Playing favorites (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
This is something I thought about doing every time a "favorite" thread comes up. It's a book ranking/vote system. Give it a try. You can only vote once, so don't just choose random titles. ;)

https://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://bukowski.net/bookranking/

After enough people enter their favorites there we should have a good recommendation list.

Oh yeah, you don't have to be registered in the forum to cast your vote. Anyone can chime in.
 
The voting system looks fine! I think I noticed a minor error though. It says that Pleasures is a compilation of poems and prose! It's a compilation of poems only, of course...
 
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of the five voting catagories
my choices are leading in four of the five catagories.

we will see how it changes as more sleepy voters
wake from their holiday coma...
 
"The Gods play no favorites - they break us in half." (or something like that.) forgot where that is from.

Anyway, I'm glad 'Factotum' isn't #1 anymore. It's nice, but it's not a #1 ...
 
I thought a while about which novel to select. Ham on Rye might be the best example of true novel form, but when it came down to what my favorite is, Factotum was a relatively easy #1 for me.
 
I thought a while about which novel to select. Ham on Rye might be the best example of true novel form, but when it came down to what my favorite is, Women was a relatively easy #1
for me.
 
Well, it will be interesting to see how it shakes out in a few months, when more casual visitors chime in. I don't know what it will mean, if anything, but at least it's something to point people to when they ask questions.
 
Screams from the Balcony is strong, as I expected. One hell of a book, really. And to think that he wrote it all as letters out in the blue, no carbons, no copies, at one person a time and never (knowing) (or wanting) to ever get it back, to ever do something with it ... Some of his best writing ever, imho. Raw funny tragic brilliant outbursting genius.

In this case it's really as the saying goes: Even his breadcrumbs are enough for ten other writers to take from.
 
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Well, it will be interesting to see how it shakes out in a few months, when more casual visitors chime in. I don't know what it will mean, if anything,...

Right! You probably can't rely too much on the results, because most people only have some of the books and they'll have to vote accordingly, so we should'nt be surprised if f.ex. a weak poetry collection gets a relatively high ranking.
 
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right. but i prefer the letters from the 70s (='Living on Luck').

Me too!

Johannes: I agree! "Reach For The Sun" seems to be the weakest of the three for me too.
I still have'nt read "Beerspit.." from cover to cover, only a little bit here and there. I think it's due to Martinelli's weird writing (sunshine=zunzhine, and=&, you=yew, wd=would, is=iz, etc.etc.). It somehow turns me off.
 
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Me too!
I still have'nt read "Beerspit.." from cover to cover, only a little bit here and there. I think it's due to Martinelli's weird writing (sunshine=zunzhine, and=&, you=yew, wd=would, is=iz, etc.etc.). It somehow turns me off.

It really sucks the first time. I was also somehow disappointed about B.'s letter-style there. So very different from all the others, seemingly trying to match up Martinelli ... but the more I've read it, the more fascinating it got.

There is a own Beerspit-thread somewhere, so I don't want to write any essays here, but if you give it a close reading (maybe excluding the Martinelli-letters at first) it shows a side of B. which is never expressed that way anywhere else. Accentuating and cultivating a sort of well-read, cultivated, artist-side of his persona interspersed with the sort of genuine Bukowskisms (like the title of the book is one) that later and in parallel letters to the Webbs, Corrington etc. is the accent there. Don't know if I'm able to make clear what I want to say :) ... but this kind of fascinates me. It shows the ambivalence and many many dimensions of his personality.

You get the feeling, that he had immense respect for Martinelli and at the same time he didn't gave one bit of ground to all her views and demands, playing her quite cool and skilled, through all the posing and flirting and keeping-him-interesting that might be there.

While Martinelli on the other side, though the artsy-fartsy-beat-flavor of her writing-style sucks nowadays, was an unconventional extraordinary kind of woman, as far as one can tell from here. And she recognized the energy, power and originality of the B.-force right away and responded to it as he did to her and hers.

It's a very interesting correspondence in many ways, but very different from all the others too, so you have to kind of read yourself into it. But it's worth it, imho.
 
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It's a very interesting correspondence in many ways, but very different from all the others too, so you have to kind of read yourself into it. But it's worth it, imho.

Yes, Buk does come off as a well-read guy! I'll give it another go after having read your positive "review"...:)
 
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I will say that I'm surprised that Ham On Rye is far and away the most popular novel so far (though with only 78 people voting, granted). I would have bet on Post Office or Women.
 
And I'm surprised to see Post Office ranking number four after Factotum. I thought Post Office would get a higher ranking than Factotum. The rankings can still change, of course...
 
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In the novel category, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions right now are a statistical dead-heat at 16, 15, and 14 votes, respectively.

The only clear leaders, at this point, are Ham on Rye and What Matters Most....
 
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That's right! The difference is not significant. It's only one vote. It'll be interesting to see later on if there'll be a significant difference between the positions in the novel category. Still, it surprises me that Post Office and Factotum are just about even, but that'll probably change.
 
