Illustration by Lisa Sheehan. How our list of the 100 best novels became a page turner. The Guardian’s landmark poll of the greatest novels published in English required collaboration and innovation across multiple desks. This is the story of how it came together.
Everyone was asking each other the same questions. How many have you read? Which ones are you going to read now? What must-reads do you think are missing? Matt Freeman, a 46-year-old designer from London, resolved to finally get around to Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie: “I’ve had it on my shelf for years – a clothbound edition because I thought that if I invested in a really great copy, I’d read it. And now I’ll finally do so – it’ll mean I can tick another one off this list.” He was talking about the Guardian’s list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled from the votes of more than 170 authors, critics and academics from around the world. Matt was one of 400 Guardian readers who gathered in London’s Conway Hall last week for a sold-out panel event about the list, published as a countdown throughout the previous week. Another 1,000 readers joined via a video livestream.
Kiaran Weil, 74, had travelled from Darwen in north-west England and was there with her daughter and granddaughter: “We thought this would be a great thing to do together and so we’re three generations here tonight.” Her favourite novel, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, hadn’t made the list. But her granddaughter’s top pick had clinched a spot: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was ranked 16th. Some readers brought along a favourite book to swap with others. But even the bustle and vibes in the hall didn’t fully capture the buzz that had brought them there: the interactive list has now had more than 4 million page views. As Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said: “The result has been an online sensation.” Since then, more than 3,000 readers have submitted their own top three novels in a follow-up poll to be published next week.
To spark this kind of global cultural conversation is no simple feat. It took months of teamwork across the Guardian. And it took our audience, whose hunger for life-changing reads transformed the project into a phenomenon. Here, we reveal the work behind the scenes: the polling, coding, reporting, designing and data-crunching.
Poll Positions
When Charlotte Northedge and Liese Spencer, the Guardian’s joint heads of books, first proposed the idea of a list of the 100 best novels, they aimed for more ambitious than previous rankings. “We wanted to think beyond previous lists that had just been curated internally,” says Liese. “So we decided to poll lots of people who read a lot and spend their days thinking about books.” The books desk polled 380 authors, critics and academics for their top 10 novels. After gentle nudging and urgent prodding, 172 respondents cast 1,720 votes – including Stephen King, Elif Shafak, Salman Rushdie, Maggie O’Farrell, Ian McEwan, Bernardine Evaristo, Colm Tóibín and Siri Hustvedt.
The list includes interactive features allowing readers to see who voted for each novel, peek at their favourite novelist’s top 10, and tally how many of the 100 they’ve read. “We wanted it to be a fun experience where you could click on the list and go as deep as you want,” says Liese. “There was so much enthusiasm and input from across the organisation.” One dilemma was how to weight the votes. “For the scoring mechanism, we didn’t know how much significance to give to each respondent’s order of books,” says Tom Richards, an engineer on the digital investigations team. “For some voters, the ranking was arbitrary. So we placed more emphasis on the raw number of votes.” A list like this is subjective. As Elif Shafak told readers: “I didn’t think of [my top 10] as the greatest novels for everyone, but personally for me: these were books that had touched me, changed me and have stayed with me.”
Author Guy Gunaratne added they selected “books that I would love to give to someone because I know it would have such a monumental impact on them.” Even if not scientifically definitive, the work was rigorous. For ties, data analysts looked at factors like average position and best position. To avoid typos, Tom built a bespoke voting tool using Open Library, generating standardised ballot forms. “When they submitted their forms, the data flowed straight into our spreadsheet.”
Design and Data
The effort to make the list visually arresting was matched by its user-friendliness. Digital designer Barry Ainslie explains the falling books animation: “There’s a vogue for replicating nature with coding, so the team had this idea of books falling like leaves. The falling effect feels arresting and organic.” However, because the list was unveiled in stages, some covers were blanked out until revealed. “We also had to temporarily redact some titles in voters’ top 10s so that we weren’t giving anything away too early,” Barry adds. Frederick O’Brien, a journalist and software developer, says the biggest coding challenge was wiring up data to reveal the list 20 books at a time, leaving ‘censored’ spots to tease those yet to be revealed. Other features include viewing the list as book spines or a gallery of covers, and dog-eared folds on tabs indicating read books. The tally function has proved a great hook. “That’s your entry point for talking about the whole thing,” says Liese. “And it’s also quite motivating.”
A Meeting Place for Authors and Readers
The other big talking point has been missing books and authors. Lisa Allardice, the Guardian’s chief books writer, interrogated the list in a thoughtful article. At the event, a reader asked how to make challenging books more accessible. Panellists highlighted collective pursuit. Guy held up a battered copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses with margin notes from friends: “A communal experience when reading is very fruitful.” It seemed fitting for the event and the Guardian’s books coverage. “One reason there’s been such a great response is because the Guardian has always been a lovely meeting place for authors and readers,” says Liese. “And Guardian readers are very passionate about books. The response has been truly inspirational.” This idea sparks a flashback to a time at school when I was mocked for reading novels outside the syllabus. Reading felt lonely then, but I soon found a place to make it a shared experience: the books section of the Guardian.
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