Greatest Novel of All-Time

[JR]

[

The Bible

Except it's not a novel.

 

[Starman]

http://www.clashicscentral.com/pic6/cc05.jpg

"I never read the book."

 

[Care Bear]

I think the idea of a bracket like this is absurd. The top spot for a person should be a multiway tie among the transcendent reads the person has had. The Telltale Heart by deckens, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Chabon and Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson were transcendent reading experiences for me. Different in many ways, but tied in the most important criterion.

The Tell-Tale Heart is a Poe masterpiece, I believe.

 

[Uncle.Ruckus]

I notice a conspicuous absence of the Twilight saga on that list.

 

[waterytart]

Now someone mentioned Steinbeck. We want to bash the greats, that is where I would start. I just don't need 80 pages describing a grain of sand, before the story moves along.

That's definitely an issue with him. Read the first chapter of "East of Eden." I dare you.

When our niece had to read Grapes, I told her to save herself some time when she hit the part about the turtle, and just skip ahead to where the story picks up again. After finishing it, she asked me what I was talking about. In my memory, that turtle crawls along for at least 25 pages.

 

[dooley_womack1]

I think the idea of a bracket like this is absurd. The top spot for a person should be a multiway tie among the transcendent reads the person has had. The Telltale Heart by deckens, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Chabon and Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson were transcendent reading experiences for me. Different in many ways, but tied in the most important criterion.

The Tell-Tale Heart is a Poe masterpiece, I believe.

Poe, deckens, Fu Schnickens, whatevs. Now I now why the teacher put a red mark through the author name on my paper.

 

[ColdCat]

Never got around to reading Moby deck, but my favorite quote about it. . .

"I have not yet read it; but have looked at it & dipped into it, & fear it belongs to that horribly uninteresting clash of nonsensical books he is given to writing-where there are pages of crude theory & speculation to every line of narrative--& interspersed with strained & ineffectual attempts to be humorous."

and that was Melville's brother-in-law.

Count me in the anti-deckens crowd too. Other than Christmas Carol and Tale of Two Cities it seemed like he just wrote the same book over and over. Great Expectations is just horribly overrates.

Meanwhile where is Slaughterhouse Five? Where is On the Road?

 

[Pilot]

I had to read Mockingbird in school and not Gatsby. If that's true for more people out there, it could explain why Mockingbird would be winning the vote.

 

[Azrael]

Middlemarch? Someone at Huff Post is trolling.

Er, trolling more that usual, I mean.

Bingo. Why not 'Mill on the Floss,' or any other turbid Eliot pastoral of the same period?

No 'Tristram Shandy?' Has to be a put-on.

 

[Versatile]

I like this list, for the purposes of a tournament-style bracket friendly to the moderately well-read: http://thegreatestbooks.org/

 

[Azrael]

I like this list, for the purposes of a tournament-style bracket friendly to the moderately well-read: http://thegreatestbooks.org/

Good list, helpful site.

 

[heyabbott]

[

The Bible

Except it's not a novel.

It's a fictional narrative with a single, overarching theme.