Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lists, Lists, Lists

I'll admit it before we go any further: I love lists!  I love checking items off lists one at a time.  I love organizing random collections into lists.  I love seeing lists grow smaller as I march through them with a sense of accomplishment. 

A book came out last year about checklists and how they help to maintain quality in processes from cooking to medicine.  I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.

A couple of years ago I found a site that I really love called Lists of Bests.  If you've ever thought about reading all of the Pulitzer prize winning books, or that pesky BBC list that's been making its way around Facebook, you can keep track here.  There are lists of movies and music too, in case you are an all-around culture-philiac.  You can even make your own lists, or edit someone else's.

One list that I found on Lists of Bests that I've been reading my way through is called The New Classics: Books from Entertainment Weekly.  It's a list of their top 100 books from the past 25 years (as of 2008).  I've made my way more than halfway through the list so far, and found some wonderful new titles and authors.


I've "adopted" more lists than I should have at the Lists of Bests site, so I'm going more slowly than I should.  But I've got the BBC lists (first hundred and second hundred), NPR's "100 Best Beach Books Ever" (including this one--really? for the beach?) and Mental Floss' list of the 25 most influential books of the past 25 years

All of these lists are plenty to keep me reading for the next several years, but they are dwarfed by the big-daddy of all my lists, my Library Thing to-read list, currently at 462 titles.  It's just a hazard of my job, that when I read reviews, I read them both to consider for purchase by the library, and also as possible candidates for my own list. 

Now I just need a reliable way to keep track of my lists (oh, wait, Lists of Bests has that too). 

p.s. The BBC book lists have many classic titles which are available for the kindle for free download. 

3 comments:

  1. I see your graphic of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; it is one of my favorites. I like the way Murakami makes you look for meaning in a less cognitive way; similar to listening to music.

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  2. And it's one that I never would have found if not for this list.

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  3. I agree about the beach list being questionable. I prefer my beach reads to be fun, not serious, reads, e.g. Bridget Jones's Diary or other similar chick lit. And definitely not Lord of the Flies.

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