Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Franzen slug it out at the top of the books site - with competition from a classic or two
The tinsel's tatty, the recycling bin is stuffed to bursting, the last of the leftovers lurk ominously at the back of the fridge. As we stare down the barrel of another New Year's Eve it's time for that yearly rite, that inevitable reckoning with the number gods which publishing on the internet demands. Except it seems that it's not so inevitable after all – looks like I was busy last year – so, with apologies alongside our usual caveats, here's our traditional look back at the most popular stories of 2013 on the Books site.
And there at the top of the pile, glorious in its tenth anniversary year, is our list of the 100 greatest novels of all time. If you've been following my homage to the statistical deities all along then you'll have seen how at first I thought the continuing popularity of this venerable institution showed only the might of Google and the infirmity of literary culture. Over the years my attitude has shifted from avoidance to acceptance, but this year I've moved on to outright celebration. Ten years after Robert McCrum first picked those great novels he's gone back to the classics, this time assembling a "work-in-progress" list of the best English-language novels, "shaped by the narrative" of Anglo-American fiction. The discussion, the debate, the enthusiasm which Robert's essays have provoked is what this site is all about. And if Google and a big fat list of great books can bring people to the site who wouldn't normally stop by, then hurrah for that and welcome.
This spirit of positivity continues with Neil Gaiman, whose impassioned defence of novels, libraries and reading comes in at number two. It's great to see his curly locks riding high up the list in what has sometimes seemed like the year of the Gaiman. A novel , a comic , a children's book, a Doctor Who story and, ahem, a haunting story for theguardian.com/books – in 2013 Gaiman was everywhere from Edinburgh to Alamogordo. He even took over the Books site. But of all these contributions, he seems to have struck the loudest chord with a lecture delivered in London, where he argued that it is only through exercising our imagination that we become truly human. Authors have an obligation to "write true things", he argues, to "understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are". But all of us, "have an obligation to imagine".
It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.
If we're taking sides or declaring biases, as Gaiman suggests we should, then I'll have to line up beside him and the hundreds of thousands of the rest of you who enjoyed his piece in favour of books, in favour of reading, in favour of imagining another world.
Number three on the list slams the door on all this happy talk, with Steven Poole's roundup of management-speak at its worst. We're going to sunset any more of that going forward, otherwise these issues might see us challenge some of our most valued stakeholders.
Sex rears its ugly head at number four, as Zoe Williams anatomises female desire in her interview of the American author Daniel Bergner. His "headline, traffic-stopping message" is that far from being the prime movers of monogamy, women "may actually be more naturally promiscuous – more bored by habituation, more voracious, more predatory, more likely to objectify a mate". Bergner says he's astonished at the level of self-delusion required to maintain the myth of female fidelity. I'm more astonished by the skill with which Williams weaves together killer quotes, sexual politics and a brief portrait of her boyfriend – a masterful performance.
Next comes Jonathan Franzen, and his despairing lament for the modern world. With Jeff Bezos installed as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Franzen looks forward to a world in which writers are "the kind of prospectless workers whom its contractors employ in its warehouses, labouring harder for less and less, with no job security, because the warehouses are situated in places where they're the only business hiring". A bleak prospect indeed.
Six and seven on the list are blasts from the past – or 2009 and 2011 at least – as we tip our hats to Reddit for bigging up reports of Hemingway's sideline as a failed KGB spy (thanks golergka), and a collection of 500 new fairytales discovered in a Regensburg archive (thanks arriver).
Eight on the list is this year's first no-show: our rights to Daniel Dennett's seven rules for thinking have, um, expired. I'll point you to Steven Rose's sceptical review, or my own more positive one and move on.
Nine and ten return us to the matter of lists, with a "definitive" list of the 1000 novels everyone must read and the top 100 books of all time, narrowly edging out Gregor Samsa's appearance as a Google doodle and Stephen King's dismissal of the Twilight series as "tweenager porn". Can't wait to hear what he makes of Austenland ...
The top 10 most read:
1. the 100 greatest novels of all time
2. Neil Gaiman in defence of libraries and reading
3. Steven Poole's roundup of management-speak at its worst
4. Zoe Williams interviews What Do Women Want author Daniel Bergner
5. Jonathan Franzen on all that's wrong with the modern world
6. Hemingway was a failed KGB spy
7. 500 new fairytales discovered
8. Daniel Dennett's seven rules for thinking
9. 1000 novels everyone must read
10. Kafka's Metamorphosis becomes a Google doodle
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