What Role Do Lists Play In Your Reading Life? (2/23/20)

[Marc]

Lists help us prioritize. They help us remember. And they prompt almost immediate response once made public. From "Best of" lists that come out at the end of the year to long and short prize lists, what lists impact your reading, what type of lists do you make for yourself, and how do lists impact your reading?

[Robert]

Marc wrote: "Lists help us prioritize. They help us remember. And they prompt almost immediate response once made public. From "Best of" lists that come out at the end of the year to long and short prize lists,..."

I see them as a way of discovering new titles - Generally a list will have the obvious favourites, the controversial choice and the curveballs - I look out for those.

[Marcus]

I have a long history of addiction to lists. I put this down to loving birdwatching as a kid, when there was a competition with myself to list how many boirds were seen in a year, how many in a holiday, plus the "life list" of all birds seen, etc, etc.
Now I apply similar traits to books - although it was too late to keep an accurate list of all books read, I do have them for every year of the last ten, plus lists for individual authors.
If I see someone else's list - the 100 best or the best of the 21st century - I will always do a count to see how many I have read or how many I own. Those '1001 Books you must read before you die' have little ticks in them, plus not just tick for read but a circle for have read other books by this author.
So yes I'm highly addicted to a good list. Is there a noun for this? 'Listoholic' sounds more like a lover of mouthwash!

[Bretnie]

I love a good list. I'm resisting the temptation to make a list of reasons I love lists.

I love using book lists as a starting place. I don't typically aim to complete many of those lists, but there are just so many books out there and I know from past experience that going on blurbs alone or heavy marketing will result in reading (or not finishing) a lot of books I dislike.

Like Marcus, I also love using lists as a discussion point - it's fun to have opinions about what should have been on a list, or shouldn't, or why it's spot on.

Book lists definitely help all three of my reading-related hobbies: Reading books, talking about books, and talking about other people reading or talking about books.

[Hugh]

My reading has been much more list-driven in the last few years thanks to peer pressure here. I don't begrudge this, because it has introduced me to some very interesting writers, some of whom I might not have stumbled on. In recent years I have read most of the Booker longlists, Goldsmiths shortlists and Republic of Consciousness longlists. I have followed the Booker International and the Womens Prize a little more selectively...

[LindaJ^]

The NBA fiction and translation, the Booker and Booker international, the Scotia-Giller, the Women's Prize, and other award longlists are very important lists for me. In the past, but not so much these days, was the NYTimes end of year "best of" lists. Lists introduce me to new authors. Lists are very important to my reading.

[Antonomasia]

Ha! This question almost makes me blush. Honestly, I've probably always been somewhat obsessed with lists of books, starting with the ones in the backs or fronts of other books when I was a kid: other books in this series, other books by this author, intriguing ones by other authors with synopses in the back, lists of Puffin Classics that sounded important.
But as I got older I wasn't always as able to make my actual reading live up to the lists I'd been poring over.

These days I hope I at least make some of the lists a useful public resource by putting them on GR.

And when the penny dropped that I could actually *join* listchallenges.com, it became satisfying to tick (check) off various classics on multiple canonical lists as soon as I'd finished each book.

[Antonomasia]

Marcus wrote: "I have a long history of addiction to lists. I put this down to loving birdwatching as a kid, when there was a competition with myself to list how many boirds were seen in a year, how many in a hol..."

Ah, I was also a birdwatcher, though oddly didn't make lists beyond the occasional one of what I'd seen on a particular day's visit to a nature reserve or similar. Lists seemed to be very much culture related for me. Maybe because there was so much more of it, whereas when I was a kid (actual birdwatching excursions stopped in my early teens) we only went abroad occasionally, and my memory was good enough that I could just look through the bird book and know what I'd seen where without writing it down. There are a lot more books or films or albums than there are birds in a guide to British Birds.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Antonomasia wrote: "And when the penny dropped that I could actually *join* listchallenges.com, it became satisfying to tick (check) off various classics on multiple canonical lists as soon as I'd finished each book..."

listchallenges.com has become a kind of guilty pleasure with me.

Lists are so good at bringing me to authors I wouldn't have tried otherwise--they have definitely pushed me towards a much more diverse reading experience, and so in that way, they've been very helpful.

The problem is that I think twice sometimes before trying something outside of these lists. That doesn't mean I totally exclude unfamiliar writers, but there's an extra moment of thought before picking them up.