The Book List

 The ABC is currently counting down the top 100 books of the Century. https://top100books.abc.net.au/

They have 200 books on the list. 

Choose 10 they say! Sheesh. That's like choosing your favourite child. How are you supposed to pick ten books? Really!

I've got my shortlist down to 61. There are books I've left off, authors I've liked, but they've not put on my favourite of the author for whatever reason. (With Carrie Tiffany they put on Mateship with Birds but not Exploded View). They missed Paddy O'Reilly's Other Houses. There are better Liane Moriaty books than the ones on the list. 

How am I supposed to get this list down to ten?

Okay, I could put up the ones that have to be in the top ten. 

Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Sarah Winman's Still Life.

Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. 

Hannah Kent's Burial Rites. 

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. 

Robbie Arnott's Limberlost. 

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet. 

Marcus Zuzak's The Book Thief.

Jennifer Down's Bodies if Light.

Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. 

I look at this list and think, "Yeah, I've read most of these more than once and love them on a cellular level."

But then I look at the long list. 

There are books here that I could easily swap out with a number of the books on the list. 

Anna Funder's Wifedom

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things

Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things

George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo

Dominic Smith's The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Shankari Chandran's Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens

Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman Other

Heather Roses's The Museum of Modern Love
Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See.

Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World

Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders

Ian McEwan's Atonement

Rachael Sieffert's The Dark Room

Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life

Seriously, I feel like I've dissed my favourite child. 

There are some books in this list that I love. There are also quite a few that I don't rate, and they didn't make the list. 

You give it a try, see how you go.  https://top100books.abc.net.au/

And I bet you come away from it feeling like you've killed somebody's puppy. 

Today's song: