The Great Reading Competition
Introduction
Reviews
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The Modern Library Top 100
The Great Reading Competition
Number of Books Reviewed So Far: 234
| Note: When searching, enter the full title of the book, a category name as it appears on this site, or the author's name in the format "last, first". | |
| Overall Scoreboard | |||
| WILL | 3 | DAVE | 2 |
Spring, 2009: German Literature
The current reading competition is German Literature, which shall include both works written in the German language, and those written by German- (or Austrian-) born authors. It will also include Arthur Koestler, whose last name really looks Germanic.
This time the competition will run from December 12th (the last day of Will's first quarter at graduate school) to the Fourth of July, 2009. This will be the longest leg of the competition to date, and should give Will plenty of time to sneak in a few pages of German literature amongst the many thousands of pages of African history he's going to be reading throughout the rest of his first year at Stanford.
Final Scoreboard
The Spring, 2009 competition has officially ended. The final results are posted below:
| WILL | DAVE | |||||||
| # | Title/Author | Date Read | Pages | # | Title/Author | Date Read | Pages | |
| 1 | Kaspar and Other Plays by Peter Handke | 12/13 | 140 | 1 | The Neverending Story by Michael Ende | 12/26 | 396 | |
| 2 | Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers | 12/21 | 687 | 2 | The Nutcracker and The Golden Pot by E. T. A. Hoffmann | 1/16 | 123 | |
| 3 | Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse | 12/28 | 520 | 3 | The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx | 2/11 | 86 | |
| 4 | Illuminations by Walter Benjamin | 1/29 | 265 | 4 | The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka | 3/17 | 121 | |
| 5 | The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt | 7/3 | 516 | 5 | The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | 5/23 | 176 | |
| 6 | — | — | — | 6 | Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche | 7/1 | 256 | |
| 7 | — | — | — | 7 | The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann | 7/4 | 729 | |
| Total: | 2,128 | Total: | 1,887 | |||||
| Average Book Length: | 426 | Average Book Length: | 270 | |||||
Results
The winner of the third leg of the Great Reading Competition (Spring, 2009: German Literature), and the coveted Golden Egret, is: WILL. Congratulations to Will, who pulled off an eleventh hour victory all the way from Morocco, and avenged his stinging defeat in the previous leg of the Great Reading Competition. Well done!
Note: There is much, much to be said about this leg of the competition. Here's a short summary:
- For the first time in the competition's history, Will drew first blood.
- Dave read more books this time around than he had in both of the previous legs of the competition combined, and in so doing retained the title Tome Swallower.
- Yet again, Dave claimed the Longfellow by being the only one to complete The Magic Mountain (729 pages), a book Will began reading before Dave, but failed to finish before the competition's close.
- Both Will and Dave finished a book at the last possible moment. Dave finished The Magic Mountain a few hours before midnight on July 4th, and pulled ahead briefly, only to learn later via e-mail that Will had finished The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy a few hours before that.
- The enormous gap between Will's fourth and fifth books is worth at least one comment. Indeed, most of Will's reading this time was completed in an airport (the first time on the way to Italy; the second time, on the way to Morocco).
Without a doubt, this was the most hotly contested leg of the Great Reading Competition yet. Both opponents performed admirably, and put forth a good effort. Will we see our first repeat winner next time? Only time will tell!
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