open
Upgrade to a better browser, please.

Worlds Without End Blog

Book Reviews v. Book Lists Posted at 3:55 PM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

Like the book review, book list making has a place in the life cycle of book promotion. Reviewers have the job of promoting books when they are new. List makers promote books when they are older. Most books will be forgotten, many right after they are published. Only a tiny fraction of books published each year will be remembered at the end of the year when critics make up their Best Books of the Year lists. Being remembered in December helps a book sell into the next year. A subset of those lucky books will get nominated for awards in that second year. Winning can give them life to last into a third year.

After that, there’s not many ways books are consistently promoted. Publishers focus on new books. Writers write their next masterpiece. Readers chase after bestsellers and award winners. This is the second period of dying off for books. Unless a book is lucky enough to be made into a movie or television miniseries, they start fading away like old war heroes. A book might inspire teachers to make it required reading, but that’s exceedingly rare. Some books become hits with book clubs. The primary way older books are remembered is by writers becoming successful, keeping their back catalog in print. Once readers switch from fans of a book, to fans of a writer, they search out an author’s older books. Often, books make a comeback after their initial sales decline when they are discounted in ebook sales. I’ve built quite a collection of classic science fiction by buying $1.99 Kindle books.

Another emerging way older books are being remembered is by being listed on the internet. Book lists are a popular way to attract readers to a web site. The side-effect, older books are being remembered, extending their life.

When readers see “10 Time Travel Books That Need To Be Movies Right Now (If Not Sooner)” it has the impact of a good book review. Since I have already read five of those novels and loved them, I wonder if the other five are just as good. Then if I compare it to “23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books” and see that The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is also on this list, and it was the one that most caught my attention on the first list, I’m even more convinced that I should track down a copy.

Some readers who don’t read book reviews, may enjoy scanning book lists to find something new to read. Listing implies the books are good ones, even great. Often we’re shown beautiful covers, listed with books we already love, and grouped into favorite themes. This is exactly the kind of attention writers crave. Writers want their books to be immortal, and that requires constantly finding new readers. Book lists remind new readers of old books.

There are many kinds of book lists. Some better than others. As visitors to web sites we know these lists are a form of sales. We know listed books have affiliate links, or bait for page ads. That’s why book lists are often shown in slideshow format—each list of 25 great books will generate 25 sets of page hits. Personally, I hate that practice, and skip out. I like lists to be lists, especially if I want to print them out.

Because there are so many lists on the internet, it’s easy to get burned out. On the other hand, if you’re a reader and have a favorite genre, or favorite theme, these lists are hard to resist. I never can pass up a list of best post-apocalyptic novels. And if they don’t have Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, I feel their list is lame. If they do, I pay close attention to the other books.

When judging book lists, it comes down to who creates the list and how. It’s extremely hard to get away from subjective tastes. Even when the list is assembled by an apparent authority, like The Modern Language Association or Time Magazine, they are built by a handful of people who go by their personal likes and dislikes. Only meta-lists that assemble groups of personal and authoritative lists can claim a modicum of objectivity. Ultimately, there’s no way to prove a book is objectively great.

I can always spot lists that are just thrown together. Lists should have integrity, and reveal the passions of the list maker. I love a list that shows reading knowledge. I know some lists are made up of books the list maker hasn’t read, and that’s okay if I sense a secondary awareness of the quality of the books. We all want to help new writers, so creative promotional lists can reflect an awareness of trending new books.

I prefer to be a meta-list builder so I can work with books I haven’t read, and claim a tiny bit of objectivity. Even when listing personal favorites its hard to ignore reviewers and scholars, because adding guilty pleasures on a great books list can end up embarrassing.

List making is becoming a new kind of book promotion. And it doesn’t hurt that most of these lists have links to where the books can be bought. Sure, some sites earn money this way, but we expect the lists makers to be book lovers first. I’ve always made lists just for the fun of it. I find it a fascinating challenge. There’s all kinds of creative ways to build a good book list. And that’s what I want to examine here. Dave and I have even joked about forming a Society of Book List Makers.

Personal Lists

Nikki Steele’s recent “100 Must-Read Sci-Fi Fantasy Novels by Female Authors” over at BookRiot, earned over 18,000 shares in a few days. It’s a great example of a personal list. Compare it to the “SF Mistressworks” list Ian Sales created in 2011. His list is still regularly written about and linked to. SF Mistressworks is listed in the Worlds Without End system. Both of these lists share common books, and unique books. Both promote books that are slowly being forgotten.

