Top 10 (or 20 or 5) lists…. Some people are really obsessed with and good at them. My brother is constantly asking me “list your top 5 favorite” this or that. Sometimes he wants me to make a distinction between the things I love most, versus the things I think are objectively the “best” which he posits are not always the same. I see his point here, but at some level or another, doesn’t labeling something your “favorite” mean that you think it IS objectively the “best” – even if no one else agrees with you?

I am a “lists” person. I LOVE making lists. Lists of my favorite things. Things that are the most important to me. But I am NOT AT ALL GOOD at putting those lists in any kind of ranking order. Deciding that this thing definitely outranks that one, etc. And, when someone asks me to name one single favorite thing I can NEVER pick just one. I love too many things too wholly and completely to pick just one. It would be like choosing a favorite limb and cutting off all the others. Just NOT possible!

I recently saw on Twitter a few people asking such questions just for the fun of it. Pick just one favorite book, or favorite movie, or favorite fight scene, etc. And multiple answers were considering “cheating, or too easy, or boring.” I sat for awhile and tried to narrow it down, but I just couldn’t. And then last night, when I couldn’t sleep, my best friend and I brainstormed our favorite books. We both agreed we could not narrow it down to just one, but we both managed to narrow it down to our top three. And then went on to do a full top 20 list.

It was not easy. And I kept overthinking it. The first three titles that came to mind, are the same three titles that ALWAYS come to mind first. But I thought, “surely it’s not that simple?” So I kept thinking and listing and eliminating. Until I told myself: “be honest. What books do you always think of first? When you consider the idea of getting a book quote tattoo, what comes to mind first? It really probably is THAT simple.”

And so, when I was honest with myself, it was.

So my TOP THREE FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME ARE:

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Dune by Frank Herbert

Friends who have known me a long time would not be surprised. In fact, my best friend guessed two out of the three with little effort. I think I may, sometime in the near future, write a book review (or maybe more of a tribute – they’re all such CLASSICS they hardly need “reviews”) for each.

And for the curious, and just because I put an embarrassing amount of thought into this, here is my full Top 20 list. A few notes on this list: The top three are clearly THE TOP THREE, but after that they are not in any particular order. There is no hierarchy here. Also, I fully admit I cheated a little because I put all of The Lord of the Rings as a single book, AND I put “Pride and Prejudice (or Persuasion?)” because I have been waffling between those two as my favorite Jane Austen book for YEARS now. And when I say Dragonbone Chair, let’s be real, I really just mean the ENTIRE Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. Just as when I say Lord Foul’s Bane I really just mean the ENTIRE Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series. And yes, I actually ended up with 21, because I simply could not eliminate one more. And my best friend very magnanimously said “I’ll allow it…”

So, without further ado, my Top 20 (+1) Favorite Books List:

1. Neverending Story – Michael Ende
2. Watership Down – Richard Adams
3. Dune – Frank Herbert
4. Dragon Prince – Melanie Rawn
5. Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Pride and Prejudice (or Persuasion?) – Jane Austen
7. Sunshine – Robin McKinley
8. Mairelon the Magician – Patricia C. Wrede
9. Neuromancer – William Gibson
10. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
11. Journal of Albion Moonlight – Kenneth Patchen
12. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
13. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
14. Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K. LeGuin
15. Redwall – Brian Jacques
16. The Dragonbone Chair – Tad Williams
17. Taran Wanderer – Lloyd Alexander
18. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
19. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
20. Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
21. Lord Foul’s Bane – Stephen R. Donaldson

I did notice that MOST of the books on this list are books I read before the age of like… fifteen, I think. It’s amazing how much those early books really stick with you and form who you are a person. There are a few exceptions: I read We in my senior of high school, and both Neuromancer and Journal of Albion Moonlight during my second year of college, and I can’t actually remember when I first read The Things They Carried… but other than that, yeah. All before the age of fifteen.

Another side note: none of the books I have read VERY recently are on this list (pretty much for the reasons mentioned above) BUT I suspect Paul Krueger’s Steel Crow Saga could very easily slide into that list over time, because holy shit I loved that book a LOT.

I had so much fun doing the list – it was like torture but FUN torture – that I have decided I want to do more of these lists. I’m already working on a favorite movies list, which has actually turned out to be even more difficult than the books so far. I have had to split live action movies and animated movies into two separate lists or I was going to end up with like…. a top 50 and no way to narrow it down more. I also think I want to do a favorite nonfiction books list (since the above list is fiction). After that we’ll see what else I can come up with.

If anyone has any recommendations (or requests) for other top 20 lists, hit me up! Also, please share some of your favorites in the comments! Can you name a single favorite book (can anyone actually DO THAT?), or maybe a top 3 or top 5? I’d love to hear from you!