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... except, of course, it's not. They've chosen one novel per author. In reality, it would be bizarre to expect that the very best novelists wrote only one of the top 100 novels. (Also, their choices sometimes seem to me to be questionable).
I also question the usefulness of selecting novels from, oh, the last 50 years: we're too close. Too much of our reaction may be to shared memes which don't affect our reaction to novels from 200 years ago. (As the novels are arranged roughly chronologically, this translates as "anything after Catch-22" (which was published in 1961). I'm also dubious about about a quarter of the list falling into this recent category on more general grounds: there's a distortion of perspective distinct from our assessment of quality which tends to make recent names more familiar. (You'll note that I haven't read many of the recent selections, as my tastes diverge from "mainstream" literature in the period, and the major authors I have read, like Pynchon, don't seem to get a look in.)
I've bolded all the books I own, italicized all those I've read but don't own, and added comments as seemed appropriate.
( Cut for length... )
Authors who probably should be on the list but aren't: Walpole, Zola, Smollett, Chesterton, Scott, Hugo, maybe Burney, Powell, (Dance to the Music of Time was started before my 50-year cut-off).
I also question the usefulness of selecting novels from, oh, the last 50 years: we're too close. Too much of our reaction may be to shared memes which don't affect our reaction to novels from 200 years ago. (As the novels are arranged roughly chronologically, this translates as "anything after Catch-22" (which was published in 1961). I'm also dubious about about a quarter of the list falling into this recent category on more general grounds: there's a distortion of perspective distinct from our assessment of quality which tends to make recent names more familiar. (You'll note that I haven't read many of the recent selections, as my tastes diverge from "mainstream" literature in the period, and the major authors I have read, like Pynchon, don't seem to get a look in.)
I've bolded all the books I own, italicized all those I've read but don't own, and added comments as seemed appropriate.
( Cut for length... )
Authors who probably should be on the list but aren't: Walpole, Zola, Smollett, Chesterton, Scott, Hugo, maybe Burney, Powell, (Dance to the Music of Time was started before my 50-year cut-off).