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So you're the culprit who put Factotum above Post Office in votes! I just knew that Factotum movie would make a difference...;)
 
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So you're the culprit who put Factotum above Post Office in votes! I just knew that Factotum movie would make a difference...;)

Hah! I've never seen that film, nor do I intend to. The book stands on its own merits: the funniest lines and the drilling into soul. And not quite so much about romantic relationships, which is why Women and Post Office came in just below Factotum. Barely.
 
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Hah! I've never seen that film, nor do I intend to. The book stands on its own merits: the funniest lines and the drilling into soul. And not quite so much about romantic relationships, which is why Women and Post Office came in just below Factotum. Barely.

Ah, so it was the romance bit which was the deciding factor. :)
- I think Factotum is a great novel. I like all of the novels, even Pulp, so I found it a bit hard to find a favorite to vote for.
 
my choice was CLEAR and out of doubt: HAM! So, I'm satisfied about that.
And I'll put 'Post' and 'Women' after that (before 'Factotum') anytime.
 
Now Women has come out of nowhere to within two votes of Ham on Rye. Seems like this list will not stabilize until there are a few hundred more votes.
 
After 180 votes, here's a breakdown with percentages, which gives a slightly more "familiar-to-the-eye" benchmark for comparison than just the total votes (for example, check out The Most Beautiful Woman.../Tales... vs. South of No North. The total votes seem to indicate a pretty big lead over South of No North, but the percent difference is only 4.5%).

Some surprises in here; I haven't read Love is a Dog From Hell since I bought it in ~1989. Anyway...

Novels
1 Ham On Rye (55) 30.6%
2 Women (54) 30.0%
3 Factotum (31) 17.2%
4 Post Office (25) 13.9%
5 Hollywood (8) 4.4%
6 Pulp (7) 3.9%

Poetry
1 Love Is A Dog From Hell (37) 20.6%
2 Burning In Water... (24) 13.3%
3 The Last Night Of The Earth... (19) 10.6%
4 Play The Piano Drunk... (16) 8.9%
5 Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (15) 8.3%
6 You Get So Alone At Times... (15) 8.3%
7 The Days Run Away... (14) 7.8%
8 Septuagenarian Stew (12) 6.7%
9 War All The Time (11) 6.1%
10 Dangling In The Tournefortia (10) 5.6%
11 The Roominghouse Madrigals (7) 3.9%

Prose
1 The Most Beautiful.../Tales... (66) 36.7%
2 South Of No North (58) 32.2%
3 Hot Water Music (46) 25.6%
4 Portions From A Wine-Stained... (10) 5.6%

Posthumous poetry
1 What Matters Most... (53) 29.4%
2 Betting On The Muse (34) 18.9%
3 The People Look Like Flowers... (17) 9.4%
4 Open All Night (13) 7.2%
5 The Night Torn Mad... (12) 6.7%
6 Bone Palace Ballet (12) 6.7%
7 Come On In! (11) 6.1%
8 Slouching Toward Nirvana (11) 6.1%
9 Sifting Through The Madness... (10) 5.6%
10 The Flash Of Lightning... (7) 3.9%

Other categories
1 The Movie: "Barfly" (46) 25.6%
2 The Captain Is Out To Lunch... (33) 18.3%
3 Screams From The Balcony (24) 13.3%
4 The Pleasures Of The Damned (22) 12.2%
5 Run With The Hunted (20) 11.1%
6 Shakespeare Never Did This (14) 7.8%
7 Living On Luck (8) 4.4%
8 Reach For The Sun (7) 3.9%
9 Beerspit Night And Cursing (6) 3.3%
 
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Hey, good idea.

And through the magic of php ($percentage = round(($row[count] / $answer)*100, 1)), that page now shows percentages rather than a tally.
 
I voted for, "The Roominghouse Madrigals." Shows you where my thinking rates here. Hmmm. Let me think about that. *Burp*

After 180 votes, here's a breakdown with percentages, which gives a slightly more "familiar-to-the-eye" benchmark for comparison than just the total votes...
That's really awesome, PS. I am sporadically checking to see the tally's as it fascinates me. :D

Congrats on your next post, #1400, not that I'm counting or anything...;)

Pax
 
Is it big effort to make the list show the percentage (like now) AS WELL as the total number of votes (like before)?

I find both info to be interesting.
 
I just klicked on the bookranking link, in the past it said: it seems you've already voted or something like that but now they allow me to vote again, which I don't do of course.
 
Is it big effort to make the list show the percentage (like now) AS WELL as the total number of votes (like before)?

I find both info to be interesting.
No, I don't think that would be difficult. I'll have to see if I still have the old counting code.

I just klicked on the bookranking link, in the past it said: it seems you've already voted or something like that but now they allow me to vote again, which I don't do of course.
That is IP based filtering. So if your internet connection changed (restarted your modem, etc.), the system may not have you logged. That's expected behavior.

The only other way to track the voting is through cookies and I don't want to drop those on anyone (many people have them disabled anyway).
 

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