Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
I counted them and you have 998 (or 1,000) titles on your list of the "999 Greatest Works". What gives?
You've caught us out. But check back in a while and you'll see the number of listed titles once again matches the number in the headline. The numbers of works in the other lists, like the "666 Greatest Novels" and "444 Greatest Stories", sometimes get out of whack too but are also eventually corrected.
This is because the lists are in continual flux. In each category we are always discovering a deserving title or two and want to add them before we've had time to review the entire list to decide which title or two can be removed to keep the total number aligned. You can imagine what an anguished decision deleting a book from a "greatest" list can be.
Sometimes, though less often, we are encouraged by new research or changing tastes to take a book off a list, or to move it to a different list, and we haven't yet found a new book to add to keep the numbers topped up.
But in both cases we eventually get it right.
Until then, we let the list sit slightly high or slightly low. We figure most readers, unlike you, are not going to count every book on a list to see if the number is exactly right.
See also:
Selected Authors: Commentaries
How the Greatest Literature was selected
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