

Random House's 100 Best Nonfiction Books: A Lesson on Internet Polls - JeffJenkins
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html

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waterlesscloud
It is a good lesson to learn that the board largely picked the books their
professors told them to like in college.

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madair
Haha, that too.

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tewks
The link is to the nonfiction list, yet the title of the post says novels.

Here is the list of novels:
<http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html>

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electromagnetic
The 'readers' list of novels is a big a crock of shit as the non-fiction. I
might be a little pessimistic, but of the top ten:

4\. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien 5\. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by
Harper Lee 6\. 1984 by George Orwell

Are the only credible novels there. I'm sorry Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard are
not and never have been popular enough amongst the populace to hit 7 out of 10
of the top 10 spots.

Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels List
(<http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100rivallist.html>) doesn't have
Hubbard anywhere and has Rand's two most read and best respected novels. I'm a
wide reader and I can say every novel on this list has been recommended to me
by someone or has gotten itself known to me by its own merits. No one has ever
recommended me Hubbard, save for once at a garage sale when someone tried to
sell me a dozen of his books for a quarter; I opted to pay $10 picking up the
Red/Blue/Green Mars series, some Heinlein, Asimov and Clark. The woman joked
that she doubts the bookstore will take them; incidentally I've got friends
who've worked at Savers/Value Village and they can't shift the books and don't
accept them.

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tewks
I agree. The fact that Joyce only comes in at number 11 is absurd.

edit: On second look, if you exclude the top ten as extraneous, explainable
due to the internet poll effect, the remainder of the reader's list isn't that
bad.

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ebneter
Yep. Throw out the Rand and Hubbard, and the list is actually pretty good.
(Although, "The Hunt for Red October?" Really? :-) )

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balding_n_tired
How very odd. I think that I've read 16 of the Board's 100; some I think
great, e.g. Yeats's _Autobiographies_. Others, well, Fussell's _The Great War
and Modern Memory_ is a fine book, but top 100? Dangerfield is fine, but
again, top 100?

Also, are we to believe that a quorum of the board had worked its way through
_Principia Mathematica_? In such cases my own suspicion would be that somebody
said, Gee, we need a math book--anybody remember one?

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pramit
Here are some book lists:

The 100 greatest books of all time everyone must read
[http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time-
ev...](http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time-everyone-
must-read)

Top 15 Novels About Work <http://bighow.com/news/book-list-top-15-novels-
about-work>

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JeffJenkins
Besides the obvious in the reader lists, I'm extremely skeptical of Principia
Mathematica being on the board's list.

