Over the next few weeks, my friend and colleague Joe DiGrigoli and I will be posting a list of the top 16 books of all time—excluding, of course, the ones we have not read. It’s a tall order. One might say, “Impossible,” but Joe and I would never go so far. If you’re a serious reader, or even an informed one, you’ve probably already seen Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels in the English language. It’s a good start. Like us, you may even have used their list as a guide to becoming an informed, well-rounded human being. Though it’s not the original, it would be a lie to say that Modern Library has neither influenced our reading nor affected our ideas.

So you might be—even should be saying—why another list? What can two college sophomores really say about the scope of human literary achievement that I haven’t already?

Touché. So allow us to explain.

First, we feel the list provides a certain degree of permeability. It will allow anyone concerned enough about the reviews to come to understand both the kind of literature that we hold in the highest regard and the books that we feel have had the most influence on us and the world over time.

As a second function, the list brings an element of the classic into a realm that is obsessed with the current, the modern, and the popular. Yes, Stephanie Meyer’s blockbuster Breaking Dawn sold several million copies this August, and teenager girls across the country swooned along with its vivid portrayal of vampire-on-human sex and rib-breaking birth scenes—but have you read Milton’s description of personified Sin, raped by Death, only to birth “Yelling monsters, [dogs]…hourly born, with sorrow infinite” that rip and gnaw inside her womb? I certainly hope so. It’s enough to curdle the blood.

Still, to take yet another page from Modern Library, our list is only the first phase. Once it’s up, we encourage all of our readers to make their own suggestions, to propose their own favorites, to proffer books that we have likely never heard of, let alone read. We’ll then create a democratically organized, reader-generated list that will be pitted—in deadly battle—against our own.

Any ranking is dubious, especially one of this scale. For instance, how can one possibly weigh a Kurt Vonnegut or a Don Dellilo novel of 250 pages, against the entirety of Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy? One simultaneously has to have tremendous gaps in his self-respect, an inflated ego, and a hungry mind. As Joe put it:

“I, like my beloved Augie March, am an American and go about things as I have taught myself, free-style. The point is that we are here to celebrate the qualifying bound volumes of our time—the time of the human race and written word—while simultaneously creating a roster that will do well in one-on-one match-ups. This to me seems like an excellent way to approach the much maligned art of list-making.”

Later in the day, the series will kick off with a list of honorable mentions—great books that didn’t quite make our cut.

Good luck. Happy reading.
-Literature Bloggers, Jake Fournier and Joe DiGrigoli