The Difficulty of Choosing a Favorite Book

If you didn't follow The Great American Read (on PBS and via social media), for a number of months local public broadcasting stations were running a contest (of sorts) where readers were given 100 books and could vote on their favorites daily. Early on, I visited the website and cast my vote a few times, although I tailed off and forgot as time went on.

Fortunately, other people carried on, and the results were announced the other night on the last show of the series (throughout the series, groups of books would be showcased this week). The winner was Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and the rest of the books were announced in order, beginning with 100. Here's a link to the results.

There were many of my favorites on the list (Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre...) and I had read many of the 100, but I noticed that many other worthy books weren't included. At first that bothered me, but then I decided that maybe the value of the contest was not just to showcase these 100 books and to get people reading (I know there are many on there I'd like to try out now), but also just to get us thinking about all the other wonderful books out there and to encourage us to share them with others.

If I had to make a list of my top 100 books, I'm sure it would be quite different from the one on The Great American Read, but it would be just as difficult to choose and to rank them. Still, I would certainly have fun trying.

At any rate, this was a fun television series, and I hope they'll do something similar again one day.

Best Wishes and Happy Reading! (Feel free to mention any of your own favorite books, whether they're on this list or not).

Myrna

Best Books Lists

I love reading book lists, but I don't like composing them myself (it's a bit too close to home), so once again, I'm going to fall back on the Best of 2013 book lists composed by other readers. I feel rather bad about the fact that genre fiction is often passed over in these lists, but then again, no list will ever be all-inclusive, and every list is colored by the reviewer's personal tastes, anyway. My wish is simply that readers find at least one new book they would like to read. That's good enough for me.

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So here we go. Here are links to:

NPR's Best Books of 2013

The Goodreads Choice Awards 2013

Amazon's Best Books of 2013

Buzzfeed's The 21 Best YA Books of 2013

Book Riot's Round Up: (an eclectic mix)

Time Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2013

The Guardian's Best Fiction of 2013

I'm glad there are so many good books out there, but it does make it difficult to choose. And if I had to name the best book I've read this year, I'm not sure that I could. While I'm reading each one I've loved, that particular book is the best, because it's the one claiming my attention at the time. Of course, I have favorites, long lists of favorites, but this post is not about me. It's all about other people's lists, so I hope that you find something you'll love.

Happy Reading!

Myrna

Daily Reminder (for Readers and Writers, or Maybe Just for Myself)

I have a bad habit of settling down with a book, or whatever I'm writing/working on, or just zipping around on the internet, and letting long periods of time go by. That's not healthy. I need to get up and move, I need to meet my writing goals, I need to remember that there's more to life than reading, writing and cruising the internet. Being a list maker, I like to set myself daily reminders of a minimal amount I need to accomplish each day. I can do more, but I try not to do less (hence, I tend to set the bar low and then try to surpass it). One of today's reminders is:

Another is:  Go Outside just for the fresh air and sunshine.

I don't set writing goals on the weekend. It's a promise I made to myself years ago when my children were young. Weekends are mostly for family and fun. That doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

The List of Book Lists - Best of 2012

I think by now I've made it clear that I love book lists. Right now I have on my desk several folders consisting of old copies of QBP monthly fliers (from the time when I still received the physical flyer, not just the online links), a bunch of pages pulled from old Romantic Times magazines, lists from libraries, from various other magazines, and from the Internet. There are also some handwritten lists and scribbled notes cobbled together from all those times when someone mentioned a good book to me.

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Mind you, there is no way in the world I could ever find the time to read all the books in those lists unless I lived to be 3,000 years old (or thereabouts), but that doesn't stop me from making and collecting new lists. It's a sickness, I know, but a good one (IMO), because now and then I pull out one of those lists, read one of the books and find a gem.

So...even though I'm a bit late (we're already past the middle of January), here are some "best of" lists I found for 2012 (there will be some overlap, I'm sure). I hope you find at least one good book you'd like to read.

You may have already seen this. It's the winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 

A list of lists: NPR's Best Books of 2012

Amazon's Best Sellers of 2012

Book Riot's Best Books of 2012

From The Guardian: Your Books of the Year 2012

Also from The Guardian - If you haven't seen this page of The Guardian, it's a wonderful list of lists (465 as of today) going back years, not just 2012. The lists are made by authors who choose their favorite books on a specific topic (recent ones include adventure stories, books of the forest, books with maps, time-travel books, seventeenth century food books, fairy fictions and so many more).
The Guardian's Top 10s

Another List of Lists - Booklist Online shares links to all the award lists for books and media

USA Today's Best-selling Books of 2012, from the top down

I could go on. This didn't even scratch the surface (I left out The New York Times, Publisher's Weekly, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, Huffington Post, Salon, Seattle Times, The Wall Street Journal, SF Gate, Time, Salon, Pop Matters, and Newsday, just to name...a bit more than a few). Book lists are everywhere, but I hope that the ones above are a good start.

Note: lists are subjective, of course, other than the ones based on sales, but I have no problem with personal "best of:" lists. I don't mind at all when someone says, "These are the books I liked. You may or may not like them." Because yes, there is a book and a book list for every taste and every genre.

Books and Lists

I love books (of course). I also live by lists. Love to make lists. Love to read lists. So, of course, this photo someone took of a list of books they read in 2008 appealed to me. I've never kept a list of the books I've read. I wonder if I had done that all my life just how long the list would be. It boggles the mind, doesn't it?

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Sometimes I forget the titles of the books I've read. If you asked me to scribble down all of the books I've read during the last 6 months or even 3 months, I might not be able to. But I do love reading lists of books that other people have read. There's something so energizing about it. All those new books just waiting for me to read, too. So, if you have any great recommendations on your own book list, I'd love to hear them. I'm always on the lookout for the next good book.