Greatest Books Tag

Women make up almost 20% (59) of the authors on my updated Greatest Books list. To be honest, I’m impressed that the number is that high given the historical, financial, familial, and cultural obstacles that women face. Still, 20% pales in comparison to the fact that women constitute half of the population, both domestically and globally.

So I wanted to spend some time with the female segment of the Greatest Books list and see what I could discern.

First, here’s the complete list, sorted alphabetically by author last name:

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The search for the greatest author. This is my latest dive into the Greatest Books list, compiled from GreatestBooks.org, Pulitzer winners, National Book Award winners, and the Modern Library novel list.

In my continued fun with pivot charts, I decided to see if one author, or several, stood head and shoulders above the rest. Numerically, this is determined by simply seeing which authors have the most published works on these combined lists.

And it looks like we have the two Williams, Shakespeare and Faulkner, on the top of the list:

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I’ve been diving into my Greatest Books list lately. As I added more details to the document, I wondered if there was an outstanding year on the list (read about that here). Then I wondered if there was a greatest decade for literature.

And here’s what I found:

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I’ve been working on a “greatest books” list for several years now. I recently reorganized my list and double checked my sources. My version of a “greatest” list comes from Pulitzer and National Book Award winners, Modern Library’s 100 Greatest Novels, and a list of lists from GreatestBooks.org.

Download the Greatest Books list here.

As I added more details, I started to wonder if there were trends in these data points.

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More than 6 years ago, I started reading fiction quite earnestly. Specifically, I pulled together several “greatest books” lists and began working my way through them.

However, I kept track of this effort on paper and didn’t collate my lists too well. I’ve resolved the issue, though, and am happy to start working with a refreshed “greatest book” list of my own.

Download the Greatest Books list here.

I pulled together four distinct lists of books to make this happen, including:

• Modern Library 100 Greatest Novels (the board list)
• Pulitzer Prize winners (general non-fiction and novels)
• GreatestBooks.org
• National Book Award winners (fiction)

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I’m slowly but surely making my way through my list of “100” greatest books of all time. I put “100” in quotes because I merged several top 100 lists and recently added the Pulitzer Prize winners in the Novel (1917-1947) and Fiction (1948-present) categories. This leaves me with a list of the 300 greatest books from varied sources.

The list is below. The titles in bold are the ones I’ve read. With 65 out of 300 read, I’m at 21.67%. I’ve been working on this list since 2008, so if I continue at this pace, the list will provide me with good reading for the next 20 years.

That seems both daunting and delicious.

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