Why Lists?

Le Salon's former dictator and I have had many a tart exchange over the matter of lists. By now, I am sure that all Le Salon's regulars know I find lists repugnant. However, Martin's questions over on the History thread have raised me sainted critical antennae. So here goes.

I am not a fan of lists. I am, however, interested in the phenomena of book lists. Listing the best books is by no means a phenomena specific to the late 20th/early 21st century; however, lately it seems as if I cannot enter a bookstore without finding yet another book listing the best books of a given period, x books we should read before we die, etc. My experience with newspapers and magazines is similar. Moreover, a casual perusal of LT groups indicates that a regular Schwärmerei for book lists exists among LT members. Two questions interest me: what is the agenda (ideologically, culturally, economically, etc., - you choose) for the choices that appear on these lists? Apart from some outliers, certain titles appear with great regularity - and I would like to see a more nuanced explanation than the usual "well they're classic and influential." Classic to whom? Influential? How? Why? To whom? The second question that interests me: Why do people feel the need to buy books of lists, check off the books they've read, and so on? What does the act of having read all the books on certain lists represent to people?

I hope some of you reply. I am posting this same set of questions elsewhere (again I hope the people on those forums respond). I will be interested to compare answers.

I have made use of lists from time to time, though I never get far with them. I have turned toward them whenever my current reading has grown stale and I'm looking to reinvigorate it.

I tend to read by association, however, so reading a work or two from a list will often lead me away from the list as I follow some rabbit trail of interest. Reading Dostoevsky turned me on to Gogol. Reading Pasternak turned me onto Mandelshtam and Akhmatova. Doestoevsky and Borges lead to Cervantes, and Shakespeare & Milton lead to Ovid.

I'm convinced, though, that a book hasn't been read if it has only been read once. The first reading is little more than a familiarizing process. So, reading to check books off a list makes no sense to me. "Yep, I've read it," is meaningless. If a book is important to me, it starts to become internalized. How do you check that off? Checking off implies subtraction—something less remaining. For me, it's the opposite. Reading a book is an addition and leads to further additions.

1. Well, selling books, of course. Exploiting whatever small stores of personal inadequacy exist to be exploited in whatever segment of (the) h. polloi is susceptible to such things. Celebrating books with real and guiltless joy, reinforcing the canon for lit-snob and cultural-hegemonic purposes, finding something for humanities grads to put their hands to (I can't believe that these lists are put together by marketing departments, the ones that come from publishing companies, I mean--they wouldn't be able to resist cheekily slipping in the new Ian McEwan or whatever at #100. No, a list like that screams "intern"--no doubt one who emailed the whole company and all their friends for input, but still). For the newspapery lists, let's see, filling column inches, trying to cater to a broad readership with familiar choices, fighting the long defeat by recognizing that the most reliable way to get people talking/thinking about books at all (which you must feel compelled to do in your arts section or literary supplement) is by giving them lists to argue about as well as can-I-say exploiting the native human cognitive need to evaluate and rank (studies show the internet will be all lists by 2014). Also, if we admit the notion of "quality", they're mostly pretty decent books.

2. I guess I kind of said this already above, but I think lists scratch a certain brain-itch of ours that is not completely dissimilar to those scratched by playing slots or looking at people's librarything libraries. The tiny endorphin rush of discovery, gatherer-style, the huntery triumph of being able to trophy a book down as "read". I think for anyone who's synaesthetic at all, the rush of associations of all those authors/titles/perhaps covers is intoxicating. The kind of people who would read "100 literary classics in one omnibus edition" out of, like, class anxiety or whatever must still exist too, albeit in smaller numbers than the early 20th century or whenever those omnibuses (omnibi?) started happening. There is a counterpart to these people in the literary equivalent of prescriptive grammarians--"the sneering ones", shall we call them. I find I've not really given shrift to what I think is the main reason, which is just consumer acqusitiveness: some people are all "I want more books in my life; here's a handy list of the best!" and others are just like GOTTA CATCH EM ALL GOTTA CATCH EM ALL. Shopping is a habit. And there's an analogue with TBR piles too--virtual acquisition of whatever sort os still pleasureful.

