I’ve updated a number of the meta-lists, using original source lists I obtained from various sources, including books, magazines, and websites.  I’ve updated several of the film lists and the literature (book) lists.  I added three new film lists, including a best 100 films from Stephanie Zacharek at Time magazine, and about 10 new best literature lists.  The literature lists hadn’t been updated in almost 10 years.  Here are the links to the updated lists:

MOVIES
Best Films of All Time – Ranked
Best Films of All Time – Chronological
Best Films of All Time – By Director
Best of the 21st Century (So Far)  (Note: Only the movies section of this list has been updated.)

LITERATURE
Greatest Works of Literature – Ranked
Greatest Works of Literature – Chronological
Greatest Works of Literature – By Author
The Big Literature List: A Meta-Meta List

Some may be wondering, why make lists of the greatest literature and not the greatest books?  I have actually given this quite a bit of thought.  I do have some lists that reference books, but the category of literature gives me an opportunity to include bodies of work, not just specific books. In many cases (esp. for writers known best for their poems, essays or short stories), people making “best of” lists will simply list the author’s entire body of work, without singling out any particular poem, story or essay.  There are often multiple collections of the author’s work in the genre, but instead of randomly selecting one of these collections as a “best book”, I thought it made more sense to reference the works as bodies of work (thus the italicized items in the literature lists).  (Although when listers do reference a specific collection/compilation, I have included it.)  Because these bodies of work aren’t books as such, I’ve used the more encompassing term “literature” for these lists (even though I’m aware that the algorithms and search terms might be looking for “best books”).