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Originally Posted by Deepflow
How can you say something is the best unless a very large amount of people like it?
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Well given I doubt you think the Da Vinci Code is the best book of the last 100 years, I think youre managing somehow.
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An alternative way would be to get the people who give the booker prize every year (just as an example of literary experts) to compile their lists: i.e expert opinion.
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Nah, I dont think that only allowing middle-class English teachers to vote is going to fix my complaint that the list is geared towards middle-class English teachers. In any case, you can no more be an 'expert' at reading books than you can be an 'expert' at listening to music or looking at paintings. Different books are going to appeal to different people, and its not a matter of 'expertise' (whatever that is).
The best bet would just be to accept that compiling lists of the Best Books Of All Time is a hilariously silly thing to do. A more interesting idea imo would be to get people to give their own personal lists of their 10 favourite books along with their reasons why. Restrict it to people who've actually read quite a lot of books obviously so you get some context for evaluation.
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This is fine, but most people won't have heard of a lot of the books they nominate and who wants to read a list of books that they have never heard of?
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Well, me for one. I'm more likely to read the favourite book of a person that I respect than I am to read a book that most average people like, even if I hadnt previously heard of it. To take a random example, if I'm reading a biography of someone who I think it a great human being, I'm quite likely to check out some of the music and books they liked regardless of whether its something that I knew about already.
To turn your question round, why would anyone prefer reading a list of stuff they already know about than a list which might introduce them to new, perhaps more obscure, things which may sound more interesting?