In his rather good book High Fidelity, Nick Hornby put forward the theorem that men really like lists.
This is likely not a surprise to many people, male or female, but it would appear than it’s not just men that like lists. No, newspapers seem to like them as well. And, what with this approaching the end of the year, that means that they get to write lists about what has happened over the preceeding year. And once they’ve started that, they just can’t help themselves, and start producing lists about everything.
Knowing my tastes, TLG is responsible for me reading some of these lists, in that she sends me links to them. Blame her, not me…
So, here’s a list of the few lists that have got my attention in the last day or two:
- Johann Hari in the Independent – I look at this list, and I agree with precisely nothing on it. Which is a surprise; how rare is it to read something and not be able to identify with at least some of it? Actually, tell a lie, there’s one point I could get on board with – to an extent – but not necessarily for the reasons Mr Hari espouses.
- The weird legal cases of the year in the Times – And it’s something of a sad reflection on how much I read things on t’internet that I was already aware of all but one of these…
- And a non-round-up one from the Telegraph: strange words from around the world
- And my favourite list of the week. Partly because of the word Chantepleurer, which definitely applies to me. Except that I’m not the one crying when I sing…
So, anyone else spotted lists like these that are worthy of a read? Or have I exhausted all the interesting ones, thusly saving the media from collating any more before January 1st?