Fifty Favorite Books

The idea came to me the other day that there might be fun in listing my top 50 favorite books. Of course, the list immediately began to compile in my head. A list of fifty anything makes for sketchy reading, though, so I thought there might be even more fun in posting the book titles one at a time with quotes, synopses, and information on why I like each book.

The fun begins tomorrow, then, unless something random happens to prevent me accessing my computer. I will likely blog about other things between these posts, but plan to have the list complete by the end of summer. To make the posts easily accessible, I'll give them their own label: "Fifty Favorite Books".

Here are my Rules for the List:

1. This list is "not counting sacred texts" so I don't have to go all Sunday-school and put the Bible, catechism, breviary, etc. at the top. Those may be assumed; believe me, if I got stuck on a desert island, I'd want them along.
2. This is a list of my favorite books, not "The Best Books I've Ever Read". I didn't want to feel pressured to leave out any of the most fun books just because Dostoyevsky can write better.
3. Stories in series form are included as a group and placed according to the installment I liked best. This keeps the several great multi-volume sagas I've loved from taking up almost the entire top 50 by themselves.
4. Books may be fiction or non-fiction, but they must be free-standing, single-unit books (or series). This excludes:

• Plays. My apologies to Shakespeare and Pope John Paul II.
• Compilations of essays, short stories, etc. My apologies to C.S. Lewis, Patrick Madrid, and Patrick McManus.
• Books about books. If I liked a book about one of my favorite books, I'll try to remember to mention it. (Key: RRR = "Recommended Related Reading".)

Take the order of this list as rather general. Books with close numbers ... say, within ten or fifteen of each other ... might well be equal in my mind. Or they might not. I've changed the list around every day I've looked at it; something so subjective can hardly be expected to be absolutely accurate.

It should, at least, be fun. Happy reading!