Globe
Legend
TimeLady

good job all

I'm assuming this is for overall?

my votes were personal preference so i guess that wasn't what i was supposed to do.

i won't pretend to know enough about books to give another form of ranking

RT that writeup was amazing, love the Escher pictures

Overall
Bobman
RT
someone else

Critical
Bobman
Legend
RT


bobman crushed this imo.

EDIT: although obviously there are a fair few authors i haven't read, and in particular Kioshk's house is one I don't feel qualified to evaluate. But I think that generally I would be more in favour of a balanced house than one with such specific focus. OTOH, that might just be houses with a focus on stuff i don't know/like - I like bobman's house which appears to focus on books kokiri likes

Overall

bobman
Roundtower
Zurvan

Sales
Dwetzel/cbec
Zurvan
Roundtower

Critical
kioshk
legend
luckbox

Did william gibson go undrafted? I always liked him, and thought that especially after cyberpunk was no longer cool, his books were pretty solid reads.

He was not drafted. I think I've only ever read Neuromancer, and that was probably 15 years ago, but I remember liking it. Not enough to read more.

Sales:
Time Lady
Globetrotter
Zurvan


Critical:
RoundTower
Kioshk
Legend42


Overall:
Bobman
Globetrotter
Roundtower

Is it bad that my only favorite author to be drafted was Stephen King??

probably

I read too many historical politics books imo

My votes:

Sales: I think it is important to pay attention to the criteria. Mao's Little Red Book may have sold millions, but then again I could sell 100 million copies of my book if I had a whole bunch of dudes with guns as my sales force. I also think with sales I am much less interested in who sold books in their heyday and with who could sell copies now. There are endless hosts of authors who sold books in their time, but are now forgotten. Barbara Cartland simply isn't selling copies in 2010. So my votes are:

3. Globe - A really good balance of popular authors, but not ones that will become dated too quickly. J.K Rowling will be read for ages to come as will Vonnegut and Michael Crichton. I don't think Peanuts has staying power. I see no interest in the characters by my daughter's generation. This is a good well balanced list though and good for third in this category.

2. Time Lady - I feel like this list was made to win the sales category, and as such I might have aimed a little more at pure sales and skipped Mao and Samuel Beckett. I think it relies a bit too much on historical sales rather than current appeal, but it is a list that is built to sell a lot of copies.

1. Zurvan - I struggled with this because I didn't like his list at first. I don't care for some of the fantasy authors he chose, but is just about impossible to beat a list with Stephen King, John Grisham and JD Robb on it. These are authors that would sell just as briskly today as when they first started writing. I consider Robb and Robert Jordan to be deplorable hacks, but they are successful for a reason and can really churn out material for the Zurvan publishing house.

Next category rating to come in the next post.

Most Critically Acclaimed -

Honorable mention goes to a number of people here. I really wanted to include Roundtower in this list, but the first half of his list is just so much stronger than his second half.

3. Legend - I think critics would have very little problem with his list. I would think that Hunter Thompson and Bukowski are the weak point. They haven't aged particularly well and I don't think they would be the critical darlings they once were. Dickens and Dostoyevsky however are strong choices.

2. Kioshk - I really could toss a coin between Kioshk and my number one. I see Cormac McCarthy and Faulkner as untouchable in this category. Beyond that, Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth are the type of writers who are much better covered by critics than they are read. This is a book lovers list and I think it is really well thought out.

1. Bobman - This list wins because it is more imaginative in its interpretation of critically acclaimed. David Mamet is a critics darling in screen and play writing. John LeCarre is the gold standard of his genre as is Rex Stout to a lesser extent. James Joyce covers the high brow critical space. Michael Chabon is the most intriguing young author writing today and may end up with the most awards by the time his career is done.

Overall

3. Zurvan - I may not claim this list as my favorite, but I may have read more books by his authors than any others. I like that he went with his taste and didn't put too much effort into a false respectability.

2. Kioshk - Dude has great taste. It isn't just a list of famous authors. These are all people who have held up well and would still sell reliably today. It is not the highest selling literary stable, but I don't see anyone on there who is chosen just for their name. This is the list I wish I was reading, but I just read genre crap instead.

1. Bobman - I would feel better about this vote if I felt he was more into the contest, but he simply chose the best, most well rounded and compelling list. He has the most enduring and influential classic woman in Jane Austen. She would have been my number two behind Shakespeare. He has Joyce, who is just as important as your teachers tell you he is. Chabon is a great talent. I don't hate anyone on his list. That alone is an achievement. I have to say that my vote for number one wasn't even close.

OVERALL

I think everyone did well with their selections and all the "publishers" have at least a few writers I've read and enjoyed/admired, as well as some I've never read (or, in some cases, never heard of before). I'll seek out some of the latter when I get the chance. This vote is really just based on my personal preferences. I may vote on the other categories later.

First: Birdman
Second: RoundTower (great writeup too)
Third: gder/ibavly

Birdman ended up having the strongest lineup of the three imo. I loved RoundTower and gder/ibavly's first half picks, but they lost me a bit in the second half.

Honorable Mentions: Globe, who was on and off the list at various times.
And TL, who had a great children's list. FWIW, I was a Famous Five fan in grade school.

George Orwell

Writer of one of the best known books of the 20th century: 1984. Not only a great story, but the social commentary has become some ubiquitous as to overshadow the book itself. Concepts such as “big brother,” “double speak” (originating from newspeak), “thought police” all find their origin in Orwell’s works. Even his last name has become an adjective.

Animal farm continues his knack for politics as he extends a metaphor of communism to a farm for an entire novel.

So famous was he for his fictional novels, one often forgets Orwell as one of the fathers of the essay. His commentary on society, politics, etc continues to shape the way we think, just as his writing style continues to pervade our language.


Edgar Allan Poe

Probably the best short story writer in history, Poe can be considered the predecessor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his character Detective Dupin (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter), the grandfather of science fiction, and father of the horror genre. The Tell Tale heart is perhaps one of the best known short stories in history.
Poe also wrote poetry. See the Raven, a poem so influential as to have an NFL team named after it. And for good reason.

Poe was also an accomplished literary critic.


John Steinbeck

A great writer who was able to develop characters and settings to an incredible degree. Won a Pulitzer and a Nobel prize. Of Mice and Men. The Grapes of Wrath. East of Eden.


Ayn Rand

Probably my most contentious pick of the draft. I feel like Ayn Rand could justifiably gone first round. You will find few more fanatical fan bases then amongst Rand fans. She gave birth to a philosophy know as “objectivism” which pervade her novels. Though often criticized for her less than believable characters, they are none the less iconic. Her sales numbers back up the idea that she is consistently a fan favorite, and slaves of Atlas Shrugged, a classic of American Literature, sells better now than at any point in history.


H.G. Wells

Along with Jules Verne, H.G Wells is the father of science fiction. Books like War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, continue to captivate people as much today as they did when they were originally written.


Alexandre Dumas

One of the most read novelists of all time, Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers continue to be famous and read almost exclusively for pleasure today. The adventures in his stories make him popular in almost any circle of readers.


Nathaniel Hawthorne

Through his incredible and beautiful writing style, Hawthorne explores ideas surrounding guilt, sin, and evil—relatable in a timeless way as each in inexorably linked with the human condition. The Scarlet Letter is renown to almost any student of literature.

ee cummings

My favorite poet. He is really really good. And really really unique. Once you open your mind and begin to understand him, no one can give you what ee cummings can. No h0mo.


Marcel Proust

I haven’t read much by Proust, and nothing all the way through, but I know he is considered to be one of the best French writers of all time. Arguably one of the best writers of all time, Proust could easily have been a first round pick (J.K. Rowling anyone?).


C.S. Forrester

Great adventure novelist. I have read 13 of his novels and they are all great. He can be appreciated on almost any reading level. He is best known for the series of books that tell the story of Horatio Hornblower.


Alexander Pushkin

Another author that I haven’t read much by but could have been a first round pick. Pushkin is, along with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, one of most widely regarded Russian authors. He is considered the father of Russian Literature.


William Butler Yeats

The first Irish writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Yeats continued his critical acclaim AFTER he won the prize with the writing of The Tower. Yeats, though certainly very well respected, was mainly a preference pick for me as I think his writing is beautiful.


Joe Haldeman

Another preference pick, Haldeman wrote my favorite novel, “The Forever War” which is a good companion to “Starship Troopers” by Heinlein. He has a great style, and is very subtle. Which I like.


Geoffrey Chaucer

Canterbury Tales. Duh. Father of English Literature and one of the first great writers in the English language.


John Updike

He won the Pulitzer for fiction twice. He just wrote a TON of stuff. A ton of GOOD stuff.


Tom Stoppard

Preference pick. My favorite playwright. He is just hilarious. I laugh out loud just READING his plays. I played the dead body in a highschool production of “The Real Inspector Hound.” Go me. The ironic thing is that although we put on the play like 3 times (not to mention the dress rehersals), I never saw the play because I always had my eyes closed.


With Orwell, Poe, Pushkin, Proust, Steinbeck, Updike…really I would say there are only like 2 or 3 of my picks that aren’t HUGELY critically acclaimed, I think I have that category on lockdown. And I don’t think it is particularly close. Between all of my writers I would wager I have more Pulitzers and Nobel Prizes than any other house. I think I have the best overall authors too, but that is less clear cut. I have a few good selling authors, but I would say that is the only category I don't think I lead in.

Some quotes:

George Orwell

“A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.”


Edgar Allan Poe

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”


John Steinbeck

“In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

“It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”


Ayn Rand

“From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.”

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”


H.G. Wells

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.”


Alexandre Dumas

“All for one and one for all.”

“Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.”


Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.”

“No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”


ee cummings

“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands”


Marcel Proust

“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.”


C.S. Forrester

“The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be.”

Alexander Pushkin

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us then ten-thousand truths.”


William Butler Yeats

“A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.”

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”


Joe Haldeman

“"I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely 'cowardice' had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live."


Geoffrey Chaucer

“Habit maketh no monke, ne wearing of guilt spurs maketh no knight.”


John Updike

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”

“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”


Tom Stoppard

“If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.”

“James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.”

We should do drafts like this for all-time football players. Or world leaders.

i don't know how it would work, but can you imagine how awesomely argumentative an draft your own nation would be with people picking norway's coastline, australian raw materials, the declaration of independence, the sas, the nobel prize committee, etc etc

*grumble* This makes it sound like she wasn't writing, and selling, books in the 1990s -- which she was, she died 10 years ago -- and was instead writing her books about Caveman Og dragging his woman into the other cave. It also ignores the fact that if she was 20% as successful, she'd still be one of the best selling authors in the draft.

Sorry to interject, but that seemed a particularly ill-thought offhand comment.

Critical Acclaim

In third, Birdman. I'm overlooking the inclusion of Ayn Rand to give props to a house that is critically solid from top to bottom. I love Orwell at #1 and Stoppard at #12, and I like most of what's in between.

In second, Legend. Legend has a great stable, and if I had to bet on best literary taste in the draft, I'd probably give it to him. Nevertheless, a lot of his picks reflect his personal taste over the critics, and that's just enough to give the edge to...

Kioshk! This was not a selection I had difficulty with. All-stars straight down the roster.


Sales

dwetzel in 3rd. On historical numbers, I think his house does better than this, but primarily because of a handful of authors that might or might not thrive today. Still a great house that will rake in the $$$.

In 2nd, globetrotter. I think this house is primed to move a lot of dead trees in 2010. A lot of authors who will be very, very popular.

First by a couple of booklengths, timelady. Obviously she knows what sells, and she went for it on every pick.


Overall

In third, Zurvan. I'm a fantasy nerd, so what can I say? A bit too one-dimensional to move further up the standings.

RoundTower. I just love the passion of this house. I also love the way he united eclecticity(?) with a clear underlying unified taste. I'm docking a lot of points for Dan Brown and Paolo Coehlo, both of whom I really hate, but even with that, I have to pick RoundTower first overall!

In second, globe. I feel like if I had to pick a house solely from the authors I didn't actually pick, I would have picked something close to what globe did.

i didn't follow draft or read any of that thread, just this thread, and mostly just the author names and skimmed through writeups



overall:
1st - dwetzel - most names i wrote down when writing down which authors add to me voting for each person; i calvin and hobbes which prolly put him over the top
2nd - gder - twain and tolkien went to the same team?! wtf; and lewis/salinger along with children classics berenstein and grimm bros? nice job
3rd - zurvan - i like his range and the great guys he got in each category he went after; definitely cream of the crop

critical:
1st - roundtower - shakespeare and dahl
2nd - legend - dostoevsky and dickens and london and sinclair? much acclaim
3rd - bobman - hemingway and homer? nice touch with mamet as well


sales:
1st - zurvan - king and grisham for sales? nice duo; i like lee and moore additions as well
2nd - globe - rowling and crichton and meyer and gladwell; nice move with schultz, too
3rd - timepublishing - seuss!clancy and potter will sell some books, too

overall:

1st - RoundTower
2nd - globetrotter
3rd - TimeLady