Heh. Let's see...

[agilebrit]

If we can get this going around as a meme:

The thebookyoucrew has decided, in all their pretentious wankerness, that they are the be-all and end-all of literary judgement. They invite all and sundry to post their list of favorite books (or something), and then these people will decide whether or not you're "worthy" to join their community.

So, in the interests of getting myself banned as quickly as possible, I put together a list of 20 of my favorite books.

1. The Bible
2. Lad: A Dog -- Albert Payson Terhune (anything by Terhune is gold)
3. Taliesin -- Stephen Lawhead (plus anything else he's ever written)
4. Guards! Guards! -- Terry Pratchett (ditto Terhune and Lawhead)
5. The Way Things Ought to Be -- Rush Limbaugh
6. Give War a Chance -- PJ O'Rourke (ditto...um, you get the idea)
7. Pat, the Story of a Seeing-Eye Dog -- Col. SP Meek
8. Smoky the Cowhorse -- Will James
9. A Princess of Mars -- Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy -- James B. South
11. Alice in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll
12. Gone With the Wind -- Margaret Mitchell
13. Animal Farm -- George Orwell
14. Executive Orders -- Tom Clancy
15. Martin the Warrior -- Brian Jacques
16. All Creatures Great and Small -- James Herriot
17. The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
18. Hank the Cowdog -- John Erickson
19. The Hobbit --JRR Tolkien
20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- CS Lewis

Now...I'm not daft enough to actually join this community and put this list up there, but frankly, it would be an honor to be banned. Looking at my list, I have three political screeds, seven sci-fi/fantasy, seven animal books, four that are either overtly or covertly religious, and only three that were written in the last decade or so. Several of them are arguably classics. And I tend to pick authors and buy everything I can find by them. In the interests of variety, I only put one book by each favorite author on the list.

I'm sure this list isn't nearly highbrow enough for these people. However, I read for entertainment or information; I'm past the point of needing to read boring tomes for school, so I don't anymore. I did read some great books in school...but I own very few of them. *thinking* Let's see if I can remember some that made an impression:

1. Lord of the Flies
2. Hamlet
3. Brave New World
4. Romeo and Juliet
5. Julius Caesar
6. The Lottery
7. Macbeth

um...um....yeah. Dude, that's just sad. Lots of Shakespeare there. Not a lot of anything else. Now, whether that says something about the quality of literature I was given to read in high school and college, or whether that means my brain is a sieve, I'll leave open for debate. Of course, I graduated from college nearly twenty years ago, so the fact that I'm retaining stuff from high school is fairly remarkable.

Comments

Re: Comments on your list, craftily avoiding the task of making one of my own

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Give War A Chance: That is a great title. PJ has lots of great titles.

Orwell: Orwell was a commie, but he was such an honest, freedom-loving and dictator-hating commie that he left the Spanish Civil War one step before the Stalinists who wanted to put him into a show trial. He's certainly an anti-Stalinist. There's a book by Christopher Hitchens called Why Orwell Matters that, while somewhat ill-written, explains a lot about what Orwell believed and why. (Christopher Hitchens is the conservative movement's favorite living communist; his demolition of Fahrenheit 9/11 is so great and I think I found the link to it from National Review.) Communist or not, his "Politics and the English Language" should be taught to every high schooler in America, and his "Shooting An Elephant" makes me understand Pilate's position.

I understand the phenomenon of unread books very much. I've yet to read my wife's published dissertation. Last Chance To See has Adams travelling to the habitats of several endangered species and writing about why they're endangered. The bits that really struck me were the mating call of the kakapo, a small flightless bird from a small South Pacific Island, and the impossibility of echolocation for the river dolphins of China. I strongly recommend you place this higher in the stack.

I'll have to look at Lad: A Dog some time.