s contending for the top spot on my favorites list.

re: the greatest books list - I’ve read 106 of the 208 on the list. It’s not a bad list, but it’s pretty much limited to the European and American classics. How about great African literature? Arabic? Chinese? There’s so much that the algorithm ignores!

>15 TempleCat: Very good point. Perhaps it is related to the demographics of LT membership?

>13 Crypto-Willobie: This is good advice about Joyce. I don't care for him much at any level, but certainly some of his work is more accessible than others. I think that's also true of Herman Melville and Faulkner.

>16 vwinsloe: Yes, that was my assumption, that the list was culled from LT members so probably heavily weighted in favor of European works, and especially English translations.

>16 vwinsloe: Aaah, yes, that’s probably why the skew. Guess we’ll have to wait for another algorithm to be developed to see the greatest of the rest of the world (and expand LT’s user base!)

An interesting idea.

https://bookriot.com/decolonizing-your-bookshelf/

https://bookriot.com/100-must-read-classics-by-people-of-color/

>19 vwinsloe: Thanks! I enjoyed the 100 must-reads (though I resist being told I "must" do anything ...). Lady Murasaki's diary is one of my favorite books.

I was also blown away by the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and kept wondering why we didn't read this in school or even hear about Douglass.

I think Black Like Me and The Pearl were on the extra credit book list. I liked both of them, but they are accounts of non-white experiences as told by white people. And that's as diverse as it got in our public school from 1966 to 1972.

Reconsidered a flippant pun.