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Le Monde, 101 Books

After compiling a list of the 100 greatest novels according to Le Monde's critics, the newspaper decided to engage its readership by asking them to vote for their favorite novels. A total of 26,000 readers participated, each submitting up to five titles. This exercise was both challenging and enjoyable for the participants, who had to reflect on their reading experiences and make difficult choices to narrow down their selections.

From these contributions, Le Monde collected 70,000 book titles, out of which 11,000 unique books were mentioned. The final list consists of the top 101 novels, reflecting the diverse tastes and personal literary "Pantheons" of the readers. Notably, this list differs significantly from the critics' list, with only 17 titles appearing on both. The selection process was free from algorithms, focusing instead on the personal connections and memories that readers have with these works.

This list was originally published in 2019 and was added to this site almost 2 years ago.