For most readers, loving a book is the only valid criteria for judging books. When readers assemble a list of favorite books, that list defines their identity—so any criticism of the list can be felt as a personal attack. These very subjective lists are valuable to other readers for a number of reasons. If many of the books on the list are ones you’ve read and love, then you tend to hope the books you haven’t read will be worth trying. If the list maker is a book reviewer, and you resonate with their favorite books, that tends to validate future book reviews.

Ultimately, we’re all readers looking for wonderful books. Most of us start out as young bookworms who read whatever randomly comes our way. As we get older, and our book lust has become an habit, we have to be more scientific about finding new books. We read reviews, and we scan lists. We crave stories that are more powerful than anything we’ve ever experienced. Book lists created by our fellow word junkies are often a way we find the really good stuff.

My craving to find great books goes beyond single lists. I wish I had software that quickly allowed me to input two or more book lists to reveal overlap. I search out books that are on the most lists. I’d love to collect lists, and luckily we have Worlds Without End to do that for us. But I still wish I had an app that would help me compare lists as I discover them. I’d want fields for title, author and year. I’m disappointed that most book lists don’t list year. Comparing lists distills the greats to reveal the fantastic.

Authority Lists

When a national magazine, newspaper, publisher, organization, or famous author presents a list of great books, readers feel those lists are more objective than lists from individuals. They aren’t. They are usually a list made via a group decision, which are just as subjective as a personal list. We just assume scholars and editors know more. But even when someone like Harold Bloom makes a list of great books, that doesn’t mean you’ll like reading his recommendations. It means those are the most studied books in literature.

Authorities, whether literary scholars, well-read editors and writers, or people in the publishing business, have read far more books than most personal list makers. If an eager teen makes a list of “The Ten Best Science Fiction Books Ever” there’s a good chance their pool of books read might be as small as ten. Even though I’ve read thousands of books, that still leaves millions unread. However, if Time Magazine hires Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo to pick “All-Time 100 Novels” – subtitled the best English language novels published since 1923, there’s a good chance they know a lot more than the average reader. However, I challenge them on their choice of Ubik by Philip K. Dick. How could they pick it over The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I got the feeling they wanted to include some token science fiction, but they aren’t SF fans.

We both trust authority and reject it. And I still feel there are many novels on their list I should read. This list is eleven years old, but it’s still referenced quite frequently.

Fan Polls

I do believe in the wisdom of crowds. If you look at fan polls like GoodReads “Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books” which has over 18,000 voters, produces all the usual suspects at the top of the list. Over 60,000 people voted for the NPR list, “Your Picks: Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books.” The overlap is eerie. Or is it? Is popularity a true indicator of reading quality? Let’s leave literary quality to the scholars, and assume a great book is one that provides a wonderful reading experience. Statistically, does that mean reading books from the top of a poll gives you a greater chance of finding reading nirvana? I think it does. But I don’t think most popular books are 100% successful with all readers.

This brings up another issue. How many books should be in a list? The GoodReads list contains over 5,000 books. The overlap with NPR’s 100 books and GoodReads first 100 books is striking. And even though GoodReads’ second hundred have some very popular titles, it’s starting to show books I consider questionable—and books I would argue against. For instance I detest Friday by Robert A. Heinlein. I know many love it, but I don’t. It even gets more votes than my favorite Heinlein book, Have Space Suit – Will Travel. So popularity breaks down at some point. I think All-Time Best Book lists are most effective at 100 or fewer titles. Theme lists work best in the 10-25 range.

Scholarly Lists

If books survive long enough they get studied. Often I read old books and judge them differently from new books. Currently I’m studying 19th and early 20th century science fiction. Young readers often ignore these books because their ideas feel outdated, and the writing style is quaint. But they are time capsules from the past, and reveal how the generations before us thought and felt. Surprisingly, ideas we feel are new today were being used in books a hundred years ago. They represent a kind of archaeology of mind and culture, and teach the history of science fiction. Two lists I’ve become fascinated by are Radium Age Sci-Fi: 100 Best and Scientific Romance: 50 Best SF Novels Published From 1864-1903. Most of these books would be forgotten and unread if not for scholars like Josh Glenn, or Brian Stableford, and his new four-volume work, New Atlantis.

