{"id":1575,"date":"2010-05-08T17:54:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T21:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/?p=1575"},"modified":"2010-05-08T18:01:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:01:03","slug":"literary-lists-of-ten-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/08\/literary-lists-of-ten-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Lists of &#8220;Ten Best&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/foilman\/3199336716\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/08-tensign.jpg?resize=240%2C180\" alt=\"Ten Street Sign\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" hspace=\"12\" vspace=\"6\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\"><\/a>The UK newspaper <em>The Guardian<\/em> has an ongoing series that focuses on &#8220;The 10 Best of&#8221; a variety of topics. They&#146;ve covered a  range of interests, including fashion, movies, comedy, politics, and music. Fortunately for those of us who teach literature, <em>The Guardian<\/em> feature has included these unusual literary lists of ten:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/may\/08\/ten-best-elections-john-mullan\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best elections in literature<\/a> (2010-05-08)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/may\/01\/ten-best-visions-heaven-literature\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best visions of Heaven in literature<\/a> (2010-05-01) <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/culture\/2010\/apr\/25\/castaway-books-crusoe-road-christie\" target=\"_blank\">The 10 best books about being stranded<\/a> (2010-04-24)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/apr\/10\/ten-best-lotharios-literature\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best lotharios in literature<\/a> (2010-04-10)\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/culture\/2010\/mar\/14\/10-best-books-war-max-hastings\" target=\"_blank\">The 10 best\u2026 books about war<\/a> (2010-03-14)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/gallery\/2010\/mar\/12\/booksforchildrenandteenagers\" target=\"_blank\">10 of the best: heroes from children&#8217;s fiction<\/a> (2010-03-12)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/feb\/20\/ten-best-monsters-in-literature\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best monsters in literature<\/a> (2010-02-21)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/feb\/06\/john-mullan-ten-best-children\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best horrid children in literature<\/a> (2010-02-06)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/jan\/30\/ten-best-pairs-glasses-mullan\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature<\/a> (2010-01-29)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2009\/sep\/26\/prison-books-ten-best\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best tattoos in literature<\/a> (2009-09-26)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2009\/jul\/08\/chris-hannan-top-10-frontier\" target=\"_blank\">Top 10 tales of the American frontier<\/a> (2009-07-08)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2009\/mar\/21\/unrequited-love-way-we-live-now\" target=\"_blank\">Ten of the best examples of unrequited love<\/a> (2009-03-21)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You&#146;ll find that some of the lists are stronger than others. For instance, I was disappointed to find that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/gallery\/2010\/mar\/12\/booksforchildrenandteenagers\" target=\"_blank\">heroes from children&#8217;s fiction<\/a> focused solely on white heroes, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/culture\/2010\/mar\/14\/10-best-books-war-max-hastings\" target=\"_blank\">books about war<\/a> failed to include Tim O&#146;Brien&#146;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/054739117X?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=tengrrl-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=054739117X\" target=\"_blank\">The Things They Carried<\/a><\/em>. How could a list of best war books <em>not<\/em> include <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>?! <\/p>\n<p>What the lists do extremely well however is demonstrate a great amount of creativity in topics. That&#146;s certainly the only list of best <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/jan\/30\/ten-best-pairs-glasses-mullan\" target=\"_blank\">pairs of glasses<\/a> or best <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2009\/sep\/26\/prison-books-ten-best\" target=\"_blank\">tattoos<\/a> I&#146;ve ever seen. Sometimes the lists are particularly relevant to current events, such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/may\/08\/ten-best-elections-john-mullan\" target=\"_blank\">best elections<\/a> list published today. If you do nothing more than read through the lists, you&#146;re bound to find a new text to add to your reading list&#8212;or a reminder of a text that would be enjoyable to revisit. <\/p>\n<p>Come back tomorrow for a great year-end activity inspired by these literary lists! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The UK newspaper The Guardian has an ongoing series that focuses on &#8220;The 10 Best of&#8221; a variety of topics. They&#146;ve covered a range of interests, including fashion, movies, comedy, politics, and music. Fortunately for those of us who teach literature, The Guardian feature has included these unusual literary lists of ten: Ten of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,26,41,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american","category-british-literature","category-classroom-activity","category-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqzI8-pp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}