I appreciate your efforts and encourage your reading passion. I have many times myself pursued the ambitious goal of establishing the ultimate list. It is no easy task and, as you mentioned, requires an amount of scientific thought. You have mentioned bias in your blurb about the list, and this is definitely true. I see you have included the Random House list and the Radcliffe list as source lists. You may well remember when the Modern Library issued their listing of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century in 1998. This list of 100 was produced through voting from a shortlist of 400 novels (bias number 1). The constraints of the 400 “nominated” novels were that they had to be published in the 20th century and written in English (bias number 2 and 3). As you know, the Modern Library is owned by Random House so I wouldn’t be surprised that this is the list you have included here. I know for a fact that the Radcliffe list was produced in a response to the Modern Library list and they incorporated the same constraints and hence biases. The big problem occurs when we try to compare or compile from these various lists since anything not produced in English or in the 20th century would not be present in many of the lists, thus voiding our comparison.

That being said, know that there are many different lists out there that can be justifiably employed in the analysis that you have endeavored here. For instance, in generating my master reading list I have used the resources of some 12 different lists.

Happy reading.

Brian Burt

You can follow my journey at
dannaswords.blogstop.com