Another day, another list, another controversy.

Actually, it's two lists this time, but on the same subject and both announced last week: The top 100 "great" English-language books of the 20th century. The first was compiled by the editorial board of Random House's Modern Library (which happens to publish most of the 100 selections on its list). The second came from students in the Radcliffe publishing course, and also was compiled under the direction of Random House's Christopher Cerf.

Both lists are provocative. Lists always are. If, for some reason, you wish to call a great deal of attention to yourself, make up a list. Circulate it to major news agencies and watch the fun begin. How do you think Mr. Blackwell got started?)

Yet the generational/gender schisms inherent in such an exercise should have been predictable. The Radcliffe students included children's classics such as "Charlotte's Web"; the Random House panel skewed toward books written in the 1930s and '40s. Rather than analyze the lists -- and, by extension, their makers -- it might be more interesting to analyze the way we react to such pronouncements.

I asked the 3,000 members of the DorothyL "listserv," a daily Internet digest to which I belong, to write about the Random House list. DL, as its members call it, is for passionate aficionados of mystery fiction. But it is first and foremost a list of readers - well-educated and opinionated.

Their posted responses show, as one put it, that there may be as many as 100 ways to respond to the top 100.

* Meredith Gillette, of Milwaukee, who is working toward a Ph.D. in English and has read most of the 100: "I think the list is laughable -- seems to me to have a heavy emphasis on the male fantasy life -- both sexual and otherwise (and there's not much otherwise.) Tells a lot more about the judges than I care to know."

* G. Miki Hayden, author of "Pacific Empire," a New York Times summer reading pick: "In reality, once the book is read, we only remember certain key portions anyway, usually our reaction to the book and not the book itself. The whole thing is a futile endeavor of the kind to which human creatures and their surfacey minds are partial."

* Laurel Kristick, physical sciences coordinator, Oregon State University: "I looked at the list not as something I had to read, but to check how my reading reflects the list. I've read 12 of the 100 titles and some of those books I wouldn't classify as a great 20th century novel."

* Steve Brewer, mystery writer, Albuquerque, N.M.: "People get argumentative about lists of best books because they consider themselves well-read, and a list like the Modern Library's Top 100 shows how many holes exist in their knowledge."

* Beth Foxwell, editor and writer, Alexandria, Va.: "Lists of 'the best' works invariably provoke comment for their reliance on 'dead white men,' but they are a good starting point for young readers. In this video-obsessed age, any way that people, especially young people, are impelled to pick up a book is laudable. (Although I have never recovered from being forced to read 'Moby Dick' in high school.)"

Foxwell's point brings us to the personal portion of this program. As a child, I read what my older sister read, and I read what was forbidden, implicitly or explicitly. I read "Lolita" (No. 4) when I was 12. I began my compulsive consumption of Philip Roth ("Portnoy's Complaint," No. 52) because someone told me you could not be a feminist and a Roth fan.

By the same token, an early force-feeding of William Faulk- ner's "The Sound and the Fury" (No. 6) backfired. A high school teacher was so intent on "proving" that Faulkner was better than my then-hero, John Steinbeck ("The Grapes of Wrath," No. 10) that the joy of discovery essential to the reader-writer relationship was forever compromised.

The Random House list reminded me of books I intend to read ("The Alexandria Quartet," by Lawrence Durrell, No. 70; John Dos Passos' "U.S.A." trilogy, No. 23; Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," No. 8). But it can't persuade me to try those books already discarded under the "life's too short" rationale. Yes, that means "Finnegans Wake" (No. 77).

The last list that shaped my reading habits was in "American Literature, the Makers and the Making," published in 1974 by Cleanth Brooks, R.W.B. Lewis and Robert Penn Warren.

Why that list? Because I was still young (read: malleable) and it was very short, with only nine "musts." I read all nine. But, perverse as ever, I preferred the "optional" list, which introduced to Theodore Dreiser ("An American Tragedy," No. 16; "Sister Carrie," No. 33) and Richard Wright ("Native Son," No. 20).

