So depressing...

There is nothing I love better than a good list*. Seriously, want me to do something that I hate, stick it on a list and your chances increase tenfold (how else do you think I get any housework done at all?). So, as you may imagine, books full of lists - and, even moreso, books of book lists are a huge winner with me.



I'm working my way slowly through the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (as well as the movie edition), BBC's The Big Read: Book of Books, and Voyages of Imagination: the Star Trek Fiction Companion ... oh, and a whole pile of the annual top-lists that I pick up from teh local bookstores. What can I say? I've come to terms with my obsession.


All this is my way of justifying the fact that I once again broke my self-imposed book buying ban (who am I kidding, really?) by buying yet another list/companion book: The Literature Lover's Companion.


Covering a huge range of authors, from Homer to Stephen King, each entry gives a brief bio of the author and a list of their major works. Douglas Adams, for example:


But of course, the fun in having a list (or book of lists) is in the crossing off. So - after a great deal of working myself up to it - I grabbed a hilighter and went at it.

Despite being a pretty speedy reader, I know that I'm the most well-read person in the world; I'm not even the most well-read person I know but even so, I had been maintaining the somewhat naive self-delusion that I had read reasonably widely ... I have since learnt that the quickest way to dispel this belief is to sit down with a book like this. There is a depressingly little amount of blue highlighting in this book.

Oh well.

*Every one of my friends just rolled their eyes and died from the complete understatement of that sentence.

2 comments :

Dani In NC said...

I'm glad that I'm not the only one out there with a list obsession! As I tell my husband and friends, I may not always stick to the list or program, but it helps me to have a framework. When I was homeschooling my eldest daughter, I would buy a curriculum and then add and subtract items and lessons. If I had tried to just create a lesson plan from scratch, I would have had a panic attack!

I also enjoy checking off items. I recognize that these lists aren't definitive, but if I make a dent in a list then it still feels like an accomplishment. Like you, I suffered a bit of a blow to my ego when I realized I hadn't read many books on my chosen lists. That just gives us something to strive for :-).

Rebecca Johnson said...

Yay! Someone who understands! Thanks Dani.