Nominate MobileRead's 10 best fiction books of the 20th Century

[Greg Anos]

Paul,

This is a tremendous consolidated list. It would make a the equivalent of the Harvard 6 feet of knowledge, only for 20th century fiction...

Great work all the way around....

[Dazrin]

My biggest problem is that I have read so few of them. Going to make it very hard to vote.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Me too. Throw some more into the potential read list. I'll probably wait to see the voting results to decide on which ones to look at first.

[pdurrant]

I'm tempted to suggest a voting rule: Do not vote for a book unless you have at least read the free preview available at your favourite ebook reseller. (Just to make sure you don't hate it, after all.)

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

My biggest problem is that I have read so few of them. Going to make it very hard to vote.

Or very easy!

I'm tempted to suggest a voting rule: Do not vote for a book unless you have at least read the free preview available at your favourite ebook reseller. (Just to make sure you don't hate it, after all.)

I would think that you would have had to read the whole book in order to vote for it. That was why it would be more useful to know how many of the nominees a voter had read rather than gender, education, etc.

[mandy314]

Thank you for starting this - and now doing all the lists etc!

My contribution? Found a couple of double entries:
- Lucky Jim (listed in 40s and 50s, book was published in 1954)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (90s twice listed and that was a close one)

Waiting with great expectations for the voting/discussion. Should be the noble thing to do: do vote only for books you have read.
Will it be "vote for the best" or "vote for the three best (1-2-3)"?

Originally Posted by treadlightly

it would be (...) useful to know how many of the nominees a voter had read

+1 - should be obligatory in the voting thread(s): "I have read x of the y nominated books for the decade"

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The best books of the 21st century thread made me think that a MobileRead list of the ten best books of the 20th century would be fun.

To avoid, as much as possible, recentness bias, let's go for the best book of each decade of the 20th century. That is books first published:

1901-1910, 1911-1920, 1921-1930, 1931-1940, 1941-1950, 1951-1960, 1961-1970, 1971-1980, 1981-1990, 1991-2000

So this is the nomination thread. Please post your nominations for the best book of each decade of the 20th century. If you don't have a nomination for a particular decade that's fine. Please identify the decade for every nomination. No more than one nomination per decade per person.

Please only nominate books that you have actually read: don't nominate based on reviews, TV programmes or films.

- snip -

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm tempted to suggest a voting rule: Do not vote for a book unless you have at least read the free preview available at your favourite ebook reseller. (Just to make sure you don't hate it, after all.)

Originally Posted by treadlightly

Or very easy!

I would think that you would have had to read the whole book in order to vote for it. That was why it would be more useful to know how many of the nominees a voter had read rather than gender, education, etc.

I would agree with Treadlightly. To actually vote for a book one should have read it. Casting votes should in my opinion be at least as restrictive as nominations. His last sentence is a great idea BTW.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by mandy314

Thank you for starting this - and now doing all the lists etc!

My contribution? Found a couple of double entries:
- Lucky Jim (listed in 40s and 50s, book was published in 1954)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (90s twice listed and that was a close one)

Waiting with great expectations for the voting/discussion. Should be the noble thing to do: do vote only for books you have read.
Will it be "vote for the best" or "vote for the three best (1-2-3)"?


+1 - should be obligatory in the voting thread(s): "I have read x of the y nominated books for the decade"

I disagree about the mandatory reading. For one, you can't police it and this is all in good fun. For two, I might want to vote for an expected good book in a genre. Let's say I haven't read a cozy entry, but that's my favorite genre. Why couldn't I vote just on that expectation?

I mean, sure, it would be nice if we all read what we voted for, but sometimes we might want to vote AGAINST a book we have read and that might mean picking something else for that timeframe that we haven't read. For example, I'd pick just about anything other than Wuthering Heights (I don't think it's in the list anyway, but just for the example).

[HomeInMyShoes]

A couple of corrections:

Kokoro should be in 1911-1920 and not 1901-1910
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is appearing twice in 1971-1980

[HomeInMyShoes]

I think it's completely stupid to vote for a book you haven't read. But that's me. My votes will have to fall into these ones for which I have read. For those scoring at home, I'm a white, male, mid 40s. I have a bachelor in science in Computer Science. I'm also an architecture undergrad dropout, a geography masters dropout. I read a lot of fiction in the contemporary and literary area, but quite a bit of fantasy and science fiction as well.