A few years ago, Esquire was the literary controversy of the moment, after publishing an alphabetical "canon" from Yale scholar Harold Bloom. For a while, I had that list on the refrigerator, thinking I might work through Bloom's books. I never made it past Walter Abish.

The book will never be closed on lists. For those who crave them, let me recommend "The New York Public Library's Books of the Century," edited by Elizabeth Diefendorf. Rather than "greatness," this list seeks to identify influential books. In the case of Faulkner, for example, it recommends "The Portable Faulkner," edited by Malcolm Cowley. This book reinvigorated Faulkner's reputation; without it, he might never have won the Nobel Prize, and many of his earlier works might have remained out of print. Other interesting picks include Jane Addams' "Twenty Years at Hull House," Grace Metalious' "Peyton Place" and Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight, Moon."

Lists connote duty; I read out of passion. Even the language I bring to my reading life is rife with romantic imagery. Currently, I have a crush on Peter Robinson (an extraordinary Canadian mystery writer); I am breaking up with John Irving; Philip Roth and I have reconciled; John Updike and I are going through an amicable divorce, in which Mary Gordon is the third party (her brilliant essay, "Good Boys and Dead Girls," pretty much doomed Updike and me.)

There are other ways to structure one's reading: in piles. More specifically, "TBR (to-be-read) piles," the kind that grow atop night stands.

Some people organize their piles by author, some by subgenre. Might anyone, I finally asked my fellow DL'ers, organize them as I do, by size, so a glass of wine can be balanced on top? Of course, several chorused back. But - red or white? Chardonnay or fume blanc? What vintage went best with hardboiled, and did one have to drink port while reading English mysteries?

And so another list began.

The Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century

1. "Ulysses," James Joyce

2. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce

4. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov

5. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

6. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

7. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

8. "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler

9. "Sons and Lovers," D.H. Lawrence

10. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

11. "Under the Volcano," Malcolm Lowry

12. "The Way of All Flesh," Samuel Butler

13. "1984," George Orwell

14. "I, Claudius," Robert Graves

15. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

16. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

17. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCullers

18. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

19. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

20. "Native Son," Richard Wright

21. "Henderson the Rain King," Saul Bellow

22. "Appointment in Samarra," John O'Hara

23. "U.S.A." (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. "Winesburg, Ohio," Sherwood Anderson

25. "A Passage to India," E.M. Forster

26. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

27. "The Ambassadors," Henry James

28. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. "The Studs Lonigan Trilogy," James T. Farrell

