Every Monday night I sit down to put together my Top Ten Tuesday post. Every Monday night I think to myself “I really should be working, not blogging.” Bugger it, I love a list. I’ve always loved lists. In fact, one of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever received was The Book of Royal Lists, given to me when I was twelve and at the height of my Princess Diana obsession. It was 300-odd pages of lists. About the Royal Family. All sorts of useful stuff like ‘Sixteen Curious Garments Worn by Royalty’ and ‘Nine Names Applied to Members of the Royal Family by Schoolmates’ (including such gems as Flop, Bat Lugs and Pragger-Wagger). I read it all, over and over, with great interest.
For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, The Broke and the Bookish threw us a freebie and I figured what could be better than a top ten of top tens? Probably nothing! It’s a list of lists!
10. Sorry. Hated It – 99% of the time I’m a cheerful person. Happy. Positive. Glass is half full. Making a list of books that I thought really sucked was surprisingly enjoyable.
9. Best Books I Read in 2012 – because I haven’t harped on about these titles enough…
8. Top Ten Kick-Ass Heroines – the list legitimately includes a pig and a rabbit.
7. Top Ten Books for Gatsby Fans – I’m not over Gatsby yet. I’ll never be.
6. Top Ten Books to Make You Think – Includes a book every parent should read (Beautiful Boy)
5. ABC… My Alphabetical Author List Has Some Gaps – I dare you to read this list and not check your own author list…
4. Lad Lit – Read-Alikes for Nick Hornby Fans – Lad-lit is not just for boys.
3. Australian Modern Literature – Ten Top Picks – Since writing this post, I would also include Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears.
2. When Food and Literature Meet – Ten Foodie Fiction picks – feeling hungry?
and my very favourite top ten list –
1. Top Ten Books to Make You Cry – I love a good bawl and it seems others do as well (the search term that leads the most people to my blog is ‘books to make me cry’).
And I’m finishing with one of my favourite musical numbers – a jolly ‘top’ song.
So meta. A list within a list…
I was pretty pleased with myself 😉
Nicely done, I’m going to do this at some point. I’ve really liked some of my lists I’ve done, I attempted to give them more exposure with my list tab. I happen to love your foodie list and I wish we got more Australian literature here, I’m jealous when I read your reviews. They take forever to get here, if they do.
And I’m still trying to fill in my author gaps!
A list tab… That’s a good idea.
I guess the majority of books by Australian authors don’t make it to the US. Many are available on Kindle but unless they hit best-seller status you probably won’t find them in bookshops (of recent titles I’ve reviewed, hunt down The Rosie Project – it has become a worldwide best seller and movie rights have just been sold so you should be able to find it).
Still going with my author gaps but aim to have them filled by the end of the year.
Hehe, great idea for this week’s TTT! I saved this link so that I can read over your lists at a later date; the Australian modern lit picks; I’ve only read The Book Thief from that list (and Geraldine Brooks, but not that one you listed) so I’m always curious to read more Australian lit 🙂
My TTT
How weird that you, Rory and I all mentioned Nick Hornby, even though our lists had completely different topics
http://annabelsmith.tumblr.com/post/51534257334/top-10-sex-drugs-rock-n-roll
That is odd, particularly as while I like Hornby, I’m not going on about him all the time (as compared to John Irving)
Great idea! I’m a list lover myself — and I do like the concept of highlighting some of those older posts that we work so hard on. I’ll need to read through more of your top 10s!
I love your foodie books list! I’m a total sucker for foodie books, Chocolat is one of the best… I’ll be adding several from your list. 🙂
You’ll have to do the Foodies Reading Challenge!
Haha I love this idea and all the lists on your list of lists…. 😀
I love this idea. TTT posts are some of my favorite to write and to read. I’ll need to put together my own TTT-TTL one day 🙂
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Wow this was a post for serious list lovers, and I am one – more like a list lunatic really. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through your lists and found a couple of new titles for my tbr list. (actually my tbr list is a spread sheet with 1600 titles on it – but there’s nothing wrong with that… )
1600 titles! Oh. My. Goodness. I think you win in my recent post titled Stacks of Shame (it’s all about TBR stacks).
Hello duckie, now there is a lot of reading about reading here in this one post. I will come back for more, but just wanted to say that I read ‘Beautiful Boy’ a couple of years ago and it has stuck very deeply in my mind and heart. I then read the son’s book, have you read that? And I’ve never met anyone else who has read them which is terrible because everyone needs to.
Yes, I’ve read Tweak as well – two books that I have not stopped thinking about since I read them years ago. I really do think every parent should read them and I regularly press them on others. I can be pushy like that 😉