The Modern Library: 100 Best Novels

[I'm Murrin]

This list is rather interesting, since it's the first I've seen where a selection by a board of professionals is put up alongside a public vote.
Would like to know what happened with all the L Ron Hubbard and Ayn Rand in the public vote, though. Weird.

[Avatar]

Very interesting. Was gratifying to see so much sci-fi, especially Heinlein, not to mention Illusions by Bach on the one list.

I've read or own 24 from the boards list, and 43 from the readers list.

--A

[Tulizar]

I read 11 from the Library's list and 26 from the reader's list.



I thought this was interesting:

From Wikipedia

The lists have drawn heavy criticism. Their ranking system and the arguably sexist and extremely insular selection annoyed the majority of professional scholars and critics. The board members themselves, who did not create the rankings and were unaware of it until the list was published, expressed disappointment and puzzlement [3]. There are only eight or nine women on the list, some highly influential works are ranked below works of questionable literary merit, and the works of major writers from many English-speaking countries apart from the USA and England - such as Australia, India, Canada, Sri Lanka and South Africa - have been ignored. There were also hypotheses that the Modern Library merely made a selection based on its stocklist. A. S. Byatt, the well known English novelist who was on the board, called the list "typically American."

The list was compiled simply by sending each board member a list of 440 pre-selected books from the Modern Library catalogue and asking each member to place a check beside novels they wished to choose. Then the works with the most votes were ranked the highest, and ties were broken arbitrarily by Random House publishers. This explains surprising results like the #5 placement of Brave New World, which most of the judges agreed belonged somewhere on the list, but much lower than the very top.

The list itself does not confirm the titular implication that a sincere effort was made to survey and adequately represent the immensely vast and varied body of international 20th century literature, which has seen so much innovation, so many movements and the increased awareness, in Anglo-American academia, of previously unrecognized but substantial literary traditions. While Random House claims they were merely interested in bringing what they call "the greatest" books to the attention of the public and boosting the sales of their publications, critics believe the list and rankings have little or no merit as a serious evaluation of literary achievement, despite occasional consistency with conventional academic opinions on Anglo-American literature.

I guess this explains Ayn Rand and Hubbard:

From Wikipedia

David Ebershoff, the Modern Library division's publishing director, stated in a follow-up "the people who were drawn to go to the Modern Library Web site and compelled to vote have a certain enthusiasm about books and their favourite books that many people don't, so that the voting population is skewed." [4] In other words, he believed that it was an insecure web poll, probably because of the success of Rand and Hubbard, who are each extremely controversial writers. (In addition, people were allowed to vote repeatedly, once per day, making the poll a measure of how much effort people would put into promoting their favorite books.) Others have been more extreme in their descriptions of the results; librarian Robert Teeter remarks that the ballot boxes were "stuffed by cultists." [5], as Scientology is a non-mainstream religion, and some have described Ayn Rand's following as cult-like

[Avatar]

Thanks for the extra info Tulizar...puts a different slant on it. Especially the "multiple votes"...

--A