#Goodreads has been pestering me about “the best #books of 2021”; first to vote, then to see the results — but I couldn't care less.
I try to read the best there is since writing exists. That often means reading works written half a millennium ago, and sometimes even as far back as the 8th century BCE. How could it be otherwise?
The year 2021 alone represents < 0.04% of time elapsed since humans started writing and reading. Even if we assumed that book production, or even book “quality”, increase over time somehow (questionable), I can't understand the disproportionate interest in novelty most people seem to have.
Old books are in the public domain, which means publishers and authors don't make money on them, which means they don't get promoted as much, which means fewer people hear about them and read them.
Also, people may want to read about what they are most familiar with, which is recent/current events. Also, very old works are written in a style that takes more work to read or that requires more training to understand. Even English works that are over a century or so old have many unfamiliar words because language changes and things that were once familiar have now become esoteric.
Some people like that challenge of figuring those things out, but many don't and would rather just breeze through some popular novel.
