Nothing beats a list, as I had cause to notice during a slack-jawed weekend lull spent watching the 100 best songs ever to appear in films.
None the less, when one is involved in the compilation of the list, it takes on a different complexion; in other words, you pretty much start from the position that whatever you do will be wrong. You'll enrage some people, bore others and provoke still more into rooting out the glaring omissions and quibbling with what seemed to you the most obvious inclusions.
And this, in the end, has to be your best hope: to get a debate going, to get people thinking and arguing and exchanging ideas and opinions, writes Alex Clark.
Not that you expect that chatter to go on and on.
In 2003, the Observer's literary editor, Robert McCrum, published a list of the 100 greatest novels of all time (rather more modestly described as the 'essential fiction of the past 300 years').
None of us particularly expected that his choices would be attracting attention three years later. But, thanks to a posting on fark.com, over 35,000 eager readers have revisited the list this week alone.
Comments on fark.com have ranged from the straightforward - 'Henderson the Rain King is better than Herzog, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles is better than Jude the Obscure' - to my very favourite, 'What's a novel?'
This is either uber-smart literary criticism, or mischief-making. Or just plain odd.
But, taken another way, it's a perfectly sensible question, because even if we agree that a novel is a piece of fiction that conforms to certain (albeit flexible) conventions, we're no nearer deciding on what makes a good novel.
And we never will be, because I could spend three days arguing that Herzog is better than Henderson the Rain King, and Jude the Obscure is better than Tess of the D'Urbervilles and come nowhere near convincing someone who held the opposing view, never mind someone who thought that Dan Brown knocks Saul Bellow into a cocked hat.
No matter. Feel free to continue to argue with Robert's choices; he and I are busily engaged on compiling another literary list - of much more compact scope but, we hope, no less interest - that we'll unveil sometime in the autumn.
