NYT is having readers vote on the best book of the last 125 years

[ex-khobar Andy]

Here's the list:



They asked for suggestions a while ago, and they have narrowed it down to 25 finalists. You have 10 days to submit a vote. You get three votes.

I chose To Kill a Mockingbird; A Gentleman in Moscow; and All the Light We Cannot See. If I remember I will post the results of the voting when polls close.

I am of course devastated that Art of the Deal is not there. Well it is the NYT - what do you expect?

[datsunaholic]

I've read 6 of those. 2 of them only because they were assigned reading in High School. 9 on the list I have never even heard of.

In that list, I would vote for 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, and Charlotte's Web, of the ones I've read, that is.

[BoSoxGal]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a very fine book, it’s nice to see it included.

Thanks for sharing!

[MajGenl.Meade]

Fellowship of the Ring
Lonesome Dove
The Grapes of Wrath

I've read 11 of those on the list. And of course, no one has ever read more than the first chapter of Ulysses - not even Joyce

[Long Run]

No Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc. I'm going with Boaty McBoat Faces Lives.

[Scooter]

So no Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, D.H. Laurence, E.M. Forster, Thomas Wolfe, or Graham Greene, but Harry Potter. Okay....

[Scooter]

Long Run beat me to it.

[Big RR]

True, but he included Steinbeck as a neglected author; The Grapes of Wrath is on the list. I htought you were updating the list.

There are some great books there (1984 is my favorite book, and one of the few first editions I own), and some I really don't care for. But such is the way of lists generated voted on by the public.

[Sue U]

And of course, no one has ever read more than the first chapter of Ulysses - not even Joyce

Not sure how to quantify "best book," but for all their qualities, I'm certain neither Lolita nor Harry Potter belongs on that list. And what, no Umberto Eco or Salman Rushdie? De gustibus and all that jive.

Confederacy of Dunces is still the funniest book I have ever read.

[Long Run]

I missed Grapes of Wrath, but the point still stands, this is click bait rather than a serious attempt to list the 25 best books. I would guess that among this well-read group, any one of us could come up with a superior list of 25 books without naming any on the NYT list.

[ex-khobar Andy]

It's also, for some reason, only novels. In their initial request for reader recommendations, I don't think there was any stipulation. My off-the-top-of-my-head votes for all books, including non-fiction, would include Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Bernstein and Woodward's All the President's Men and, although I hated his treatment of Rosalind Franklin, James Watson's The Double Helix. Robert Caro's 3 volume bio of LBJ has to be up there.

I'm with you on Harry Potter - hardly one of the great series in a literary sense. But one thing in JK Rowling's favor: she did get children reading again. As a veteran of five midnight releases at Barnes and Noble (US) and Waterstones (UK) - I'm not sure we are ever going to see that again. Swarms of kids from 5 to 15 with their parents, some dressed up as Harry or Hermione - something important was happening.

[Crackpot]

Crime and Punishment aged out of this list

[Bicycle Bill]

I believe that each and every one of these books have made it onto the banned book list of someone or another as well.   Maybe we should take that as a sign of good literature — if it hasn't pissed off someone at some time or another, it can't possibly be considered a good book.

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

I don't know Bill, Charlotte's Web? And while Gone with the Wind pissed people off, I doubt it ever made a banned list (indeed, I'd best most of the banners would love the parts that pissed others off). But you probably sert forth a pretty good test for what's worth reading (when all the crap started about the Harry Potter books, I bought my kids a full set of the ones out at that time (and kept it up as new ones were published).

[Bicycle Bill]

I don't know Bill, Charlotte's Web? And while Gone with the Wind pissed people off, I doubt it ever made a banned list (indeed, I'd best most of the banners would love the parts that pissed others off). But you probably sert forth a pretty good test for what's worth reading (when all the crap started about the Harry Potter books, I bought my kids a full set of the ones out at that time (and kept it up as new ones were published).

