{"id":102,"date":"2011-10-05T17:18:44","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T07:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourpole.net\/susan\/?p=102"},"modified":"2011-10-05T17:18:44","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T07:18:44","slug":"the-list-of-lists-of-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"The List of Lists of Lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve borrowed a library book called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books<\/em><\/strong> edited by J.Peder Zane. The editor asked 125 writers to list their favorite books, and then made more lists of the lists. The Top Top Ten were;<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Anna Karenin<\/em>a by Leo Tolstoy<\/p>\n

2. Madame Bovary<\/em> by Gustave Flaubert<\/p>\n

3. War and Peace<\/em> by Leo Tolstoy<\/p>\n

4. Lolita<\/em> by Vladimir Nabokov<\/p>\n

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> by Mark Twain<\/p>\n

6. Hamlet<\/em> by William Shakespeare<\/p>\n

7. The Great Gatsby<\/em> by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/p>\n

8. In Search of Lost Time<\/em> by Marcel Proust<\/p>\n

9. The stories of Anton Chekhov<\/p>\n

10. Middlemarch<\/em> by George Eliot.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard of all of those authors and titles, and have actually read six of them, which I suppose isn’t too<\/em> bad, but (since we are listing here) when I looked at the writers who actually made the lists, I found I recognised only 46 names. Worse, I’d only read books by 19 of those authors. I excused myself a little by saying that the ones I didn’t recognise were mostly American authors and since there are just so many whose books published in the US that don’t make it here… Perhaps the truth is, I don’t read widely enough.<\/p>\n

I thought I would have read a lot of the books on the 125 lists, but actually, when I was really really honest, and didn’t count books I’d skimmed or started and not finished (or even just seen the film) it was only a miserable 69 out of the 546 books.<\/p>\n

Then I found myself almost agreeing with Annie Proulx, who said ‘I find this list of ten books project to be difficult, pointless, and wrong-headed… One could of course quickly go on to put together list after list after list. Moreover the lists would change from week to week as ones tastes change and one reads more widely.’ If I was asked to list my 10 favourite books, it would really depend on why I was reading. And also when I was reading. So here are some of my categories. By the way, they’re all fiction, and no poetry or plays.<\/p>\n

I Thought These Were Great, by Somehow I Don’t Want to Re-read Them<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Austerlitz<\/em> by W.G.Sebald<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Madness of the Seduced Woman<\/em> by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0War and Peace<\/em> by Leo Tolstoy<\/p>\n

4. The Stone Diaries <\/em>by Carol Shields<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Lady Oracle<\/em> by Margaret Attwood<\/p>\n

6. The Man Who Loved Children <\/em>by Christina Stead<\/p>\n

7. Possession <\/em>by A S Byatt<\/p>\n

8. Memento Mori<\/em> by Muriel Spark<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0The Dispossessed<\/em> by Ursula le Guin<\/p>\n

10 The Women’s Room <\/em>by Marilyn French<\/p>\n

I Thought These Were Great, I Re-read Them<\/span><\/span>\u00a0and I Still Think They’re Great<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>1. The Leopard<\/em> by Giuseppe di Lampedusa<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Middlemarch<\/em> by George Eliot<\/p>\n

3. Lives of Girls and Women<\/em> by Alice Munro<\/p>\n

4. Cat’s Eye<\/em>\u00a0by Margaret Attwood<\/p>\n

5. the Claudine<\/em> books\u00a0by Colette<\/p>\n

6. Excellent Women<\/em> by Barbara Pym<\/p>\n

7. Wuthering Heights<\/em> by Emily Bronte<\/p>\n

8. Jane Eyre<\/em> by Charlotte Bronte<\/p>\n

9. Persuasion<\/em> by Jane Austen<\/p>\n

10. The Big Sleep<\/em> by Raymond Chandler<\/p>\n

Authors I Re-Read When in Need of Comfort<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Jane Austen<\/p>\n

2. Barbara Pym<\/p>\n

3. L.M. Boston<\/p>\n

4. Colette<\/p>\n

5. Michael Innes<\/p>\n

6.Elizabeth Goudge<\/p>\n

7.Kathleen Norris<\/p>\n

8. Raymond Chandler<\/p>\n

9. Mary Roberts Rinehart<\/p>\n

10. Georgette Heyer<\/p>\n

Books I Loved in Childhood<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.The Little White Horse<\/em> by Elizabeth Goudge<\/p>\n

2. The Midnight Folk<\/em> by John Masefield<\/p>\n

3. Little House in the Big Woods<\/em> by Laura Ingalls Wilder<\/p>\n

4. The Wind in the Willows <\/em>by Kenneth Grahame<\/p>\n

5. A Wrinkle in Tim<\/em>e by Madeleine l’Engle<\/p>\n

6. Mistress Masham’s Repose<\/em> by T H White<\/p>\n

7. Seven Little Australians<\/em> by Ethel Turner<\/p>\n

8. Little Women<\/em> by Louisa May Allcott<\/p>\n

9. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase<\/em> by Joan Aiken<\/p>\n

10. Anne of Green Gables<\/em> by L. M. Montgomery<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve borrowed a library book called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books edited by J.Peder Zane. The editor asked 125 writers to list their favorite books, and then made more lists of the lists. The Top Top Ten … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}