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

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

...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.

Originally Posted by mandy314

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

Well, it'd just be more polls but it would be interesting to know, although I think it'd only be useful if it were by decade just like the nominations.

After reading these posts, I was going to suggest that as part of each poll, along with the nominations, Paul could ask us to identify how many books on that particular nomination list we've actually read. Options could be something like 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-9 and 10+.

This could fit in with the nominations on the same poll in some decades. In other decades it couldn't. In fact, in looking at the numbers per decade to see if it's feasible, I see that (if I've counted correctly) two decades, 1951-1960 and 1961-1970, miraculously have exactly 30 nominations each while two others, 1971-1980 and 1981-1990, each have more than 30 nominations! I wish Paul luck in figuring out how to resolve that for a 30-max poll.

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Well, it'd just be more polls but it would be interesting to know, although I think it'd only be useful if it were by decade just like the nominations.

After reading these posts, I was going to suggest that as part of each poll, along with the nominations, Paul could ask us to identify how many books on that particular nomination list we've actually read. Options could be something like 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-9 and 10+.

I was just planning to post this info in the discussion below the poll. Something like "I only read Book X and Y and Book X was better!"

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

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).

I disagree with this reasoning. As you say, you can't really police it but we can work on a trust system, like we did with nominations. Paul specified you had to read what you nominated and everyone just trusted that everyone nominated things they'd read.

Two, I personally don't think anyone should vote for an "expected good book" no matter what. This will make the results meaningless in my opinion. If I look at a book and see that three people voted for it, I want to know that they've already read it and consider it worthy of their vote, not that maybe they've heard it's good and like the idea of the book.

Three, I don't think we should be voting *against* any book here. Let the votes speak for themselves. Probably no one will be happy with all the winners, and probably the winners will reflect famous and more-read books as well as favourite genres, but that's ok. It's not about making sure a book you think you might like "wins" this, or making sure a book you don't like "loses". This is more about the process, and for me the biggest part of the process after nominations themselves will be looking at vote distribution. Even a book with one vote can be meaningful if I trust that whoever voted for it did it because they read the whole thing and really loved it.

[Lynx-lynx]

On the meaning of 'best' ..... after thread discussion it seemed that the consensus was that each one of us was being asked to decide what best meant to us and then choose books that we had read, and so I presume you all decided upon your criteria as to what 'best' meant to you as well.

I determined my list by deciding that 'best' meant 'best talked to me about my country, my people and their thoughts and attitudes' at a given time in the 20th century (and were books that I had read). If those books were at some point recognised as well enough written to win an award (in their day) then good oh, but that didn't influence how they affected my decision to include them or not.

We were informed to name only one book per decade and that was the book that we intended to vote for.

By the thread 'rules' now that all the nominations are in, and the decades are compiled, we will be given the opportunity to vote, so now I need to either apply my 'best' formula to the nominations or decide upon a new formula. Should I follow my initial formula then I can only vote for my listed books; if not then I will vote according to my new idea of 'best'.

Part of my consideration is that there are many, many books listed that I have not read, and so I need to work out whether to read any of these books, and how many in a given time frame, in order to identify if I want to broaden my 'best' criteria.

It seems to me that each one of us will have similar considerations as to what constitutes 'best' at the time of voting, and that voters also will need to decide whether or not to continue with their initial idea of 'best' or redefine it. (Of course, there may be MR members who vote that haven't contributed a list, and they also will need to define what 'best' means to them.)

The highest number of votes per book, per decade, will of course determine a 'best winner' for that decade. But what is not, and can not be, determined is the criteria under which those books were chosen given that there is no apparent common form of 'best' criteria.

Anyway, all the best with your 'best' decision making.

[Lynx-lynx]

Given that there are a total of 251 books over all decades, how long is it anticipated that the voting period will be?

It seems to me that it is quite likely that no one of us will have read all the books nominated, and each one of us will need to determine not only what constitutes the 'best' book per decade for us, but also whether we intend to read any of the other books in the various decades to 'test' the strength of our decision.

There are expedient ways around this volume of nominees of course, and that is to selectively read the book or part thereof, but this may still take time.

So .... the voting period should be ..... 4 weeks ..... 6 weeks ...... 8 weeks ..... ?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

So .... the voting period should be ..... 4 weeks ..... 6 weeks ...... 8 weeks ..... ?

Given my available time for this, I hope to post one voting thread per week, and give each voting thread one month time to run. This does mean that voting will stretch over a three month period, probably ending mid to end August.