I didn't attempt to answer your first question because it's out of my league. I can give a small answer, my own, regarding my own lists—an answer which is already there in my answer to Q2—is that the "To whom" question is answered with, "to the other authors in the list." I really, really don't care about ideological questions. I care that Milton's works have a relationship to Ovid and Virgil. Dante to Virgil and Homer. I care about the works, themselves, and their relationships to other works focused upon the texts and not questions of ideology, sociology, sexuality and other itys and ogys and isms. Those questions are simply beyond me and I find them distracting from the pleasure to be found in the works, themselves. No doubt, a low-brow and unsophisticated answer.

Tuirgin's answer is nicer.

The answers are all fodder for the dissertation I will never write.

The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte.

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

http://www.macumbeira.com/search/label/Umberto%20Eco

I love Umberto Eco's and Mac's take on it.

I am going to be super honest here and very very subjective and personal. I love the kind of lists that I can use to check things off and feel superior because I have read most of them, or at least heard of most of them, or whatever. In fact I might need a 12 step process on them. More below.

Joining groups that are about counting the number of books you read a year, though, is such a complete turnoff I can't even express it. I read because I love to. Counting them, like they're some sort of scalp taking process, totally does not work for me. So all those "75 books in 2009" type groups are not my thing.

But whenever there's a "100 great books you should really read in sci fi" or whatever type of thing, I have this compulsion to read it. I also read "5 top things hipsters hate" and "100 things blah blah blah" articles. Every time. Even if most of the time I end up slapping my forehead and saying "WHY DID I CLICK ON THAT LINK and read that stupid list!"

Because Eco and Mac are soooooo right. ;) Because I don't want to die dammit.

Tuir and Smartini and Mac and Anna address it better than I can, U, You Pesky, Persistent Pursuer of a Nascent Misanthrope's Seeking of Solitude and Seclusion!!!

Lists are like reading seeds that when planted and properly attended, produce some tasty fruit tangents I'd of heretofore not thought to pluck off the vine. Simple as that.

Case in point: Last night I found, courtesy of Barnes & Noble, yet another book of lists I'd never heard of with a ton of authors and books I'd never heard of too, A Brief Guide to The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950, by Coim Toibin & Carmen Callil. Originally released in the UK by Picador in 1999, it's finally been released here in the States. It's the best book list I've encountered since Burgess' 99 Novels; the best, for me, because it's filled with so many "unknowns" for me.

Here's a lengthy listing sampling of all the unknowns for me in the book (hope you enjoy yet another list, U!):

Power without Glory by Frank Hardy (1950)
December Bride by Sam Hanna Bell (1951)
The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann (1953)
The Palm Wine Drunkard by Amos Tutuola (1953)
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins (1954)
The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1954)
A Legacy by Sybille Bedford (1956)
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956)
Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame (1957)
That's How it Was by Maureen Duffy (1962)
The Lonely Girl by Edna O'Brien (1962)
Heartland by Wilson Harris (1964)
Memoirs of a Peon by Frank Sargeson (1965)
The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson (1969)
Happiness by Mary Lavin (1969)
Black List, Section H by Francis Stuart (1971)
Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (1977)
Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson (1978)
Plumb by Maurice Gee (1978)
The Murderer by Roy A. K. Heath (1978)
From the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant (1979)
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick (1979)
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard (1980)
Lamb by Bernard MacLaverty (1980)
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (1980)
The Children's Bach by Helen Garner (1984)
Nation of Fools by Bairaj Khanna (1984)
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1986)
The Other Garden by Francis Wyndham (1987)
Paris Trout by Pete Dexter (1988)
The Sugar Mother by Elizabeth Jolley (1988)
Forty Seventeen by Frank Moorhouse (1988)
Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa (1988)
Wise Children by Angela Carter (1991)
A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri (1991)
Death and Nightingales by Eugene McCabe (1992)
A River Sutra by Gita Mehta (1993)
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (1993)
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman (1994)
Asylum by Patrick McGrath (1996)
Last Orders by Graham Swift (1996)

Without such reading seeds as these, I'd starve, U!!!