1901-1910
The Call of the Wild (Synamon)
The Wind in the Willows (gmw)

1911-1920
Kokoro (HomeInMyShoes)
The Metamorphosis (dickloraine)
Ethan Frome (frddgls)

1921-1930
The Trial (HomeInMyShoes)
Ulysses (sun surfer)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (caleb72)
To the Lighthouse (missimpossible)
The Sound and the Fury (bfisher)

1931-1940
Brave New World (treadlightly)
The Hobbit (HomeInMyShoes)
Of Mice and Men (spellbanisher)
And Then There Were None (sun surfer)

1941-1950
The catcher in the Rye (dickloraine)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (treadlightly)
Cannery Row (HomeInMyShoes)

1951-1960
The Lord Of The Rings (cadele)
To Kill a Mockingbird (treadlightly)
Rabbit Run (HomeInMyShoes)
Lord of The Flies (obs20)
Things Fall Apart (sun surfer)
Fahrenheit 451 (AnemicOak)

1961-1970
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (treadlightly)
Farewell Gul'sary (HomeInMyShoes)
Slaughterhouse-Five (obs20)
Where the Wild Things Are (spellbanisher)
The Giving Tree (curtw)

1971-1980
Roadside Picnic (Rizla)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (poohbear_nc)
If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (HomeInMyShoes)
The Shining (Grey Ram)
Chronicle in Stone (issybird)

1981-1990
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (HomeInMyShoes)
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (Geralt)
Neuromancer (Grey Ram)
Skinny Legs and All (BelleZora)
The Elfstones of Shannara (Katsunami)
City of Glass (Jeff L)

1991-2000
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (dickloraine)
A Suitable Boy (HomeInMyShoes)
A Game of Thrones (Geralt)
A Fine Balance (ccowie)
The Windup Bird Chronicle (Hamlet53)
Stardust (pdurrant)
Small Gods (gmw)

[Dazrin]

My concern with having to read the entire book before voting is that there are a couple very popular books in some of these lists and any of the other books may not have a chance. The Hobbit, LOTR, Cannery Row, etc. I think reading all the samples and some reviews might be a reasonable compromise.

That said, I am not sure I would be able to get through all the samples for more than one or maybe two decades even with a month long voting period. Certainly not while keeping up with my normal reading.

This is hard.

[HomeInMyShoes]

It's an Internet poll. People will vote how they want to and the results will at best be spurious. As many said, and is true for me, the nominations are more important than the vote.

For what it is worth, Cannery Row was my vote prior to the bookclub selecting it to read this year. I read it a few years ago and made the slightly tongue-in-cheek comment that "Everyone needs to read Cannery Row." The book has had its own life and been an on-going joke with me and Kennyc. I still love the book. Love the pace, the descriptions and the somewhat shallow, but realistic to my life experience characters.

[Dazrin]

I see a couple duplicates now that I am looking closer:
From 1901-1910: Call of the Wild/The Call of the Wild are duplicated.
From 1971-1980: Roadside Picnic is duplicated.

As for voting by fully read books my options are limited to one for a couple decades although there are a bunch that I have wanted to try or have tried and abandoned.

Spoiler:

1901-1910
Anne of Green Gables (BearMountainBooks)
Hound of the Baskervilles (frddgls)
The Call of the Wild (Synamon) / Call of the Wild (Katsunami)

1911-1920
The Secret Garden (Synamon)

1921-1930
Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Clock (BearMountainBooks)
Winnie the Pooh (gmw)
Murder at the Vicarage (disconnected)

1931-1940
The Big Sleep (Rizla)
The Hobbit (HomeInMyShoes)
Of Mice and Men (spellbanisher)

1941-1950
Nineteen Eighty-Four (treadlightly)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (AnemicOak)

1951-1960
The Lord Of The Rings (cadele)

1961-1970
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (treadlightly)
Dune (Ralph Sir Edward)
Where the Wild Things Are (spellbanisher)
The Left Hand of Darkness (caleb72)
A Wizard of Earthsea (pdurrant)
The Giving Tree (curtw)

1971-1980
Roadside Picnic (Rizla)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (poohbear_nc)
Roadside Picnic (Geralt)
The Princess Bride (Synamon)
Rendezvous with Rama (EndlessWaves)
The Dispossessed (spellbanisher)

1981-1990
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (Geralt)
Red Storm Rising (gbm)
The Hunt for Red October (EndlessWaves)
Watchmen (sun surfer)
The Elfstones of Shannara (Katsunami)
Agent of Change (bfisher)

1991-2000
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (dickloraine)
Cryptonomicon (GeoffR)
A Game of Thrones (Geralt)
Snow Crash (spellbanisher)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by mandy314

TMy contribution? Found a couple of double entries:
- Lucky Jim (listed in 40s and 50s, book was published in 1954)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (90s twice listed and that was a close one)

Waiting with great expectations for the voting/discussion. Should be the noble thing to do: do vote only for books you have read.
Will it be "vote for the best" or "vote for the three best (1-2-3)"?

Thanks for the corrections. Now fixed.

I will certainly be suggesting in the voting threads that people should not vote for books if they haven't read them at all. I would hope that if someone does read previews of the nominated books, they'll want to read all of the book they vote for - otherwise there wouldn't be much point in voting for it.

But I'm not going to insist that people must have finished a book before voting - not everyone reads very quickly and/or has a lot of time for reading.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

A couple of corrections:

Kokoro should be in 1911-1920 and not 1901-1910
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is appearing twice in 1971-1980

Originally Posted by Dazrin

I see a couple duplicates now that I am looking closer:
From 1901-1910: Call of the Wild/The Call of the Wild are duplicated.
From 1971-1980: Roadside Picnic is duplicated.

Thanks, both, for the corrections. Now fixed.