100 Books List

[osprey_archer]

All the cool kids (skygiants, troisoiseaux, qian...) are posting hundred book lists, so I thought I'd do one too. Here it is! See how many you've read!

Comments

[asakiyume]

Where's the question that prompts the list? You, Skygiants, and Qian all have personal intros to your list, but was the question "What are 100 books that influenced you?" Qian's intro says "maybe not all dating from my childhood," which makes me think the question had something about childhood in it? But I'm guessing you're free to shift the question pretty freely?

(Oh, and I share 18 with you, incl. some all-time favorites of mine--The Changeling, The Moorchild, Bread and Jam for Francis (probably others as well, but those jumped out at me)

[osprey_archer]

To be honest I'm not 100% sure which 100 books we're supposed to be listing. 100 favorites? 100 most influential on my life? One books I love from childhood? 100 books of some kind, I guess!

The Changeling of course had to come first. I was trying to do just one book from each author or there probably would have been a lot more ZKS on there - The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, Libby on Wednesday. And The Moorchild is a perennial favorite even though I've been pretty lukewarm on every single other Eloise Jarvis McGraw book I've read.

It was hard picking just one Frances book, but Bread and Jam for Frances IS a perennial classic. Really looking forward to sharing it with my niece.

[genarti]

I'm not sure if there's a specific question, per se! I started seeing these kinds of lists go around on tumblr for movies, and it was all stuff like "how many of this magazine's list of top 100 movies have you actually seen?" or "how many of these popular movies I see lots of fandom content for have you seen?" And then it started becoming "how many of my personal top 100 favorite movies have you seen?" and then suddenly I was seeing personal book lists on DW. So either it made the jump in a slightly haphazard and personal way, or there's a shared origin point that both of these diverged from.

Anyway, I take it as basically, whatever constraints are interesting to you to make a list of books that you feel is in some way a window on you (today, etc -- I'm sure if I did the same thing in a month I'd end up with some different picks!). Which is the spirit in which I'm enjoying doing other people's!

[asakiyume]

Yeah, that has to be the only way to do it! It couldn't be My Definitive List; it would have to be My List Today, at This Hour.

If I did this list, I'd probably do books that really influenced me/were really important to me, which would have a high overlap but wouldn't be identical to books that I really like... especially as the years go by, I enjoy reading many things wholeheartedly, but they just don't have the same indelibility as things I read earlier in life. (But then along comes something that does make an indelible impression)

Do you have one up now? I need to come look!

[osprey_archer]

My Definitive List is simply too much pressure. Much better to reserve the right to come back later with a new list!

It would be interesting actually to do a new list every year, or five years, or whatever, without peaking at the old one of course. See how much things change over time, or if they remain relatively stable.