Lists help you keep track of things. What's wrong with lists?

>10 bostonbibliophile:,

I am not talking about lists in general. I am talking about book lists, book-list books, and book-list articles. I feel averse to listing what I consider the greatest books of all time, greatest novels of the twentieth century, 1000 books to read before I die ... well you get the picture. But I do wonder about our current obsession with book lists.

11: It taps into our biological desire to categorize? While our ancestors needed to know it was better to eat the purple berries and not the red, we retain that in the more mundane "these books are great" and "these books are crap".

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

>7 Macumbeira: Mac,

I am unconvinced by this claim. I can see how it might be germane on the macro level (which Phocion's response in some ways points) of human existence. As a species, we want to avoid extinction or barring that leave some evidence of our existence on the planet, hence the time capsule phenomena. But on the level of the individual, I am unconvinced; I suspect other forces are at play. Nevertheless, I can imagine an amusing fable in which urania is sitting up late one night reading a book and Uncle Death comes knocking on the door and says, "Time's up." An irritated Ur replies, "not until I've finished this book." Of course one book turns out to be all books and Uncle Death eventually gets tired of waiting (not to mention behind schedule) and goes away. Immortality for Ur. However, unlike Gilgamesh who didn't want to die until he had achieved immortality (his name written on the walls of the city forever), this fictitious urania really don't care about death one way or the other (i.e., with respect to her own death not others) except insofar as it gets in the way of her reading.

Note: Please to not confuse the Ur of the fable with the urania writing this post

This LTer's library right here, the modern library's, I just discovered, "library" is the complete listing of the contents of the book I mentioned above, A Brief Guide to the Modern Library, for those interested.

Maybe we make lists because it's easier than writing a densely allusive work of our own. Maybe it's ego-stamping... Branding for the literate. "I've read this, see what this says about me." Maybe because most of us lack the will to battle with a work until we've reached a point of being able to synthesize it into something personal. Maybe it's just a way of organizing and turning down the distraction of the many, many works the publishers want us to read. Maybe it's a sort of self-defense. Maybe it's fun. Maybe it's just easier than reading another damned book right now.

It seems there are many possible reasons to create a list, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. And there's an entirely different set of reasons why people respond to lists that have been made. It's just a tool or a diversion.

Branding! That was the word I forgot to use. ... branding.

Branding - excellent point.

Lists are amusing and sometimes challenging. The first book list I encountered was one that specified recommended books for the college-bound. I had read many of them and hadn't heard of some of them -- on the one hand, I felt prepared (even superior?) -- on the other, I delved into areas I hadn't yet encountered. The next major list was stuff that I should know for a doctoral exam. Major challenge -- fill in those gaps of knowledge that somehow evaded me along the way. Now -- I just find lists amusing. Ooh -- I can share my experience with you or ooh -- maybe I should read THAT. I do love the list of books I have on LT -- I guess it has something to do with the librarian in my soul -- certainly no one else cares about it.

It seems to me that you can hardly do anything without creating a list. By mentioning books on this thread we have all created a list, its there under touchstone works. I like lists. I am continually creating lists for myself, it seems to be some sort of need if only for an aid memoire.

How boring our lives would be here on LT without the lists? I see no problem with them they are harmless fun.

Bookstore lists or the 1001 books you must read before you die etc, can only be an encouragement to read more books, surely not a bad thing.

lets not kid ourselves we are all consumers, and most of us are happy to be so.

To summarize and embellish:

1. We need lists to avoid forgetting. This is especially true for us old folks. Don't forget the tomatos or the Joyce.
2. Some people want lists to exclude others. A list of best books is always most notable for what is not on it. These lists are to help with the forgetting. I'm not telling you who is not on my lists.
3. A list is customarily handed out at the beginning of every class. These lists are to scare away the unworthy and prepare the intrepid. But can you imagine a class without them?
4. Publishers list their wares. Why not add advertising copy at the top of the list, like "Best Books Printed in New Jersey"? Also, can I have a side of fries with that?
5. Some people like to fight. It doesn't matter what's on it as long as we can fight about it. Ok, I admit. This is me. My list is better than yours.
6. Our time is finite. If we are to use it well, we must prioritize. We never get to the bottom of a good list.
7. Lists are potentially infinite. If we just keep reading the next thing, we'll live foreover.

