Together in Spirit

An online reading group ('TIS a reading group!) to bring together friends, and friends of friends, who aren't able to be in a conventional reading group due to constraints of time or geography.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

best authors, best books

I surprised myself with my best author list and realise that Valerie was very wise to divide hers into life-stages. How would I feel about Galsworthy and Greene now? I’ve decided that the only thing to do is to reread a shortlist of about 20 of my best books (luckily I have a list of everything I’ve read since 1985, with the top three marked for each year) and from that construct both a best books and best author list. Rereadings, of course, result in different judgements, so this is hardly are rigorous scientific survey. I’m sure this is of minimal interest to you all, but it will keep me amused and eventually you will be informed of the final results.

Emily and I are both musing on the best book/best author issue, and feel probably that our best books are not by our best authors. In my case, one of my best all time books will surely be Poisonwood Bible, but another Kingsolver I dashed off to read, Prodigal Summer, is disappointing (all unlikely sex and coyotes conservation). Ditto Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, great, everything else, mediocre. Maybe there is a special one-book-wonder category? What else would you nominate?

(Sorry, I still haven't found out how to make titles bold ( i do this in Word and then paste)