This is a super interesting pursuit. Would love to see your results somehow displayed in a chart or infographic. It could be a useful way of portray the depravity of modern media.
Discussion
Best I can do on short notice is color the scores the NYT "best books of the 21st century according to elites" list got. A score of less than 6 is either mixed morality or neutral all the way down to immoral or even evil. And that makes up pretty much 80% of the list. It tops out at around 8, and there are lots of very good books that sit above that rating, with ratings of 8 to 9.5.
And after I wrote that, I also took the top 100 goodreads books (which is slightly better than NYT), and a personal list I made of books I now plan on reading (and some I've already read). And the books that I've read that skew green/red do actually match my own experience with them, so I'm fairly confident in the results for books I haven't read.
**New York Times:**
**GoodReads**
**Personal**
Wow, I’d say that does a pretty good job of painting a picture!
You’ve read a lot of books too. What book from your list would you recommend to others to read?
It's pretty cool to see 😁
Some of the ones on that list that I have read:
The Lord of the Rings
A Wizard of Earthsea
To Kill a Mockingbird
Needful Things
More than half of those are ones I haven't read yet, but have been in my audiobook library. I was able to cut some from the list that I wouldn't have enjoyed thanks to this prompt.
Lord of the Rings is such a task to take on, but it would be cool to read it at some point. I haven’t heard of A Wizard of Earthsea or Needful Things though. I’ll have to check those out. Thanks!
Lord of the Rings is the best of the best of the last century, a true modern epic. And you're welcome!
Absolutely. I read it first as a teenager, and a couple more times since (the hobbit included). I go back and forth between that and the Foundation series being my favorites. I'm a pretty big Asimov fan.
I've read Dune more times than I can remember. Such an incredible book for the year it was written, so much better than the awful movie adaptations. https://briangreen.net/reading