Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx
The outcome of the poll is quite meaningless by itself, because there is no indication as to how many of the books were read by the voting population...
...For me this Best Book exercise has proved most fruitful in drawing out the books of each decade that I have now followed up on (and which I might never have come across otherwise).  |
I think issues along the lines of the first point are difficult to avoid as it is unlikely that many (if any?) have read all the books and that will be especially so in the next decades, for example, when the likes of Proust and Joyce appear, they being landmark books in the history of literature and of undoubted quality, but read by few (comparatively speaking). I assumed that the outcomes would be weighted towards what voters enjoyed most or were more popular reads from among the nominations (the quality of none I dispute). I don't regard that as a bad thing.
Likewise for me regarding your last point, the nominations have pointed out books in each decade that I have not read, or thought about, but worth looking at. I have ploughed through and enjoyed the quite long
Buddenbrooks from this decade, for example.
I had planned on trying Vance Packard's
The Passage as I enjoy Australian books along its lines (as I have mentioned before
) but as I cannot find an eBook and our local library not having a pBook, together with its nominator seeming to have given up expanding on her nominations
I feel abandoned on that one (by the way, it is out of copyright on our side of the Tasman so I could even build an eBook if I had the needed text
).