I’ve seen this on a number of people’s blogs–

, fusenumber8 (I think), etc.

Aw man, I just copied something else onto the clipboard, and now I have to go back and find it again…

Ah yes! It was also fusenumber8. Here it is:

Mark the selections you have read in bold. If you liked it, add a star [*] in front of the title, if you didn’t, give it a minus [-]. Then, put the total number of books you’ve read in the subject line.

Only 19?? How in the world?

*The Chronicles of Prydain – Alexander, Lloyd
Carrie’s War – Bawden, Nina
Death of a Ghost – Butler, Charles
Ender’s Game – Card, Orson Scott
Summerland – Chabon, Michael
King of Shadows – Cooper, Susan
*The Dark is Rising sequence – Cooper, Susan
Stonestruck – Cresswell, Helen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Dahl, Roald
Matilda – Dahl, Roald
Ingo – Dunmore, Helen
The Sea of Trolls – Farmer, Nancy
Madame Doubtfire – Fine, Anne
Corbenic – Fisher, Catherine
-Inkheart – Funke, Cornelia
The Thief Lord – Funke, Cornelia
The Owl Service – Garner, Alan
Happy Kid! – Gauthier, Gail
Stormbreaker – Horowitz, Anthony
Whale Rider – Ihimaera, Witi
Finn Family Moomintroll – Jansson, Tove
*Fire and Hemlock – Jones, Diana Wynne
The Phantom Tollbooth – Juster, Norton
The Sheep Pig – King Smith, Dick
Stig of the Dump – King, Clive
A Wizard of Earthsea – Le Guin, Ursula
*The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – Lewis, C S
The House at Norham Gardens – Lively, Penelope
Goodnight Mister Tom – M
agorian, Michelle
The Changeover – Mahy, Margaret
The Stones are Hatching – McCaughrean, Geraldine
The White Darkness – McCaughrean, Geraldine
*Beauty – McKinley, Robin
*Sabriel – Nix, Garth
*The Borrowers – Norton, Mary
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH – O’Brien, Robert
Z for Zachariah – O’Brien, Robert
A Dog So Small – Pearce, Philippa
Life As We Knew It – Pfeffer, Susan Beth
A Hat Full of Sky – Pratchett, Terry
*His Dark Materials sequence – Pullman, Philip
How I Live Now – Rosoff, Meg
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – Rowling, J K
*Holes – Sachar, Louis
The Foreshadowing – Sedgwick, Marcus
Marianne Dreams – Storr, Catherine
When the Siren Wailed – Streatfield, Noel
The Bartimaeus Trilogy – Stroud, Jonathan
*The Hobbit – Tolkien, J R R
*Charlotte’s Web – White, E B

Well, I’ve decided that this list is biased. I’ve read Margaret Mahy, but not the The Changover, for example. I keep meaning to read A Hat Full of Sky because I liked other Terry Pratchett so well (and because the man is hilarious in person, too–the best panel I ever saw at a WorldCon was Neil Gaima
n and Terry Pratchett on a panel called “How do you know when you’re dead?”).

I also tend to be very loyal to authors I like. Love Diana Wynne Jones, for example–I’ve read most of her books. Same for Robin McKinley and Garth Nix. I own Elidor by Alan Garner and keep meaning to read it because the name of the city, Elidor, is the same name as one of the elves in a series I edit. 

Only one choice for all five Dark is Rising books? 🙁

But the truth is I also have a to-be-read pile that’s overwhelming. Perhaps I ought to make a meme of my own listing all the books I read in grad school. It makes me wonder, given the sheer number of children’s books published every year and the varied tastes of all the children’s lit people I know, how our own list of favorites would coincide with each other. Would any of us have what we would call a definitive canon of children’s literature that would coincide in full with anyone else?