Wandering around livejournal last night I realized why so many people think we are nuts. Honestly, anyone who ranks, rates, creates as many lists and ratings of cultural items as live journal users do, either has way too much time on their hands, is incredibly bored, or posting from the local asylum. I’m posting from the asylum, can’t you tell?
A friend of mine hates these things. She doesn’t understand how you can decide one episode or one book is definitely best while another is worst, when each is very different from the other. It’s like saying an apple is better than an orange. Another believes that it is all subjective anyway, so what’s the point. Not sure. I think because it tells us something about one another – the desire to list and rate and rank things shows a desire to organize and control one’s universe, to make sense of one’s own likes and dislikes and figure out how compatible those likes and dislikes are with others. Can I like you, if you loved Ann Rice’s The Vampire Lestate but hated Ulysses? Probably, since I enjoyed both for different reasons.
The latest in these ratings games – is a community that has set itself up as * the authority* on good literature.
( discussing aggravating livejournal literary rating community )At any rate this community apparently was the source of
the 20 Favorite Book Meme that went around livejournal recently. I’m still not completely sure what the criteria was for choosing the 20 books. Is it the books you enjoyed the most? The books you found the most memorable? The books you think are the best written? The ones that moved you the most? The ones you want to re-read over and over again? The only category that I could possibly limit it to 20 is the most “memorable”, because then I’d just go by the books I can actually remember the story. This meme seems impossible to me otherwise – but then I’ve read more books than I can count, so maybe the people who came up with it haven’t read that much? (Shrugs)
Here’s my attempt at it. Liable to change at a moments notice: My 20 Most Memorable Books – I’ve used the following bits of criteria to attempt to limit the list, ie. Once again I’m manipulating someone else’s meme to create my own:
1. Can I remember the story? (Also it can’t be anything I’ve read in the last 12 months, because of course I can remember those, okay, well most of them.)
2. Did it move me in some way? Or make me think? Did it tell me something new? Teach me anything? Show me another angle of life? Do I care about it in that special way you do about a close friend? Remember fondly or even with a little aggravation?
3. Did I enjoy it? Did it pull me into another world, was I captivated by the characters so that it continues to haunt me?
4. Was it well-written in my opinion? Ie. Did the writer develop and evolve the characters, create an interesting world, and did they have something new to say through those characters? Did their technique aid or hamper them?
5. Was I satisfied? Or did the story leave me hanging?
6. Was it clear or did I need to re-read it over and over again to get the meaning?
( 20 Most Memorable Books )Whew. Frustrated lit major is satisfied now. Maybe I can veg for a while in front of the tube, then write a little of my own stories.
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