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I read a lot of books and I write about them on here. Mummy Geek is sometimes a guest blogger....people seem to love her.....Oh and you can find me on Twitter.....@book_geek_says. Shortlisted for Blog of the Year by the 2015 Love Stories Awards...THANK YOU!!

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Best books???

What are your top five books?
Do you have a list of books that you think people should read before they die?
Do you have a top 100 books?
Do you think you know what makes the perfect library?

There are loads of lists everywhere declaring everything from what '110 Books Make The Perfect Library' to what '100 Novels Everyone Should Read' to the '100 Books of All Time' to the '100 Best Novels' chosen by experts and then by readers and to the 'Top 100 Books' AGAIN and the 'Best 100 Novels' Oh yes, AGAIN!!

Who are the people who decide what appears on these lists?
Why are allllll these lists different?
Why do some books appear on all of them but not others?
What qualifies a book for these lists?

When it comes to a top list of any thing I've noticed that you always have to choose from the options offered by the compilers. They never let you actually announce your favourite.

If you were asked to choose your top 5 songs of the year 2011 you'd find Adele, Lady Gaga, Jessie J, One Direction, etc, etc. You wouldn't see the obscure, the niche, the off the radar....Said the Whale for example or   Unto the Locust???? You aren't actually allowed to give your own individual opinions....well very rarely anyway....booooooo!

So now I'm on a mission, a small, straw poll mission, but I'm trying to find out what books should be on the list! I want to know what books people would say are their favourites if they weren't constrained by the expert lists!!!

It may be tough, but I'm going to try and do it!

I'm on my way, I have people from the lovely twitter verse helping me out, but I could do with more! Either tweet me @book_geek_says with the hashtag #top5books or just leave a comment!

If you do this you will have my love forever!!!

Thanks and happy thinking!

Book Geek

:-)

4 comments:

  1. My top 5:

    1. Michel Houellebecq - Atomised
    2. James Joyce - The Dead (Novella)
    3. Albert Camus - The Fall
    4. Charles Bukowski - Post Office
    5. Raymond Carver - Elephant (short story collection)

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  2. Here's mine then:

    Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
    Couples - John Updike
    Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino
    New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
    To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

    A very American and 20th-century selection, I see. Oh well.

    Thanks for asking

    Leo

    ReplyDelete