30. "The Good Soldier," Ford Maddox Ford

31. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

32. "The Golden Bowl," Henry James

33. "Sister Carrie," Theodore Dreiser

34. "A Handful of Dust," Evelyn Waugh

35. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

36. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

37. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder

38. "Howards End," E.M. Forster

39. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

40. "The Heart of the Matter," Graham Greene

41. "Lord of the Flies," William Golding

42. "Deliverance," James Dickey

43. "A Dance to the Music of Time" (series), Anthony Powell

44. "Point Counter Point," Aldous Huxley

45. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

46. "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad

47. "Nostromo," Joseph Conrad

48. "The Rainbow," D.H. Lawrence

49. "Women in Love," D.H. Lawrence

50. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

51. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

52. "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

53. "Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabokov

54. "Light in August," William Faulk-ner

55. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

56. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

57. "Parade's End," Ford Maddox Ford

58. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

59. "Zuleika Dobson," Max Beerbohm

60. "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy

61. "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Willa Cather

62. "From Here to Eternity," James Jones

63. "The Wapshot Chronicles," John Cheever

64. "The Catcher in the Rye," J.D. Salinger

65. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

66. "Of Human Bondage," W. Somerset Maugham

67. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

68. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

69. "The House of Mirth," Edith Wharton

70. "The Alexandria Quartet," Lawrence Durrell

71. "A High Wind in Jamaica," Richard Hughes

72. "A House for Mr. Biswas," V.S. Naipaul

73. "The Day of the Locust," Nathanael West

74. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

75. "Scoop," Evelyn Waugh

76. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Muriel Spark

77. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

78. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

79. "A Room With a View," E.M. Forster

80. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

81. "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow

82. "Angle of Repose," Wallace Stegner

83. "A Bend in the River," V.S. Naipaul

84. "The Death of the Heart," Elizabeth Bowen

85. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

86. "Ragtime," E.L. Doctorow

87. "The Old Wives' Tale," Arnold Bennett

88. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London

89. "Loving," Henry Green

90. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

91. "Tobacco Road," Erskine Caldwell

92. "Ironweed," William Kennedy

93. "The Magus," John Fowles

94. "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

95. "Under the Net," Iris Murdoch

96. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

97. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles

98. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain

99. "The Ginger Man," J.P. Donleavy

100. "The Magnificent Ambersons," Booth Tarkington

Radcliffe publishing course's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century

1. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. "The Catcher in the Rye," J.D. Salinger

3. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

4. "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee

5. "The Color Purple," Alice Walker

6. "Ulysses," James Joyce

7. "Beloved," Toni Morrison

8. "The Lord of the Flies," William Golding

9. "1984," George Orwell

10. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

11. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov

12. "Of Mice and Men," John Steinbeck

13. "Charlotte's Web," E.B. White

14. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce

15. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

16. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

17. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

18. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

19. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

20. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

21. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

22. "Winnie-the-Pooh," A.A. Milne

23. "Their Eyes Are Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston

24. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

25. "Song of Solomon," Toni Morrison

26. "Gone With the Wind," Margaret Mitchell

27. "Native Son," Richard Wright

28. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey

29. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

30. "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Ernest Hemingway

31. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

32. "The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemingway

33. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London

34. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

35. "Portrait of a Lady," Henry James

36. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

37. "The World According to Garp," John Irving

38. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

39. "A Room with a View," E.M. Forster

40. "The Lord of the Rings," J.R.R. Tolkien

41. "Schindler's List," Thomas Keneally

42. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

43. "The Fountainhead," Ayn Rand

44. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

45. "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair

46. "Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf

47. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," L. Frank Baum

48. "Lady Chatterley's Lover," D.H. Lawrence

49. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

50. "The Awakening," Kate Chopin

51. "My Antonia," Willa Cather

52. "Howards End," E.M. Forster

53. "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote

54. "Franny and Zooey," J.D. Salinger

55. "Satanic Verses," Salman Rushdie

56. "Jazz," Toni Morrison

57. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

58. "Absalom, Absalom!" William Faulkner

59. "Passage to India," E.M. Forster

60. "Ethan Frome," Edith Wharton

61. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor

62. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. "Orlando," Virginia Woolf

64. "Sons and Lovers," D.H. Lawrence

65. "Bonfire of the Vanities," Thomas Wolfe

66. "Cat's Cradle," Kurt Vonnegut

67. "A Separate Peace," John Knowles

68. "Light in August," William Faulkner

69. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

70. "Things Fall Apart," Chinua Achebe

71. "Rebecca," Daphne du Maurier

72. "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams

73. "Naked Lunch," William S. Burroughs

74. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

75. "Women in Love," D.H. Lawrence

76. "Look Homeward, Angel," Thomas Wolfe

77. "In Our Time," Ernest Hemingway

78. "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Gertrude Stein

79. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

80. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

81. "The Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

82. "White Noise," Don DeLillo

83. "O Pioneers!" Willa Cather

84. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

85. "The War of the Worlds," H.G. Wells

86. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

87. "The Bostonians," Henry James

88. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

89. "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Willa Cather

90. "The Wind in the Willows," Kenneth Grahame

91. "This Side of Paradise," F. Scott Fitzgerald

92. "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand

93. "The French Lieutenant's Woman," John Fowles

94. "Babbitt," Sinclair Lewis

95. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

96. "The Beautiful and the Damned," F. Scott Fitzgerald

97. "Rabbit, Run," John Updike

98. "Where Angels Fear to Tread," E.M. Forster

99. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

100. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

-From wire reports

Pub Date: 7/26/98