A_, I'm getting that list tattooed on my back.

"I can imagine an amusing fable in which urania is sitting up late one night reading a book and Uncle Death comes knocking on the door and says, "Time's up." An irritated Ur replies, "not until I've finished this book."

Urania, can you please develop this fable. It is the core of a brillant new book !

Amusing, thanks for summarizing this topic in a list !

in

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/72555162

in the chapter on "value", about what makes a good book, the writer comes to the following conclusion:

1 ) There is no "workable" agreed definition of what makes a book good.
2 ) Instead of trying to find an agreed workable definition, someone ( Bloom ? ) has proposed a list on which are written the 1000 or so best books ever of Western civilization
3) The discussion on value has immediately been distracted by that bold move.
4) The list has been attacked to be of a Dead white man quality, biased, racist, mysogenic etc. and other lists are proposed
5) Few attempts are made to define what qualifies a book to be on one or the other list

Lists are a way to compensate for an unanswerable question

Bloom

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>20 A_musing: A_musing, a possible subset to your #5 Some people like to fight, might be 5a. Some people like to agree, i.e. "Boy, can you believe how stupid that list is? It doesn't include xxx (add your favorite author or book)." This usually leads to a discussion of the politics surrounding aforementioned exclusion, which then leads to 5b. "Hey, let's make our own list. It will be much better."

>9 absurdeist: I've read enough of two of the books on that list to suggest you toss it.

Ur, In this group I would like to hammer out of a list of something like the 20 best novels since 1900 in order to discuss all that goes into greatness in literature and so on and etc.
i don't mind lists concocted by people I sort of know (like here), but otherwise find them repulsive--gut response. Probably because of their inherent exclusivity. (worst example more or less recently, i saw a newspaper article about the list of best English language writers under 40. I knew one of them and thought nice guy good for him but then wanted to vomit. For one thing, 40? Why not between 31 and 34? or 46? And of course best is not possible without that one is touched by the wand of success, which is another exclusionary tool. To get on the U.S. list, you have to be touched by the wand when you apply to a workshop, and touched two or three more times while there. Each of these times others as worthy must be passed by. After gettting out, the wand must remember tapping you and do so again, partly because it already has and has both a short memory and a lack of energy. Once published, the wand requires a lot of money to get it up and tapping, and has exhausted its energy by now, is tapping with eyes closed. E.g., a single review in the N.Y. Times can make a career--even if the writer fails to get on the list, one good review is good for at least ten years of nice income...)

Reading books of lists? Sounds like easy money for listers.

Good points, Rick. Especially the digression.

A list is an argument. In a discussion with friends, lists are a convenient way to spark conversation and try to think out the values that go into your judgments. Lists by author or genre authored by fans of the author or genre serve as an investigation tool, but without the imprimatur that a formally published expert-authored list has. I recognize the exclusive power of the formally published expert-authored list, but I see value to the reader, so long as readers don't confine themselves to any few such lists, even if a single list can be a valuable starting point.

I see lists as less harmful than ridiculous scoring systems. (Who am I to give an accomplished writer's work three stars - whatever three stars means?) But the scores have their value, too, properly employed.

the list is merely a way of organising the extensive manifold?

or

a form of masturbation?

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/07/fragment-147.html

how about someone make a list of all the reasons to keep lists, and then another for reasons not to keep them?

There is a fundamental human need to categorize experience; the list is just another form of this.

People who hate lists often hide their lists in a narrative form but the list is still there.

Lists, like many things, only become problematic when they are reified.

