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It has been suggested, by other people as well as by the quixotic little voice in the back of my brain who gets ideas of this sort, that I ought to actually LIST MY FAVORITE BOOKS. After all, they are my favorite thing to talk about. Why not have them all in one convenient little list, to show off to the world?
Here's why not: BECAUSE WHO CAN SERIOUSLY PICK WHAT THEIR FAVORITE BOOKS ARE?! THERE ARE TOO MANY! THE LIST WOULD GO ON AND ON UNTIL THE END OF THE INTERNET!
But, complete bookdork that I am, I figured I might as well give it a serious consideration. I went through my List of All The Books I've Ever Read and copied out every title-- and in some cases, author-- that yelled out "This is quite possibly one of your favorite books and you've probably told somebody it was at one point for that matter too!" at me to start with. Of course this is just a list of my favorite NOVELS, which most of my favorite books tend to be, so then I had to wrack my brains to make sure I'd thought of all my favorite picture books and nonfiction too (or at least The Picture and Nonfiction Books I consider My Favorite Books, which is slightly different).
And THEN I had to figure out how to put them IN ORDER. That looked hopeless.
So first I tried splitting them into Tiers, with Tier One being the subject of my last post, Tier Two being "Lifelong Hugests of Favorites," Tier Three being "Also Hugely Favorited Important Books," down all the way to, like, Tier Seven, "Books I Have Adored At Some Point In My Life." This way I wouldn't have to rank them each individually and be fussing over their order constantly. But that didn't seem to work, because then it made books a tier down from the tier above look much lower ranked than the ones above when they actually might be only a couple books apart, which was breaking my heart over some of them.
So THEN I decided to go ahead and rank them all anyway, but that brings us back to my original problem with that, which is that I CANNOT DECIDE if the ranking is final anyway, so just accept that it is NOT, and number 3 may not be ALL that much greater than number 4, and whatnot.
And then there are books that USED to be your favorite books but you haven't read them in over a decade and are not full of burning desire to REread them at the moment, but you KNOW they are awesome books and you DID love them. There are more than a few of those on this list, because I feel like being inclusive, but it DID involve hemming and hawing.
And then you get books like Lord of the Rings. Honestly, I cannot read Lord of the Rings straight through on rereads-- I have to skim and skip all the places where Tolkien really ought to have skimmed and skipped. TECHNICALLY, it's not a great book. But it is SO INGRAINED IN MY VERY SOUL AND I NAMED MY SON AFTER IT, so, seriously. It belongs on this list-- and HIGH on it-- whether I technically enjoy the writing or not.
Then there are series, like Star Wars in the movie world, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (but where I'll give you the names of some of my favorite parts --er, books-- anyway). If you compare individual titles in the series to the stand-alone titles around them in rank, they MAY OR MAY NOT actually fit there, but I did my best to place series where they might fall in my love for them, anyway.
Somehow, all those books-- or series-- turned out to be exactly 40 slots worth of books, so I said, "Cool! It's a Top 40! I can live with that!"
But that was after I pulled out certain kinds of books on grounds that I couldn't fairly rank them, so we also have some separate lists:
--All those books that you strongly suspect ought to be on this list, but you've only read them once and can't say with confidence that they really are your FAVORITE. So I made a separate, unranked list of those books. Which would mess up the Top 40 thing if I ever DO get around to rereading them, but seriously.
--Picture books and nonfiction books. I just can't put those into the same ranking system as fiction, because they're too different to compare properly. So I've listed them separately, but that doesn't mean I love them LESS. I love apples AND oranges. Though neither as much as strawberries, so my metaphor will die if I continue much longer.
SOOOOOOO, now that I've got all the stipulations out of the way ... shall we begin?
( Read more... )
Here's why not: BECAUSE WHO CAN SERIOUSLY PICK WHAT THEIR FAVORITE BOOKS ARE?! THERE ARE TOO MANY! THE LIST WOULD GO ON AND ON UNTIL THE END OF THE INTERNET!
But, complete bookdork that I am, I figured I might as well give it a serious consideration. I went through my List of All The Books I've Ever Read and copied out every title-- and in some cases, author-- that yelled out "This is quite possibly one of your favorite books and you've probably told somebody it was at one point for that matter too!" at me to start with. Of course this is just a list of my favorite NOVELS, which most of my favorite books tend to be, so then I had to wrack my brains to make sure I'd thought of all my favorite picture books and nonfiction too (or at least The Picture and Nonfiction Books I consider My Favorite Books, which is slightly different).
And THEN I had to figure out how to put them IN ORDER. That looked hopeless.
So first I tried splitting them into Tiers, with Tier One being the subject of my last post, Tier Two being "Lifelong Hugests of Favorites," Tier Three being "Also Hugely Favorited Important Books," down all the way to, like, Tier Seven, "Books I Have Adored At Some Point In My Life." This way I wouldn't have to rank them each individually and be fussing over their order constantly. But that didn't seem to work, because then it made books a tier down from the tier above look much lower ranked than the ones above when they actually might be only a couple books apart, which was breaking my heart over some of them.
So THEN I decided to go ahead and rank them all anyway, but that brings us back to my original problem with that, which is that I CANNOT DECIDE if the ranking is final anyway, so just accept that it is NOT, and number 3 may not be ALL that much greater than number 4, and whatnot.
And then there are books that USED to be your favorite books but you haven't read them in over a decade and are not full of burning desire to REread them at the moment, but you KNOW they are awesome books and you DID love them. There are more than a few of those on this list, because I feel like being inclusive, but it DID involve hemming and hawing.
And then you get books like Lord of the Rings. Honestly, I cannot read Lord of the Rings straight through on rereads-- I have to skim and skip all the places where Tolkien really ought to have skimmed and skipped. TECHNICALLY, it's not a great book. But it is SO INGRAINED IN MY VERY SOUL AND I NAMED MY SON AFTER IT, so, seriously. It belongs on this list-- and HIGH on it-- whether I technically enjoy the writing or not.
Then there are series, like Star Wars in the movie world, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (but where I'll give you the names of some of my favorite parts --er, books-- anyway). If you compare individual titles in the series to the stand-alone titles around them in rank, they MAY OR MAY NOT actually fit there, but I did my best to place series where they might fall in my love for them, anyway.
Somehow, all those books-- or series-- turned out to be exactly 40 slots worth of books, so I said, "Cool! It's a Top 40! I can live with that!"
But that was after I pulled out certain kinds of books on grounds that I couldn't fairly rank them, so we also have some separate lists:
--All those books that you strongly suspect ought to be on this list, but you've only read them once and can't say with confidence that they really are your FAVORITE. So I made a separate, unranked list of those books. Which would mess up the Top 40 thing if I ever DO get around to rereading them, but seriously.
--Picture books and nonfiction books. I just can't put those into the same ranking system as fiction, because they're too different to compare properly. So I've listed them separately, but that doesn't mean I love them LESS. I love apples AND oranges. Though neither as much as strawberries, so my metaphor will die if I continue much longer.
SOOOOOOO, now that I've got all the stipulations out of the way ... shall we begin?
( Read more... )
