Making a List

As I have said many times, I love lists, but the end of the year book lists generally serve to only make me grumpy. somehow I see them as pointing out to me all of the books I haven't managed to read. Or if they have lots of books that I have never heard of before by authors I have never heard of before the list makes me feel stupid. I don't need a list to make me feel stupid, I do just fine on my own thank you very much. But The NY Times Notable Books is an okay list. There are 100 books on it and they cover all the biggies of the year plus some more obscure (to me) books. They are also kind enough to give a one sentence synopsis in case you are book shopping for yourself or someone else. And here's a list from the Guradian. Who would you invite to dinner? Mine might be something like this:

Jane Austen Virginia Woolf Emily Dickinson Walt Whitman Henry David Thoreau Charles Dickens Edith Wharton Mary Shelley Douglas Adams J.R.R. Tolkein