As to what 'best' means. Well, I will again leave that up to voters to decide.

Personally, a best book would have to be one I enjoyed reading, and have or would enjoy re-reading. In addition, I feel it ought to be a book that has had some influence over the world, its genre, or just over me. And it would probably be the book I'd be most likely to recommend to a friend.

But if you feel best can only mean best-selling, go for that!

(The title just says 'best'. I'm unwilling to define the criteria more than is in the title.)

[pdurrant]

I just noticed that one of the nominees is currently available at Amazon UK for £0.99:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

[orlok]

A great list, which represents a lot of work on your behalf pdurrant, so kudos for that. Many, many books that I have not read, but I am pleased to note that I have read more than one from each of the groupings. Sorry I missed the chance to nominate, though there are some there that I may well have chosen myself.

Not sure if you have answered this, as I have skim read the posts to catch up in short order, but why have the authors not been included along with the book titles? A lot more work, I know, but it would save having to look up each one individually.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by orlok

Not sure if you have answered this, as I have skim read the posts to catch up in short order, but why have the authors not been included along with the book titles? A lot more work, I know, but it would save having to look up each one individually.

For the ones you recognise the author name is redundant, and for those you don't the author name won't mean anything.

Actually, it's because I was short of time. I will certainly add in the author names in the voting threads.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

- snip -

Three, I don't think we should be voting *against* any book here. Let the votes speak for themselves. Probably no one will be happy with all the winners, and probably the winners will reflect famous and more-read books as well as favourite genres, but that's ok. It's not about making sure a book you think you might like "wins" this, or making sure a book you don't like "loses". This is more about the process, and for me the biggest part of the process after nominations themselves will be looking at vote distribution. Even a book with one vote can be meaningful if I trust that whoever voted for it did it because they read the whole thing and really loved it.

Absolutely. Voting for a book that one has not read just because it is not one particular book in the category is just dumb. And distorts the results. Maybe when this is done we can have the mirror, voting for the worst book of each decade?

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Given my available time for this, I hope to post one voting thread per week, and give each voting thread one month time to run. This does mean that voting will stretch over a three month period, probably ending mid to end August.

As to what 'best' means. Well, I will again leave that up to voters to decide.

Personally, a best book would have to be one I enjoyed reading, and have or would enjoy re-reading. In addition, I feel it ought to be a book that has had some influence over the world, its genre, or just over me. And it would probably be the book I'd be most likely to recommend to a friend.

But if you feel best can only mean best-selling, go for that!

(The title just says 'best'. I'm unwilling to define the criteria more than is in the title.)

Absolutely. Everyone has there own criteria to select the "best" book. For me it must be well written, be exceptional at achieving its goal, and say something important about reality and/or the human condition. That's why despite it perhaps being an exceptional escapist fantasy I would never rate Lord of the Rings as best.

I also anticipate that at least for me the discussion, not the vote tally, will be the most informative and interesting.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

[...] Absolutely. Everyone has there own criteria to select the "best" book. For me it must be well written, be exceptional at achieving its goal, and say something important about reality and/or the human condition. [...]

So my Winnie-the-Pooh nomination should be a shoo-in for your vote.

[pdurrant]

The first voting thread is up! But voting isn't enabled just yet. I'd like nominators to post about their nominations, and for discussion of the nominations by anyone who wants to join in. I'll open voting in a week's time.

[Lynx-lynx]

Paul there was a suggestion that we include a survey as to how many books we've read per decade. As there are 10 decades, perhaps 3 choices could be given: 8 books and under, 9 to 16 books, over 16 books (or whatever).

To my thinking this survey is necessary because whilst each of us will be voting for ouir "best" book, we aren't choosing from the complete offering, just those books that we've read. (And that may mean that quite a bulk of us could be making a choice from only 8 or less books for some decades.)

So, statistically I think it adds to information in understanding how the resultant "best" book was determined.

I appreciate that a drawback to this survey is that we aren't nominating the books that we've read by name, just by volume - and yes that's a flaw.

Any ideas?

[pdurrant]

I'm not very keen on *another* survey - people might get a bit tired of them! Anyone else interested?

[treadlightly]

I don't believe a poll is the best way to go about looking at that information. How many and which books were read by a voter is interesting. If someone had read 10/12 nominees and found Book X to be the best, that is valuable information to me. And if they felt like describing why, that is even better information. If Book Y was their second choice and that happens to be my first choice, then reading Book X (if I hadn't previously) might be a great suggestion for me. A poll won't capture any of this.