The latest version of Whitcoulls Top 100 List is up. It makes for interesting reading as usual. It has the usual mix of classics and first-timers, some of which will go on to become classics and others which will vanish without trace, based on forces beyond the ken of mortals. Fifteen of the titles have been on the list for ten years, twenty titles are appearing for the first time.
Lord of the Rings is at number one. Again. I don’t get this. SF&F is something of a minority interest, accounting for about 10% of fiction sales. So why does our Mother Ship come in at #1 every time? Is it because the self-selected voters are disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the genre readers? Or are there large armies of readers who would never want to get any of that icky Fantasy stuff on them, but who have a soft spot for LotR for some reason? Interesting stuff.
I count eighteen SF&F books among the 100, modulo the usual problems of what counts as SF&F.
Dear old Cross-Stitch is still there, at #4. Must read it some time. The Da Vinci Code is still there, although it’s dropped to #7. I had hoped that this would be a flash in the pan, but it’s been on the list for some time now, and seems to be heading for classic status. The Bible makes it to #15. It’s kind of embarrassing to see The Secret there (#80). I think the one to watch is Twilight (#44) – will it vanish without trace, or is it heading for classic status?
There is one cookbook (if you’re a Kiwi, you don’t need to be told which one), and I think two non-fiction books (A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Penguin History of New Zealand).
Sixty-nine authors are present once only, with eleven authors having more than one book on the list as follows:
| Author |
Count |
| Marian Keyes |
7 |
| Bryce Courtenay |
6 |
| JK Rowling |
6 |
| Jodi Picoult |
5 |
| Paullina Simmons |
3 |
| Dan Brown |
2 |
| Lee Child |
2 |
| Jennifer Donnelly |
2 |
| Ken Follett |
2 |
| Khaled Hosseini |
2 |
| JRR Tolkien |
2 |
Borders has just announced that it is running a Top 100 vote as well. It’ll be very interesting to see how closely their list matches Whitcoulls’s.