>1 urania1:
The lists you are refering to, or believe you are refering to, annoy me as well. I see them more often online now. I'm not sure why, other than to trivialize an interesting subject. The defense is that they promote discussion, which I agree with, if you consider anonymous opinion a form of discussion.

Lists can be interesting however. For instance, I could make a list of the books I've read this year. In creating that list I might remember something from a few months ago and forgot; or seeing it on paper I might make a connection that is personally interesting, with regards to what I have read.

Also, consider the interesting lists from Joyce's Ithaca chapter, particualrly the phonetic Sinbad the Sailor one. I thought McCarthy was giving a nod to it at the end of Suttree:

"thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots, and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.”

But someone else pointed out a more probable inspiration, Nelson Algren, which was interesting:

"copper johns, double clockers, lush workers and mush workers, deadpickers and turncoats, rats, pigeons, stooges, short faders and crap catchers, deadheads and deadbeats"

Or, the interminable lists in the Mabinogion (Culhwch ac Olwen) and other stories that. There's also The Domesday Book...

I think there's a tendency to get Borgesian about this topic. A grocery list is merely an aid when you are at the store wandering the aisles. You could create any inference you want from it, but the purpose isn't to thwart the inevitable. Someone with an anxiety disorder might be comforted by making lists.

*I agree with you Peter, only I might add: Beans, like many things, only become problematic when they are refried.

Look at this wondrous list of legume dishes, from my beloved wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refried_beans

Pie floater???

Personally, I think Bouvard and Pecuchet is the greatest book ever to exploit the predilection for lists...

Here's more information on the opera:

http://www.upublish.info/Article/Great-Moments-In-Opera---Madamina--From-Mozart-...

What about Wilt Chamberlain? Maybe lists are more about male conquest than death.

Indeed Bouvard et Pecuchet !

29: Both, and more! I like that fragment.

That list by Mozart:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGI5gyrAFhs

32> Rabelais was the primary generator of the literary list. As far as I know all sprung, sprang, springbokked from his.

Yes, a seminal list-maker.

And a seminal everything else.

>36 RickHarsch:, 38 nah. homer. Illiad. catalogue of ships, book 6, I think

The question guys - not the lists.

#40 Impossible to answer the question without making a list.

Don't much like being upped one by a cat.

Ur,

I think there is more scope for fraught discussion on this thread than in any I've seen for a while. The listers are alist. We anti-listers have been laying off, but this can only go on so long.

If you have a list, any list, and tick things off when it's done, you feel organised and sane. I never do it, myself.

Pedantic note on 39:

"Catalogue of the Ships (in the Iliad), Book VI, I think"

No, it was Book II, but, as a classicist, Iʻm glad you htought of it at all.

Itʻs something Iʻve been meaning to re-read for some time (and even the first "reading" was little more than a cursory scanning.) It is something that the classicists of my era might mention in passing, but would not be caught dead lecturing on it.

thanks for correcting me, RP. My memory is not what it was. of course now that I think on it, book 6 is far too late in the work. I remember it was somewhere near the beginning.

>45 rolandperkins: too obvious, you mean?

All those ships crossing the wine-dark sea at once must have been a sight to behold. For the Trojans it must have been akin to what greeted the Germans on the Normandy cost on June 6, 1944.

>36 RickHarsch: and >39 QuentinTom: I think the Mahabharata has a list near the beginning that might even pre-date ole Homer.

Do the begats count as a list?

All right, back to Rabelais and the fun, literary lists...

Please, no more lists. A meditation on the question.

No more lists. What would life without lists look like? Without grocery lists, laundry lists, syllibi, rosters, censuses (censi?), dockets, inventories? A world without catalogs (isn't LT just a list?), without menus, without genealogies, without annals? I cannot imagines such a list. I just keep thinking of all the things we would be without.

>53 A_musing: right! I was thinking of the begats, but really, right at the start of the bible there's a list, of all the things God created categorized by the day he created them on. Lists are kind of inseparable from human cognitive processing, aren't they?

Ur in post 1:
'...lately it seems as if I cannot enter a bookstore without finding yet another book listing the best books of a given period, x books we should read before we die, etc.'

