Lists of books

There is no end of making lists of books to read, books for other people to read, books you should have read, books you wish you had time to read, and so on. Newsweek has done a sort of metaanalysis by combining the book lists of others:

The complete list of 10 previously published lists that we drew upon includes The Telegraph’s 110 best books/The Perfect Library, The Guardian’s top 100 books, Oprah’s Book Club, the St. John’s College reading list, Wikipedia’s list of all-time bestsellers, the New York Public Library’s books of the century, the Radcliffe Publishing Course’s list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, The Modern Library’s 100 best novels and 100 best works of nonfiction, Time’s 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, and NEWSWEEK’s own list of current top 50 choices, which is being published this week.

Their resultant list of 100 top books is at this link. I won't comment any further except to wonder why Ulysses keeps making it to "best books" lists.

In a slightly different vein is a list of Science Fiction Books that Launched Their Own Genres. Utopia, apocalyptic futures, time travel, first contact, alternate history, space opera, cyberpunk, steampunk, and Gothic.