Guardian Unveils Top 20 Geek Novels

Yes, yes, I know, I know, lists of the best novels, best songs, best movies, best diners, best chip wagons, best bars to get drunk in with a member of the Hell's Angels etc. are totally arbitrary.

Still, I can't help thinking that the British newspaper The Guardian came up with what seems to be a great idea.

Jack Schofield, the Guardian technology blogger, saw that Time Magazine had produced a list of the "all-time 100 great novels" published in English since 1923 (when it started publishing).

Schofield thought it would be tempting to survey readers about the best geek novels (brain-challenging, with a futuristic or science-fiction twist) written in the same time period.

Number 1 on the list: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Most votes against a book: Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Of course, Schofield's blog being a technology blog, it accepts comments and the readers of geek novels being, well, very geeky, the comments flooded in fast and furious. The comments are as much fun as the list itself.

Two remarks:

1) based on the comments, this computer generation of ours reads books, lots and lots of books
2) I realized I read more than half of the geek novels on the list. I need to get out more.