The Best Books of all Time Poll

[misterlit]

Hey guys, I have been wanting to compose a top 50 Books. I have chosen 50 titles and am giving you guys the opportunity to vote for your favorite classic of all time. This list includes modern books and yes a couple of odd titles from the fantasy and sci-fi realm but I have chosen them for what they have accomplished in their respective genres though are not real "classics". Anyway, I hope you take the time for to vote and enjoy the results. You may vote for more than one title but please do not vote for more than 3, thank you.

[Veho]

I can't see a poll...

Edit: I see one now...

[misterlit]

Please be aware, that these are my picks, so there may not be some titles you think should be on the list and are not or vica verse.

[Dark Muse]

Arghh......no fair only getting to choose three. It was tough to narrow it down to only three. There were so many different ways I could have gone, so I did the best I could.

[Darcy88]

Don Quixote!

[The Comedian]

What's a greatest book poll without the greatest book: Walden. :lol: Oh, well. I endured and made my selections. ;)

[Night_Lamp]

I'm sure you're expecting a response thread overflowing with: "where's ..."

So I'm going to be one of the first and dispute the absence of the greats of the gothic cannon: I would have like to have seen The Italian, The Mysteries Of Udolpho, or The Monk.

You've made some great choices though, and I'm not here to complain. No list with under a thousand titles is going to make everyone happy.

[Modest Proposal]

You really think that Lewis's 'Monk' deserves mention as a candidate for greatest book of all time? Or Radcliff's work even? I enjoyed classes in gothic, but even the most enthusiastic of my professors never seemed to compare the works literary merit to works of the great writers. I always understood--specifically, the English Gothic--as more a popular culture study then a literary study.

[Night_Lamp]

Fair play:

Maybe I'm letting my personal tastes get in the way with two out of three- but I think The Italian holds it own against *a good portion* of the books on the list.

I certainly love Treasure Island; but Radcliffe's masterpiece is on a higher stature.

[DanielBenoit]

You know, there's just too many of these polls. Why can't we just enjoy literature without having to decide what's the greatest? When it really comes down to it, titles like Don Quioxte, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace etc,. all come out as equal.

[stlukesguild]

As another has pointed out you are certain to get endless complaints about this or that missing favorite. I would point out that the list is incredibly biased in that it avoids any poetry (Dante? Baudelaire?, William Blake?, Milton?), drama (uh... Shakespeare? Aeschylus?), non-fiction (Plato, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Montaigne's and Emerson's Essays). The list is also largely skewed toward literature written in English (with a few exceptions) and offers little as far as non-Western literature. I'll also note that just placing The Lord of the Rings upon a "greatest books ever written" list is ridiculous.

Having said all that... I'll play along. Of the choices offered I would need to go with War and Peace, Madame Bovary (an almost flawless novel), and Don Quixote. These books would certainly make my list of the 50... even the 20 greatest books ever written... even if I were free to chose from any book written. My guess, however, from what I have seen from Lit Net discussions is that Dostoevsky, Orwell and Lord of the Rings will come out on top... perhaps with Jane Austen or even Dickens as a dark horse.

I also agree that competition in literature is a bit absurd. There is no World Series for the winners. There's no need to worry that if Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Homer, etc... don't continually win a set number of the "best of..." awards they will slip from the curriculum. Nor is there the least chance that The Lord of the Rings will ever rise to such a status simply on the basis of the same. Put simply... almost anything on your list is worth reading... and there are a great many others of equal or even greater merit.

[ykell]

It was a bit difficult to narrow the books I've loved to only three. But I hope there are some who share the same love towards the books I've voted for.

[soundofmusic]

You know, there's just too many of these polls. Why can't we just enjoy literature without having to decide what's the greatest? When it really comes down to it, titles like Don Quioxte, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace etc,. all come out as equal.

The polls are interesting, though. When I really thought of it, I realized that I read books that are emotionally satisfying. I read all of Scott Fitzgeralds works, even his letters. Gatsby and The Last Tycoon are among my favorite books...but, as a novelist, does Fitzgerald possess the genius of Tolstoy?
I don't think so; but when I wasn't suffering with Anna Karina, I was sleeping!

[Modest Proposal]

Fair play:

Maybe I'm letting my personal tastes get in the way with two out of three- but I think The Italian holds it own against *a good portion* of the books on the list.

I certainly love Treasure Island; but Radcliffe's masterpiece is on a higher stature.

Oh, and you had to bring in the favorite book from my childhood. Treasure Island is certainly a 'treasure', but you are probably right that The Italian has more merit and complexity.

If you are into gothic, have you by chance read Zofloya? It is pretty under-appreciated in my opinion. But Charles Brockden Brown's Weiland is my absolute favorite Gothic novel.

[wessexgirl]

I've gone for 3 of my favourites, and what I think are seminal works of literature. I could have gone for lots on your list, but I think that these 3 are up there as some of the greatest or most influential of all time.

Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
Middlemarch

[mal4mac]

Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
Middlemarch

Picking three is so difficult, I guess you need to apply more-than-aesthetic considerations....

I was going to suggest you had a feminist bias, then I just realised I voted for three men...

Pot. Kettle.

I'll vote for Middlemarch next time (tail between legs...)