With the proliferation of lists that the year end brings, I got to wondering: why is it we're so obsessed with top 10 lists? Seriously, the media is full of them come December.
On the one hand, I think the lists are places to focus debate and discussion. As readers, we like looking at these lists that distill the best of the best into a compact form and subsequently either having our views verified or else arguing against the compiler for their oversights. In today's online world, we even increasingly become a part of this debate, entering our comments and arguments underneath the original list for others to read and discuss.
More importantly, however, I think these lists are helpful to us in an information-burdened society to try to bring some order out of the chaos. In terms of sheer volume, there simply is too much being put out there for any one human being to possibly get to it all. But look now - some helpful reviewer has brought together his or her top choices for books/cds/movies/whatever for the year! Now maybe we can be a reasonably informed citizen and at least know about these top releases. Maybe we can even find time in our schedule to check out at a couple of those that appeal to us. Personally, I know I've had friends who have decided they're going to make their way through the top 100 films of all time or similar lists. I think people like lists like these because they quickly and succinctly tell us (in that one source's opinion, at least) what we need to be aware of if we're cutting the crap and getting to the creme de la creme.
At least that's the idea.
But it doesn't always end up that way. Take, for example, the various lists that came out in the past few weeks describing the top poetry books of 2011. I actually initially came across just one of them (I can't remember which one). I know how tough it is keeping up with all the new releases, so I was interested to see what some of the top titles were in the past year. After reading the one list, I thought I'd check out some of others. Here's a sampling of some of the "best of" lists I encountered:
- Library Journal
- NPR
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Publishers Weekly
- Boston Globe
- Poetry Foundation staff picks
The interesting thing about these lists is the decided lack of consensus. Hardly any one list mentioned a book that was on another. I don't have exact figures, but say I looked at lists that added together included about 50 books. Of those, if you took out any repeat offenders, I would still say there were about 45 unique titles.
Obviously, lists like these are subject to the tastes and whims of the reviewer(s). But still, the lack of consensus on these lists was somewhat surprising to me. Was it just an unusual year for poetry with no heavyweight titles that stood head-and-shoulders above the rest, or does it have something more to do with the poetry field in general, which is notably broad and diverse in its tastes? I'm guessing it's more the latter, as one's individual taste in poetry, as with certain other fields, is exceptionally subjective.
Note that I don't think this is a bad thing. In fact, I find the poetry titles I often enjoy the most are ones that elicit groans in others. I just found the lack of consensus interesting, considering what these lists usually are intended for. The few titles that did show up on multiple lists were thus somewhat conspicuous and caught my eye. Just wanted to run over a couple of them briefly here. . .
Devotions, by Bruce Smith - Judging from the write-ups, this volume is one of those ones that seems difficult to describe to make it stand out (wouldn't it suck to have to try to write book descriptions for poetry books for a living?). Nonetheless, this is another book that has received consistently good praise across the board.
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