In 2006, Kansas banned 'Charlotte’s Web' because “talking animals are blasphemous and unnatural” and passages about the spider dying were also criticized as being “inappropriate subject matter for a children’s book.”   (https://bannedbooks.com/charlottes-web-by-e-b-white/)

'Gone with the Wind' was also banned in 1978 and challenged in 1984.  The first instance mentioned occurred in a school district located in Anaheim, California; the school district banned the book due to the behaviors of the main character, Scarlett O’Hara, and the depiction of slaves.  The second year mentioned occurred in a Waukegan, Illinois school district because the use of the “n-word”.   (https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics — click and scroll down)

-"BB"-

[Gob]

No Conan Doyle, John Le Carre, or Colin Dexter, meh...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Le Carre yes - but the other two? Anyway, these are NYT readers and one can't expect much in the way of discernment

[Big RR]

Well Bill, proof there is an ass for every seat. FWIW, I never really thought GWTW was taught in any school curricula; I read it when I was fiarly young, but it is hardly fine literature--more like a drawn out soap opera (the same is true for the movie, although it is beautifully filmed). The banning of Charlotte's Web is something I just don't understand; talking animals? I guess they don't like most of the children's books and cartoons as well.

[MGMcAnick]

I propose that IF Charlotte's Web was ever banned in Kansas it might have been by one of the 321 local school districts or perhaps one of many hundreds of private "Christian" schools that banned it. I certainly don't remember it being in the news. Other books have been banned and then brought back MANY times over the years. Really stupid ones, and most are, have made the news.

A search of the interwebs turned up no proof. Snopes never heard of the incident, if indeed there was an incident.

I did find this, and tend to agree: (Italics mine.)

It’s curious that not one single claim that the book was banned in Kansas in 2006 is accompanied by a historically verifiable citation.

I propose that’s apocryphal. Unverified at best, and certainly doubtful.

If someone can provide an extant and historically verifiable reference (e.g. from a firsthand report in a major newspaper) dated prior to April 3, 2011, including the specific Kansas school district name and/or parent groups that are alleged to have made the comments cited, that would settle this question.

Until then, it’s just people repeating hearsay. (I'd say BS rather than hearsay.)

[Bicycle Bill]

MG, you may be on the correct path.  A moderately-thorough search through Google brought up numerous references to this same 2006 'banning', laying the blame on "some parents in a Kansas school district" without further clarification or citation.  At least one of the references went on to say that "according to the parent group at the heart of the issue, ‘humans are the highest level of God’s creation and are the only creatures that can communicate vocally.  Showing lower life forms with human abilities is sacrilegious and disrespectful to God’."  So maybe it wasn't even banned — or if it was, it was strictly local and didn't get make waves anywhere but the Lower Bumfuck School District — but merely challenged.

However, I did find a second reference to a single school's banning of "Charlotte's Web", this time in Merry Olde England —

Such was the case at a junior high in Batley, West Yorkshire, England, which became the center of international attention in 2003 when the school’s Headteacher decreed that all books featuring pigs should be removed because it could potentially offend the school’s Muslim students and their parents.  No such complaints were ever filed by any parent involved with the school, but the school official felt she was being proactive in her policy.

Interestingly enough, it was the Muslims themselves who asked for the ban to be lifted...

Islamic leaders in the community asked the school to drop its ban, which included Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh, and the Three Little Pigs.  The Muslim Council of Britain formally requested an end to the “well-intentioned but misguided” policy, and for all titles to be returned to classroom shelves.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the MCB, said: “It is understandable, but this is a misconception about Islam which is often encountered.  The Headteacher has acted sensitively, because there are parents and families who believe that portraying the pig in books is wrong.  But there is absolutely no scriptural authority for this view.  It is a misunderstanding of the Koranic instruction that Muslims may not eat pork.  Drawings and photographs of pigs have always been used in children’s books to teach values common to all the great religions, and these are perfectly legitimate in Islam as well.  There can be a cultural misunderstanding, and it is good for everyone to discuss it and clear it up."

-"BB"-