Meta-Lists

Meta-lists are book lists that statistically show the most popular books of all-time by collecting numerous book lists and looking for overlap. Only books that have been on many lists end up on meta-lists. We are starting to see enough meta-lists to be able to create a meta-list of meta-lists.

And if you look at all books, not just science fiction, with lists like The Top Ten and The Greatest Books, they reveal very few science fiction books are popular with the general reader. The Greatest Books uses 107 lists to build its meta-list.

There’s a lot of research possibilities in building meta-lists. We can compare books loved by fans to books loved by critics, or books that win awards to lists built by scholars.

Are Lists a Valid Method for Identifying Great Books?

Writers want to write books that are so well loved that they will never be forgotten. For readers, they want to find books to read that resonate with their souls. The odds if you read a book that gets on dozens of lists, increase the chances you might love it. It’s not a guarantee. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is an immensely popular book that tops countless lists and has survived the test of time for two centuries, yet some people aren’t charmed by its beauty. I believe you have to be a misanthrope to hate some classics, and P&P is one of them.

Being forgotten is the destiny of most books. The art of list making helps less than 1,000 books for the SF genre. Over time, older books start falling off the lists, and new books show up. There’s a window of remembering for books that are 5-100 years old. I believe books that are remembered after 100 years are the true classics.

Two books that seem to always be at the top of any list of great science fiction books are Dune by Frank Herbert and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Both are at the half-way mark to becoming true classics. Personally, even though they aren’t among my top favorites, I’ve read and admired both. I think they will become classics. I plan to reread both in the future because my reading tastes evolve as I age. Not every remembered book will dazzle every reader, but we do need to support them. Reading books that enchanted other people, but not you, still has value, because as we become old jaded readers, we also become scholars of fiction. If you read enough novels you become aware of how they work their magic. Lists help us find books worth studying.

As I get older, and the number of books I have time to read dwindles, it becomes all the more important to find the essential books to read. Book lists also help me do that.

2 Comments

Engelbrecht   |   12 May 2016 @ 06:10

James, like yourself, I’m an inveterate list reader (and list maker). I like to go through them, looking for new discoveries, while at the same time, trying to decide if the list maker has come up with a quality list.

To respond to your question as to whether lists are a valid method for identifying great books, I think I’d say that meta-lists are really the most valid way to identify great books. Single source lists, no matter how expert the compiler or how thorough and meticulous the preparation, can’t help but incorporate a certain amount of subjectivity. Meta-lists tend to mitigate or even eliminate this subjectivity, washing away the dross and leaving us with shining nuggets of gold.

That said, there can still be blind spots, with great books slipping through the cracks for one reason or another. Heck, it took Moby Dick more than fifty years to emerge from obscurity!

Meta-lists are great, but my favorite lists are single source lists where the list maker’s tastes resonate with my own. Jeff Vandermeer’s sixty book list of essential fantasy reading is one great example, as is fan Eric Walker’s sprawling 100 Great “Works” of SF&F.

Here are some other lists that might be of interest:
Locus’ Mark Kelly has compiled an incredible list of lists – sixty of them! These include a number of Locus polls for all time best works.

The Complete Review is something of a meta site focusing on more literary “major” works. They pull together high profile reviews and come up with an average grade (see 2666 for an example). Their Top Rated list includes a sprinkling of genre works, and their SF&F list is interesting and unusual.

The Greatest Books is a general literary meta-list compiled from 107 (!!) sources and includes a fair amount of literary genre.

Lastly, I have to mention a list that I know you’ll appreciate – Flavorwire’s 50 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels That Everyone Should Read leads off with Ubik and is in a slideshow format. 🙂 It’s actually a strong list, worth clicking through (I like Flavorwire – they’re usually quite good in their book & movie coverage).

jwharris28   |   12 May 2016 @ 08:07

Engelbrecht, thanks for those lists. I hadn’t known about some of them. We really could form a Society of List Makers. Also, it looks like we could create a Society of List Maker Listers.

I hope Dave incorporates some of these lists into Worlds Without End. And, hint, hint, it would be great to have a list comparison feature, where we could mark two or more lists and see how they intersect and overlap.

Personal lists are subjective, but we do need them to build meta-lists. And I like personal lists because they help me get to know the list maker.

If all of us keep working with lists, we might learn that there’s a science to them.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.