Books!!!

I don’t know if you have ever read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity or have seen the movie based on it, if you have done either of these things, you probably remember that in the book and the movie, Rob (the main character) and his two buddies spend the time making top five lists of random subjects: Top 5 episodes of Cheers, Top Five Dream Jobs, Top Five Bands or Musicians Who Will Have To Be Shot Come the Musical Revolution, Top Five Films, etc. If you did not read it or saw the movie, well, now you know something new!

I just finished the book some weeks ago and I have, since, been unable to shake off the need to make my own listings of things; I sit around thinking about whether my love for Crème brûlée is higher or lower than my love of flan, if rice pudding should even make the cut. I consider many facts: my sentimental connection with them, how many times in the last year I have gone out of my way (or diet) to eat them, if I have ever (out of pure craving) have attempted to make them, etc… It’s a serious thing for my mind, as if my final list of top 5 deserts will change the future of some small country.

For today, however the listing needs has been, in a way, productive, at least now I think it can make a nice little post, something to consider if you were thinking of going to the bookstore. I love to read and I wanted to do top five lists of books… so I did:

Top 5 books that have amazing characters:
5- The Gorgeous Habour, Mr. Clement (the main character is called Astrolapin, do I need to say more?)
4- Watchmen, Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons (The Comedian makes mean look cool, Rorschach makes crazy look heroic and Doctor Manhattan makes blue and naked look rather blue and rather naked)
3- The Story of Mr. Sommer, Patrick Suskind.
2- The Neverending Story, Michael Ende (well, just about every character one could want to meet is in this book)
1- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll (and about every character that one should runaway from in this one).

Top 5 books with beautiful ideas or literary images:
5- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
4- Snow, Orhan Pamuk
3- 1984, George Orwell
2- The Stranger, Albert Camus
1- Twelve Pilgrim Tales, Gabriel García Márquez (specially in Light is Like Water)

Top 5 books that are perfect and that I wish I had written:
5- Olivia, Ian Falconer
4- Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden.
3- After the Quake: Stories, Haruki Murakami (specially Super-Frog Saves Tokyo)
2- Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk
1- One Hundred Years of Solitud, Grabriel García Márquez

Top 5 books that made me the crazy girl I am.
5- Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
4- Terrors anthology by Charles L. Grant (mention of honor to the short story Survivor Type by Stephen King)
3- The Joke, Milan Kundera
2- Stories of Love, Madness, and Death, Horacio Quiroga.
1- The Perfume, Patrick Suskind.

Top 5 books that wonderfully depict sad or low moments.
5- A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby (rather simple and concrete thoughts on suicide and depression, lovely)
4- The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
3- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
2- Down and out in Paris and London, George Orwell (so sad and beautiful)
1- Blindness, José Saramago.


…By the way, top 5 desserts:
5- Cherry pie
4- Flan
3- Crème brûlée
2- Cactus fig (also called: cactus fruit) sorbet (I am Mexican, remember!?)
1- Pavlova (sans fruit)