Entertainment - Friday, December 12, 2008 13:57 - 15 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time [1-4]

It seems my negligence and insipidity has rolled into one fat ball of anticipation that can only disappoint. Nevertheless, here it is—the top of this side of the list of the sixteen greatest books of all time. You refresh your memory here: Honorable Mentions, 13-16, 9-12, 5-8.

These four selections span three centuries of human thought, four nations, four movements—satire, American romanticism, realism, and modernism—and, in each, we can see the biting, soul-dropping honesty achieved for only a few scattered moments in our actual lives and rarely (almost never) sustained throughout a substantial piece of writing. It is, thankfully, totally subjective.

After all, objectivity, in its pure sense, is as unoriginal as it is unattainable. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of us with the necessary imagination to form an engaging, honest lie. I’ve barely read a sliver of what can be called “everything,” and even with the few things I have, my memory is not so strong. It all decays and blurs and we forget the things that made us love a book when we were reading it, that made us say the week after we finished it that it was not just good, but our favorite, and, then the thousand other temptations that pushed it from our mind.

So I’ve come to admire anyone still capable of a strong and justifiable opinion, or even an intuitively justified opinion, or really anyone who’s taken up the book and read it. Not to mention anyone who sees in the following selections the best four books of all time. Continue…

Entertainment - Friday, October 10, 2008 9:44 - 9 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time [5-8]

Hopefully, by now, our list has upset you. In this section, you may find yourself outraged. Keep calm! First, you may find it useful to reread our mission statement. Remember, this is only Phase 1. In Phase 2 we will compile a list of your favorite 16 books of all time. Surely the Brother’s Karamazov and (we hope) Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita will appear on this list, which will come to combat our own.

The true list will emerge once our list and your reader-generated list face off in an NCAA-style tournament. Each match will be illustrated and the outcome will be determined by your voting. More than a few of you have wined to me in private about Ulysses, Lolita, and even Don DeLillo’s Underworld being kept from the list, and, while this is good, the only way you can change it is by leaving a comment.

Here are numbers 5-8. I hope they can quench your insatiable thirst for the sweet, sweet nectar of literature. Continue…

Entertainment - Tuesday, September 23, 2008 16:29 - 4 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time [9-12]

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. – “Song of Myself”

As it was with Walt Whitman, so it is with Joe and me now. As a culture, we are often obsessed by the top, the end, the apocalypse. We can see this play out in small matters before our eyes—why else would this list be serialized? We’re just trying to draw out your death-drive as long as possible and, hopefully, spark more of your interest. But you should rest assured: numbers 9-12 are no less rewarding than numbers 1-4, and, as with the beginning of the list, they still invite (nay, demand) your criticism. As always, the success of our project and our shared, overall level of fun depends on your suggestions. The list goes on. Continue…

Entertainment - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 15:46 - 7 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time [13-16]

Here is the tail end of what we believe are the greatest books of all time. We urge you to ridicule (or praise!) both our selections and our reasoning. We need your suggestions for the showdown to come—our list will be pitted against yours in what’s sure to be an epic, illustrated death match. Come back soon for the next section and a cash prize for anyone who can guess our top four. Continue…

Entertainment - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 18:33 - 4 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time—Honorable Mentions

Over the course of the next few weeks, literature bloggers Jake Fournier and Joe DiGrigoli will compile what they’ve dubbed “The List,” and count down the 16 greatest books of all time. An ambitious endeavor, to be sure, but Fournier did quite a convincing job at laying out the case for such a list, and you can check out his reasoning here. But before we get rolling with the official festivities, check out their honorable mentions, in no particular order, after the jump. Continue…

Entertainment - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 0:30 - 7 Comments

The 16 Greatest Books of All Time—A Preview

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. Continue…