It's probably not a terribly cool thing to admit but I like lists - shopping lists, to-do lists, things to pack lists, pros versus cons lists. Writing them makes me feel organised; crossing things off makes me feel productive.
I also enjoy other people's lists - the most scandalous news stories of the decade, for example, or the biggest grossing movies of all time - so of course I clicked on a blog post over the weekend which promised me the five best books that the blogger had read this year. It turned out that the writer had set out to write a post on her favourite book but couldn't narrow it down to just one, hence the list.
I can't recall which books were listed now but it started me thinking about the books I'd put in my top five for 2009. A S Byatt's The Children's Book perhaps. Sarah Water's The Little Stranger? Maybe. Definitely We need to talk about Kevin. Or did I read that in 2008? Ummm, what else? Pondering the question it soon became apparent that I can't even remember half the books I've read this year, let alone pick five. In my defence I've probably read somewhere between 120-150 books over the last 12 months, and the fact that I've forgotten many of them suggests they probably weren't very good.
I am curious though so I've decided that I'm going to start keeping a list of the books I read so that at the end of 2010 I'll be able to look back at my year's reading as a whole. I'm not sure what it'll reveal about my reading habits, other than I'll read anything that takes my fancy, but I think it'll be interesting.
Backdating the list to Saturday, when I came up with the idea, here is the list so far:
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
Book four in the Twilight series. Did I mention that my childhood ambition was to be a vampire when I grew up?
This is How by MJ Hyland
A sympathetic and compelling portrait of a murderer before, during and after his crime. I loved this book and plan to track down Hyland's previous book Carry me Down on the basis of it.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
I'm less than a third of the way through this family saga set in post colonial Africa but I'm finding it hard to put down. The narrative device of having the five females in the family tell the story from their unique perspectives while the evangelical preacher father is effectively silenced is interesting.
(On the subject of lists, I recently read a quote online which said something along the lines of "Put 'eat chocolate' on the top of your to-do list, so that you'll get at least one thing done today." Love it!)
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