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Following Charlie Bassett's analysis of the great literary canon debate
(Colby, winter 1999) we invited readers to submit their own top-10 book
lists. And guess what? Bassett was right. Readers were all over the map about
which books are "good."
Sure, we got some of the usual suspects--The Catcher in the Rye (J. D.
Salinger) most popular among them. But we also got some (shall we say?)
quirkier nominees: Primary Colors (Anonymous), The Feynmann Lectures
on Physics and A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle) to mention a
few.
Where was The Great Gatsby, the highest-rated book from the combined
Modern Library 100 and Library Journal lists? No one even mentioned it.
Proving that any such poll reflects the sensibilities of the group surveyed
were the presence of Richard Russo's The Risk Pool, E. Annie Proulx
'57's Postcards and Jim Boylan's Getting In.
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