'Why do people feel the need to buy books of lists, check off the books they've read, and so on? What does the act of having read all the books on certain lists represent to people?'

Martin in post 54: 'Lists are kind of inseparable from human cognitive processing, aren't they?'

The list from 2 to 53 is probably a benign cognitive process, but the lists Ur refers to in the two examples indicate a degraded use of the cognitive process of listing

I am just interested in book lists. Occasionally, I keep lists as well - mostly of politicians who are currently on my liste du merde. While it is true that I am no lover of lists, I am curious about people's love of lists (particularly book lists) and I am interested in what seems to be a veritable outpouring of them at this particular point in history. I like all of you (book lists notwithstanding). You are on my list of favorite people with whom to talk that I have never met in person - although I have not given up on a Salon getaway so I can meet all of you in person.

Hugs,
ur

Well, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to look at my LT library, which is like a list. But I get exactly the same feeling when I look at my bookshelves, so that's not its list-ness, it's more the ownership and all those experiences both read and unread that they represent. 1001 books to read before you die kind of lists turn me off - if done by someone I respect, then it's daunting and gives pressure (takes away the fun). Usually though, I'm just not interested in the writer's opinions - seems to me only salonistas know what they're talking about when it comes to books, and no one else has a clue.

I guess what I'm getting at is, why on earth am I responding to this, because I'm not a list person either.

Muse,

A thoughtful response. Thank you.

>51 RickHarsch:

I've no issues with lists, but please no more references to the Master. I'm having Flashbacks!:

The Apparition of St. Gertrude to a Pregnant Nun at the Convent of Poissy
The Buskins of Patience
The Goad of wine
Of Scholarly Dungchasers
The Tripe Merchant of Pious Thought
On Guzzling Bacon, in three volumes
Attorneys and Fur Cats
The Cheek of Country Stewards
The Scragglescraping of Cardinals
The Papshit of Virgins
The Skinnery of Humbuggers

Delicious! For a moment there I thought Rick Harsch had inhabited your fingers. Then I realized it was only Rabelais. Also, it reminds me, is anyone else intending to read Laura Warholic come this December?

Sorry, I'm out. After Rabelais a while back, and now The Magic Mountain, I think that all I will be able to handle is The Pokey Little Puppy.

>60 slickdpdx: I will if I can find a copy! So far, really no luck.

I have a copy of Laura Warholic. I think I know where it is. I could use the impetus of a challenge here to pick it up.

Robert

Ganesha wrote a raving review

Why lists? Because writers and editors are often lazy? Example: The Top Ten Books Lost to Time from Smithsonian magazine. Note that there's no explanation of how this list was formed.

The buskins of patience!

I might add that in the original it was the foreskins of remembrance.

65 Nice artcle and pertinent comments
Thank you aelizabet

a good list should end at 69

69> amen!

I've discovered something about lists during my coma. Lists on a page, in a magazine, a web article, are one thing: I generally mildly like them but they're not exciting. Lists don't become exciting to me until they're put into an LT post with touchstones, and suddenly a multitude of previously unknown universes pop up with a click: owners (who, any of my friends & acquaintances?), popularity, editions, book covers, et cetera ad infinitum....

Creating the following type of list isn't very interesting:

1. War & Peace
2. Brothers Karamazov
3. Ulysses

Ho hum.

Creating this type of list with touchstones

1. War and Peace
2. The Brothers Karamazov
3. Ulysses

Extraordinary. Infinite tangents of wonderland wormholes offering endless adventures in exploration instantly created because of touchstones. May seem obvious, a no-brainer to most. Not to me. Not where I've been.

Welcome back

>70 absurdeist: this is why we should do a Foucault's Pendulum--I mean Foucault's Pendulum--hypertext project!

we are, no?

great!

Has this been discovered before? I found it through Anna's link in the birthday thread - letters of note led to Lists of Note: http://www.listsofnote.com/

Yes. We are doing a hypertext/index/detective work for the Foucault Pendulum tome read.

But we will definitely not be listing. I leave that to the Pequod.