Far from Perfect

Posted 7 April, 2008 in Bookish |

From the Telegraph, a list of 110 books that would create the “perfect” library.

My personal library, which apparently is far from “perfect,” contains exactly twelve of the listed titles:

• Gulliver’s Travels
• Madame Bovary
• Canterbury Tales
• The Prelude
• Odes
• The Waste Land
• Paradise Lost
• Portrait of a Lady
• The Human Stain
• The Prince
• Confessions
• Life of Johnson

What surprises me is that at five titles out of twelve, the vast majority of this dirty dozen, by category, are books of poetry. (Which seems serendipitous during National Poetry Month.) I’ll admit to having cheated here a bit by including poems that I’ve got in larger anthologies (Complete Poems and Major Prose of John Milton, for example, or The Riverside Chaucer). But, I think that’s fair enough.

Of course, like all lists of its kind, this one is something of an exercise in stupidity. I’d love to know what the criteria for inclusion were. How, for example, does someone decide that the “perfect” library contains a Harry Potter volume (although they’re not specific as to which one) and A Year in Provence, but not Don Quixote or King Lear or Crime and Punishment? Whose infinite wisdom determined that Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (both execrable books) were more worthy than Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Thus Spake Zarathustra?

Ultimately, this list represents the “perfect” library of whoever created it. Someone else’s “perfect” library would presumably be made up of V.C. Andrews novels and Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Surely y’all have some pet MIA’s of your own?

2 comments to “Far from Perfect”

Panic, April 7th, 2008 at 4:21 pm:

• Damn right it’s got VC Andrews in it. Any female of my age bracket would tell you the same. ;)

Alex, April 7th, 2008 at 5:21 pm:

• I scored 61! If it wasn’t for all those kiddie books and books that changed your life I might have attained perfection.

  I’ll admit I’ve read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but no longer have a copy. One of the few things I’ve thrown out . . .

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