Ask a silly question: get a collection of desire

Yesterday I asked people to tell me what a list of books have in common. They include Enid Blighton’s The Magic Faraway Tree and Milan Kundera’s Unbearable lightness of being. Lance Armstrong’s It’s not about the Bike and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Now you may think this was difficult, but I did expect someone to get it with the help of Google. (Which would have turned up the common thread had you asked it for a web address that contained a reference to all these works.)

These books are, of course, all favourites of Delta Goodrem. How do I know? Well, on my trip to the Melbourne Citi Library to listen to Troppo commenter Gillian Bouras I picked up a little booklet called ‘Collections of Desire’. Some inspired librarian trying to promote reading, asked a bunch of well known people who have lived in Melbourne at some stage or other for their list of favourite books. So you can check out Germaine’s and Robyn Archer’s favourites. Paul Salmon’s are nothing to write home about – though he’s a fan of Lance Armstrong too.

The resulting Collection of Desire is a good little tome, and a good source of ideas for books to read. I commend it to you – it is here(Pdf warning).

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Ken Parish
Admin
18 years ago

Are these lists of favourites or lists of everything this lot have ever read?
As well as being pretentious, I’m not sure it’s even useful as a catalogue.
….and imagine how boring it would be to have to pluck authors and titles out of your memory for a list – how could anyone get ‘excited’ about that? Robyn Archer? Tell me.
….and do you know, that even as I write this, I bet Parish would love to be exploring the lists, picking out a title and a name and thinking “mmmm that might be interesting” – Right now he’s thinking just that about mowing the lawn.

Ken Parish
Admin
18 years ago

Yeah. And so do I Nic.
love a cancer victim/survivor.
What’s his favourite book?

Gaby
Gaby
18 years ago

Hiya Nicholas,

In context, I reckoned googling for an answer would be tantamount to cheating. Like looking up the answers in the back of the book. Defeats the fun of your teaser.

Does raise a nice point of netiquette. Should one google and answer without a suitable acknowledgement?