The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
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The Mookse group classics list
Is this for us to start listing titles, Hugh, or for suggestions about how to do this?
Mod
One option would be to do something like the year-end ranking but leave it up for a longer period of time. For example, we could have nominations in by the end of January 2023, similar to the year-end process, and then the ranking would close by the end of January 2024. That would give us a longer time to read the nominations that interest us while avoiding most of the prizes and holidays.
Or the end of Dec so the list could be posted in Jan ‘24
I said end of January only because December is usually the time we are doing the year-end rankings.
I'm thinking since we're a largely Anglo-American group (or at least I don't think there's another nationality strongly represented) that we're likely to end up with some of the same problems as the other lists... very anglocentric. Even if a lot of us read translated literature, how many of those are translated classics? So maybe everyone also gets to nominate a book or two from their country(ies) that gets in vote-free?
I think there was a list a while back that didn't rank books but grouped them. Like: the best thrillers, the best books with spiky female narrators, the best cozy mysteries...can't remember who produced it though.
Emily wrote: "So maybe everyone also gets to nominate a book or two from their country(ies) that gets in vote-free?"How do you see that working, Emily? I was only going to nominate books from outside North America and Europe.
I’m not sure… but how do you see nominating books from outside working if others haven’t read them? Or maybe I’m mistaken, maybe you’re all well read in the classics of other countries…I’m not though. I wouldn’t be able to up or downvote most of them.
Let's say someone nominated A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Maybe five people will have read it already, and five others are interested enough to read it over the course of the year. Even if that's still less than half of us, it may have a positive score in the aggregate rankings.The key I think is to have a final list that is slightly more than half of the total nominations. That way, every book with a positive score is included.
In other words, if we are shooting for a final list of 100, we should try to get 120-150 nominations (give or take). The books that would miss the final cut would have negative scores - and would probably be the anglocentric books we've all read and feel indifferent about.
Ah okay. I didn't realize were were going to have a year to catch up on reading.
Emily wrote: "Ah okay. I didn't realize were were going to have a year to catch up on reading."It's not like we'd have to do all the reading. I'm sure there will be a range of interest levels. But I expect to see some intriguing titles nominated that I haven't read (possibly haven't heard of), and catching up on the books that catch our interest is part of the fun.
What is a classic?Am not asking this as a rhetorical question. Am suggesting that part of the criteria may be to start with a definition that folks can agree on.
Good question, Janet. We could either leave it open ended and see what gets nominated. Or we could have a narrower definition, like a work of prose during a set time period (1800-present?)
I thought it was to be a list of which books we think are must-reads so any books published anytime from any country.
Are you thinking we’d leave the time open ended, Wendy? That would pick up stuff like The Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Yes! I think everyone should read The Iliad!
That’s a very different list than one with long form prose.
It reads like prose, but I’ll go along with whatever everyone agrees to.
Mod
Agreed. I’ll also go along with whatever the consensus is.
Though the Iliad reading like prose is dependent on reading it in translation, and which translation you're reading. It seems to me that the broader this list is with no chronological boundaries, the more similar it's likely to be to all the usual 'classics' lists which would be a bit of a missed opportunity. We've already had mention of a couple of the usual suspects, Gilgamesh and Homer - yes, love them but they're on every 'classics you must read' list.
It would be a shame to confine the list to prose: no Sylvia Plath, no Derek Walcott, no Olive Senior...
Hugh wrote: "or books that we think should be regarded as classics, but aren't yet."This would make the list more interesting to me. For criteria could use something like only include works with fewer than 150,000 ratings on Goodreads, or excluding works that are listed on some famous list of classics (Harold Bloom or something).
The Iliad doesn’t read like prose. I wrote that without thinking, I meant it is as exciting to read as an adventure story so I wouldn’t want it to be excluded because it is epic poetry, not a novel. Unless we are coming up with the best 100 novels, then technically it wouldn’t be eligible. I just really loved The Iliad and would like to see on a list of books everyone should read.
So you’re thinking it would be a “classics you might have missed” list? I like that idea.
I like rediscovering lost classics, but I feel like it could quickly turn into an NYRB catalogue!
And love the idea of including Walcott and other poets
Should we include essays, or nonfiction written like fiction, like Annie Ernaux or Joan Didion?
We could do categories - prose, poetry, drama, essay/nonfiction. I'm not sure that's a good idea, just throwing that out there.
Throwing out what also might be a bad idea.World population by continent is roughly:
Asia - 60%
Africa - 17%
Americas - 13%
Europe - 10%
It seems like a classics list should be reflective of this in some way.
I would like to see it be very informal and just a list of the 100 books we think everyone should read-prose, poetry, biographies, memoirs, epic poems, etc.
I am just now catching up on the conversation. I also like the idea of something broad and informal. We could start with a thread of nominations as we've done in the past-- not sure how per person, but if we are looking for a top 100, we may need to allow more nominations than we usually do. We could follow up the nominations with one or two rounds of list reduction until we arrive at the final 100 (assuming that's the number we aim for). Or top X by category? Actually, that raises a question. Should we rank these? Or just come up with a top X in no particular order? (I favor the latter).
If it would help, I could pull the recommendations into my survey software and design some type of voting or ranking mechanism to arrive at the final list. This could be based on a simple vote or some type of scoring algorithm from a set of agreed-upon criteria e.g. impact/influence of the work, cultural significance, etc. (The latter could get tricky with a long list, so would need further thought).
I also favour the informal, and am rubbish at ranking books. But what about doing something like 100 classics from the past 100 years?
If it's all time classics, I suspect the list will be full of all the expected titles. 1921-2021 could include contemporary books we think will or should become classics in the future
Agree on informal. I'm also keen on the 100 classics from the past 100 years idea. The idea of a list full of national epics seems like a wasted opportunity.
Or 20th and 21st century. I would hate to miss out on someone like Kafka.
I like the last 100 years approach. I guess we still have to stick Ulysses in though. ;-)
Wasn't Ulysses 1922? In which case it sneaks in! But yes 20th-21st century would work too
Emily wrote: "I like the last 100 years approach. I guess we still have to stick Ulysses in though. ;-)"Ulysses wasn't published right away, at least not legally, so I think it's within the last 100 years :)
Much as I love Ulysses, perhaps we should exclude books that are on one or two widely recognised conventional lists.
Yes, yes, I meant there's no getting away from it!
For some reason, my mind's eye read "The Odyssey" instead of Ulysses so was confused by the comments above. ;-)
I'm sympathetic to Lee's and Ben's comments about excluding works that appear on many other lists of classics. Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm hoping this group would naturally weed out the usual suspects through ranking. If a small handful of the usual suspects makes the final list (Garcia Marquez, etc.), I see it as making the final list all the more comprehensive.The key will be getting the right number of nominations for a final list of 100 so that we can weed/rank in a way that gives us a good final list.
At this stage I don't want to be too prescriptive about how we go about this, or impose my own ideas of what we are trying to achieve, so I will listen to any ideas you post here.
Those of you who are long standing members of the group may recall that the first Mookse Madness poll involved a list of 64 classics of various kinds, so it may be worth looking back at what was discussed when that list was created.