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[thegreatestbooks]

Update

I added a bunch of books from the yearly award lists and updated the rankings. 

[thegreatestbooks]

Added The List “The New York Public Library's Books of the Century”

I just added The New York Public Library's Books of the Century which was a really cool list originally published in 1995

[thegreatestbooks]

Added 5 New Lists

Since it’s the end of the decade there have been a lot of new “Best of” lists lately. I recently added 5 and I’m adding many more soon.

Top 10 Fiction Books of the Decade(2010) by Entertainment Weekly

The 40 Best Novels of the 2010s by Paste Magazine

The Best Fiction Books of the 2010s by Time

The 100 best books of the 21st century by The Guardian

100 Novels That Shaped Our World by BBC

I also added a new link to The Greatest Books Since 2010.

[thegreatestbooks]

Updated Rankings

I finally finishing adding all the books from The Book “1001 Books to Read Before You Die” by Peter Boxall. I highly recommend the book and I think it’s a great and well researched list. 

The list has a pretty high weight so it has had a pretty major change on the rankings, although there’s so many books on the list, many of the top books rankings won’t change much.

More changes coming soon!

[thegreatestbooks]

Working on a Bunch of Updates

I am currently in the process of adding a 1001 long list of books from a really good list that should significantly change the rankings. It should take me another week to finish adding it and then I’ll update the rankings after It’s complete.

I have also been working on adding more author data like gender and nationality so I can create country or gender specific lists. 

I have also started working on adding genres/categories so you will be able to filter by genres like sci-fi, fantasy, etc. 

[thegreatestbooks]

Added “The Great American Read” list by PBS

This list is pretty interesting. They hired a polling service, to “conduct a demographically and statistically representative survey asking Americans to name their most-loved novel”. 7200 people participated in the survey. 

Then a “advisory panel of 13 literary industry professionals” tallied and organized it into a list of 100 books.

The list can be seen here: http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/181

The original article and list can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/

[thegreatestbooks]

Adjusted the weight score and recalculated the rankings

After a lot of thought I adjusted my algorithm a bit. In addition to adding a couple of new lists, the rankings have changed. In Search of Lost Time is again #1, and we even have a new #2!

[thegreatestbooks]

Added “The Greatest 20th Century Novels by Waterstone”

I could not find an official list, but I got it from LibraryThing. http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/124

[thegreatestbooks]

Added a new German list from abebooks

This is a list I partially added last year, and I just now finished it. It’s very challenging adding lists from different languages. I’m sorry it took so long!

I am going to be adding a bunch of new lists soon, as well as working on updating the site. 

[thegreatestbooks]

Adjusted the Algorithm a bit

And there’s a new #1!

I got rid of the “There’s a chance this list might be biased” list con. I’ve gotten a few e-mails over the years about this. I think every list can be biased and it seemed very arbitrary. 

Removing this and recalculating the scores made Don Quixote the #1 book of all time!

[thegreatestbooks]

Added Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century

I added a pretty good German specific list. It ended up being quite a few points so I’m sure these books all increased in the rankings quite a bit.

http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/178

[thegreatestbooks]

Updated the National Book Award List for Nonfiction

It had not been updated since 2009, so some newer nonfiction books have been added.

[thegreatestbooks]

Added The College Board: 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers

It’s an unranked list that’s pretty damn good: http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/177

I just wish there were more voter and criteria details...

[thegreatestbooks]

Updated a couple of yearly book award lists

I updated the Pulitzer prize for fiction list as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. I’m going to be updating all the yearly book award lists in the next week, as well as adding some new yearly award lists I’ve found.

[thegreatestbooks]

Updated the Ranking Algorithm

I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback over the years on the criteria and how I calculate the list. Today I made some changes based on that feedback.

- removed the penalty for “controversial” and “quantity over quality”

- decreased penalty for yearly book awards by 10

- decreased penalty for lists voted on my the public by 10

[thegreatestbooks]

Added “Third World Novels… The Top 10″ List.

Added this interesting list from 1989: https://newint.org/features/1989/01/05/novels/

About half the books were not yet on the site! 

I also slightly adjusted the algorithm to count “no voter details at all” just as much as “only 1 voter”

[thegreatestbooks]

Added “The 100 Greatest British Novels” from the BBC

A poll from 82 book critics of the 100 greatest British novels:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels

It’s a pretty good list!