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Well, somebody had to be first!
This is not of course to disparage Joyce or Faulkner or Vonnegut or Orwell, any of whose works would have made a worthy first place. I think the value of that survey is to demonstrate that a great book can be popular as well as profound, engage the emotions as well as the intellect, satisfy high, low and middle brows all at once. And it's a stunning rebuke to the Toynbee/Greer/Booker Prize circlejerk of Literary Correctness who hold that a book, to be valid, must be sneering and/or unreadable.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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