The 1,000,000,000 Best Books Ever List!

Internet book lists are nothing new. For as long as I’ve been writing for this blog, I’ve been rating and mocking various book lists that rank famous, influential works of literature, such as this latest from The Guardian. Even though everybody knows that these lists are clickbait, they’re still fun to read.

Yeah, book lists might be mock worthy, but I admit that I like to compare my personal preferences with those of other book readers.  The lists usually place the novels into groups of 10 or 100 and then attempt to justify each book’s ranking. When it comes to ranking importance or influence, it’s interesting to see how various perspectives or identities shape how people evaluate the importance or influence of works of literature and popular culture. 

Sometimes book readers get mad that a certain book is on a list but not ranked higher (or lower). To me, just what’s on the list is the interesting part (except maybe the top spots). Arguing about the actual placement is just being petty, especially if you start slinging insults. It’s happened to me on my own blog! Haha!

Rating books is so subjective that I wonder about the emotional stability of people who get angry over someone else’s differing opinion about a book.   I mean, frothing at the mouth, pounding the keyboard, ALL CAPPING insults, SWATting houses type of angry.  It’s bad enough when people do that over politics, but books?  C’mon, dude!

Even though I know not to get angry at selections that I disagree with, I still occasionally roll my eyes a little, especially at choices that seem pretentious, generic, or narrow.  For example, I almost disregard lists that place Ulysses or Finnegans Wake (both by James Joyce) too high on their lists.  To me, both books require far too much background knowledge for most readers to get anything out of reading the novels except frustration. 

I even wonder how many people have read either or both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake because they’re ‘supposed’ to.  For all I know, readers have been intentionally brainwashed into believing that to be taken seriously as a literary critic, you a have to have read (and fully appreciated)  one or both of these novels. I blame literary brainwashing. If you get mad at me for having that opinion, you’ve been brainwashed. If you just disagree with me but don’t care what I think, then that’s cool.

Each judge in the recent list from The Guardian had his/her own unique choices that readers can review, which is great for starting literary discussions but is also great for showing how pointless the endeavor is if you’re truly attempting to rank the books. I guess a list like this can still get a lot of needed website views, though I don’t know if it works as much as it used to. Or maybe it never really worked, and I’m the only one dumb enough to keep reading these lists.

One noteworthy element in The Guardian’s current book ranking is that To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee isn’t on it. I know that’s more of an American novel than a British literary treasure, but there seemed to be enough judges from the States to influence the polling, unless the American judges had other notions or didn’t rank it high enough on their ballots. Either way, I thought that its absence was noteworthy, but I don’t care either way. Again, maybe it makes only certain American-centric lists, and I haven’t seen enough recent book lists to notice.

Even more bizarre than the internet list of book rankings is the book list of book rankings. Over the last few years I’ve seen books that rank books. I admit that I’ll read a book that ranks books, but I’d never buy a book that ranks books. Maybe it would be a good coffee table book, but I have better coffee table books, and they’re not even about books.

Writing a book that ranks great books is almost like making a movie that ranks the best movies. Some of us might watch a video that ranks movies, but would anybody pay money to sit in a movie theater and watch a full length feature that ranks the greatest movies of all time? I’m seriously asking the question because I don’t know the answer to it. Maybe people would if they knew that the movie about great movies was a really great movie and not just a movie about great movies.  

If I ever write my own real book about book lists, I’ll title it 1,000,000,000 Books You Must Read Before You Die!!!! I’ll use the word ‘must’ instead of ‘should’ because readers need to feel a sense of urgency before they buy a book like this. The soft sell approach doesn’t work, even though it’s the approach I’ve always been comfortable with. People have always told me that I should get out of my comfort zone more often and be more assertive, so here’s my chance.

After I publish my 1,000,000,000 Books You Must Read Before You Die!!!! opus, those same people might claim that I was going too far. Haha! That’s how it works. They always want control, and they always want you to doubt yourself, but I’ll show them. I won’t just make a book about the top billion best books; I’ll also make it a GREAT book about the top billon best books. Great execution can sometimes overcome a really bad idea.

If you’ve gotten this far, I hope that you don’t feel cheated. You had to know from the title that this was either satire or clickbait or both.  I mean, c’mon (the word “c’mon” usually isn’t a good argument, but I think it works here)! I haven’t read a billion books.  I’m pretty sure nobody has even read a million books.  Maybe some speed reading egghead out there will claim to have read one million books, but nobody will believe it.  At least, statistically, nobody will believe it.  Maybe it’s plausible for one person to read a million books, maybe, but one billion? 

To those who are angry that I didn’t actually list a billion books, just know that this blog post was me stepping out of my comfort zone. Plus, you’re brainwashed.

But enough about what I think! What about you? How seriously do you take the Best Book lists? What consistent selection makes you roll your eyes (even though you know that you shouldn’t care)? Do you feel cheated that I don’t actually have a list of a billion books? What worthy book do you think gets neglected on book lists, even though you know you shouldn’t care?

*****

Man, I hope my ONE novel is one of the 1,000,000,000 best books ever written.

It’s the oldest story in the world, 1990s style!

Man meets woman; man falls in “luuuvvv” with woman; man gets blindsided by reality!

The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon !

*****

For more Dysfunctional Literacy, see…

Harry The Dirty Dog vs. Dirty, The Hairy Dog

A Time To Kill vs. To Kill A Mockingbird 

Why Should I Read This? Ulysses by James Joyce  

How to Write an Award-Winning Novel starring… The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction