Top 20 sci-fi, top 20 fantasy, top 20 series, etc but I'd guess they'd tend to resemble existing lists. It might be interesting to see, and the quickpoll could probably be used for it
Thing is, if my choices were to make up a substantial part of any list, it would involve a lot of selections that would be obscure to many. But I suppose asking people to list their Top 10/20 lit and 10/20 SF/F might generate something, although I suspect it'd be an odd list in terms of critical/pop lists.
Well usually you can gamble on the obvious ones showing up, like LotR, Hitchikers, Dune and Foundation, even though I don't think Foundation gets read much anymore. Every list I've seen is different to some degree though and I'm often surprised by a choice or two.
Yeah, the more people involved in devising such lists, the odds grow that such old staples would appear. If I were developing it by myself, however, none of those would appear (or at most, Dune).
For example, I would list Borges on both hypothetical lists. Very few multi-volume fantasies would make it. Lit list would have fewer Anglo-American works and more Latin American ones. Likely wouldn't provide as much a common ground from which one could then explore the works they haven't yet read themselves.
I'd not be surprised if some non-English books made the list but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to recommend any, languages have never been a knack of mine. I don't know how my own list would stack up for obscurity, title maybe but not author. I might toss out a long out of print book by a dead author but it's still almost definitely going to be a pretty well known author. Like Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny rather than his more well known Chronicles of Amber or Lord of Light.
Later today (about to go offline for a while), I might append a personal list somewhere in this thread.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
If this board had more activity, I'd propose doing a list similar to this one
- 19/01/2013 11:34:41 AM
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You could do a list
- 19/01/2013 02:38:12 PM
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I suppose I could
- 19/01/2013 02:46:20 PM
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Re: I suppose I could
- 19/01/2013 04:25:33 PM
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Some of those wouldn't be "obvious" for me 
- 19/01/2013 04:58:15 PM
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- 19/01/2013 04:58:15 PM
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I dare say any non-English novel that would appear on such a list, would be available in translation
- 19/01/2013 10:39:04 PM
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