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Comment by hungryhobbit | Hacker News Reader

What an awful list!

And I say that as a Modern Literature major who has read a lot on that list. FAULKNER IS A TERRIBLE WRITER! And while James Joyce and some of the others are good writers, they don't deserve multiple entries in the top 100.

It's clear this list is really "5 librarians personal favorites."

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The sentence "FAULKNER IS A TERRIBLE WRITER" is one of the most incredible sets of words I've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

It was from a list of 440 books (possibly what Random House then had in stock) and voted on by the board members --- it's been widely criticized/commented on, see the Wikipedia article for some further links on this.

The Sound and the Fury is an incredible piece of art with a beautifully structured narrative, in my reading of it. Why do you say he's a terrible writer in your opinion? Who would you rank higher?

Can you recommend a better one? I picked it at random when I wanted to explore literature, but it seemed to be cited often enough.

One that does not omit Dostoevsky or García Marquez over mediocre books in the English language would be a good start.

Again, this list is from Random House, a major American English-language book publisher.

My suggestion would be to start with the authors nominated for a Nobel prize for literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit...

Filtering by those available in readily available English translations should yield a workable list.

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