Top 10 Lists – Made Neither Flippantly, Nor Hastily

Recently my friends and I entertained outselves by making lists of our top 20 novels and films. This was difficult in a pleasing way. We made arbitrary rules for ourselves; for example, I would not allow author repeats in the top 10, but they were ok for the top 20. Also, I have a thing about not allowing something into the top 10 unless I’ve read/seen it more than once and an appropriate amount of time has passed since I first saw it.

While doing this, partially because everyone involved was female, I kept thinking about my favorite South Park episode, “The List”, in which the girls have secret list-making committee. Some sample dialogue:

Stan: “Maybe you could just change the list.”
Wendy: “Change the list? Do you have any idea what that would take? Maybe you don’t realize how important list-making is to girls. It’s not just something we do flippantly. There’s protocol.”

Thus, if it pleases and sparkles, I offer my lists, which I can assure you, were not made hastily (though they are, I humbly admit, slightly different from what I first submitted to my friends).

Top 20 Favorite Films (in order of my *personal* preference, and no miniseries are included; also, I realize some of these films are “better” than others, but I’ve tried to be honest and include some films that I’ve watched over and over, even though they’re not the most technically brilliant films.)
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Heavenly Creatures
4. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
5. Rebecca
6. Psycho
7. Howards End
8. Pan’s Labyrinth
9. Spirited Away
10. Cache
11. The Others
12. Lost Highway
13. Dig!
14. School of Rock
15. Moulin Rouge
16. Heathers
17. Boogie Nights
18. Being John Malkovitch
19. Freeway
20. Blade Runner

Runners Up:
I wish something by Robert Altman had made it in there, either Gosford Park or Nashville. On the opposite end of things, one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Ginger Snaps, is one of the movies I’ve seen over and over, so it should probably be up there.

Top 20 Favorite Novels
1. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
2. Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
3. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
4. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
5. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
6. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
7. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
8. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
9. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
10. Toni Morrison, Beloved
11. Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
12. Charlotte Brontë, Villette
13. Wilkie Collins, Armadale
14. A.S. Byatt, Possession
15. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
16. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
17. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
18. George Eliot, Middlemarch
19. Bram Stoker, Dracula
20. Ian McEwan, Atonement

Runners-Up:
21. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
22. Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother
23. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (Am I kidding? No.)
24. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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