Books, in general, are good!
We’re big fans of books here. Sure, that should be obvious. We’re a library support organization. We have assorted book podcasts. We’ve done book groups – in person and online.
You can definitely quibble over books that are “bad” for you in some way – too boring, too long, not a subject you are interested in reading about. All perfectly fine. Libraries should carry a diverse range of books for just this reason: not all books are good for all people.
But what are people more interested in knowing? They want to know what good books are.
And here is where things get challenging. “Good” is subjective – it doesn’t mean to me what it means to you. So it’s an interesting attempt to determine lists of best books – because it means “good for the person/organization” assembling this list. It does not mean in any way that the lists of “good” books are books that are good to me, interesting to me, or enjoyable to me.
So, drop that idea of a universal list immediately.
It doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. And there is no need for it to exist.
Instead, let’s think about sharing books that are good for the person we are talking with. Good readers advisory will do this – connect a person with a book THEY want to read, not something we think was great. (Unless, of course, that book also sounds like something that would connect with them.)
We’re moving toward the end of the year and that always prompts “BEST BOOKS OF….” fill in the blank with whatever. This is a good opportunity to practice some information literacy skills: Look to see how the list was created. Maybe the books are great for you, or your patrons, or to add to your collection. But don’t feel like you need to follow any list exactly. Some books will be good, some not be right for your needs. Not a problem.
One of the biggest book organizations in the world is OCLC. And of course, they rank books!
“What makes a novel “great”? At OCLC, we believe literary greatness can be measured by how many libraries have a copy on their shelves.
Yes, libraries offer access to trendy and popular books. But, they don’t keep them on the shelf if they’re not repeatedly requested by their communities over the years. We’ve identified 100 timeless, top novels—those found in thousands of libraries around the world—using WorldCat, the world’s largest database of library materials.”
Sure. That seems entirely reasonable in a definition. And it definitely works for them: it’s easy to measure, and it uses their tools. Cool. Absolutely not wrong.
Looking at the list of their top 100, I was…bored.
Sure, I’ve heard of all these books. I’ve read a bunch of them. But…it’s the same set of books I’ve been seeing since I was in high school. Fine, but….We can do better.
This list strikes me as one of those sets of books that are popular because they have always been popular. Almost entirely written by white people, almost entirely people from the US and Britain, the vast majority males. I zipped through and counted not quite 20 books by women – and four of them were Jane Austen. (Speaking personally: Bleh. I find her stuff so boring, all discussions of how horrible women’s lives were that I can’t enjoy them. But, of course other people do; so they should be in libraries. Because that exact kind of diversity is valuable.)
None of these are “bad” categories, but these are really easy categories to find lots of books in libraries already. Walk to a random library shelf, close your eyes, stick out your hand, and grab a book. You have a pretty good chance of grabbing a book written by a man, probably one who is white, and probably one who is from the US or Britain. That’s not bad or wrong. But it’s not giving us a good reflection of the books available to us, and it’s not giving a good reflection of the people we live with in our communities.
These are not at all the books I would look to when I’m trying to find good books – for myself or for a library. Where are the fun books? The interesting books? The science fiction books? The mystery books? The travel books? I found nothing on here that I added to my TBR list. (Which is already booming out of control, so maybe that’s just as well!)
They do also offer an extended list of the 500 books most available in libraries, and that does add some more interesting, current books to the mix. But overall, it still reads like a “safe” boring list of books that someone bought just because it seemed like the right thing to do – not because the books were going to be interesting to their specific community members.
And still: these are perfectly fine books! Nothing at all wrong with adding them, reading them, enjoying them! I would like to you add in the “AND” statement of “AND read some other books!” here, so you have things that will appeal to a broader range of readers.
What is the takeaway here?
Read books – lots of books! Read old ones and new ones. Books by men and books by women. Books by WASPS and books by immigrants. Books by people who live in all sorts of places, have all sorts of ideas, and express all sorts of ideas.
Go ahead and browse over the “best of” book lists – there are probably some good suggestions. But look at a bunch of different lists, to help you find the best books for you – because that’s the only definition of “good” that matters.