Another Stupid Top 10 Books List

I hate lists. Hate hate hate them. They betray an alien type of thought to me: people who can not justify their world view without ranking ideas, things or opinions in a one-dimensional, balkanized list of likes and dislikes. If you asked me what my favorite movie was, I simply would not know what to tell you: at the end of the day, being able to rank art implies that you can only appreciate one very small wedge of it.

But the Internet throbs and grows on lists. No surprise, then, that the Scotsman's list of ten books royal they can't live without it so appalling. Two words: Harry Potter.

What can you say? That it's still to pass the test of time? That the writing is purely secondary to the (superlative) plotting? Who cares: this series has brought the joys of reading to millions of children, many of whom might not have bothered to read a novel. Few books are written with this level of detailed imagination.

The sort of paragraph that can only be put together by a poltroon. Harry Potter certainly does not contain superlative plotting. The writing is amateurish at best. Furthermore, children are idiots, and the claim that "millions of children" might never have read a novel outside of Harry Potter is absurd. It is true that few books are written with the fevered pitch of imagination as the Potter books, but that's because most authors feel ill-at-ease stealing so wantonly from such a vast gamut of better books by better writers.

The 10 Books We Really Can't Live Without [Scotsman]