All you listers out there will be interested to know that I have been experimenting with a new listing method that overcomes one of the worst frustrations listers face: the numerical limit.  Top 10 this.  Best 100 that.  The difficulty, if you love something, isn’t coming up with 10, or 100, but getting it down to the required number.  When I compiled my Top 100 Movies list, I started with over 200: cutting those last 25 movies to get down to 100 was a painful experience, and it felt very arbitrary – is Mildred Pierce really better than Cool Hand Luke?

But thanks to a number of websites that ask members to give ratings (1-5 stars, usually, sometimes 1-10) to books, movies, albums, etc., there is another, less frustrating option: listing your 5-star rated items.  Instead of arbitrarily cutting off your favorites at 10 or 100, you can list every book, movie, album, etc,, that you gave the highest rating.  The total number is irrelevant: it could be 7, 99, or 274.  This method provides a more accurate depiction of your favorites and, more importantly avoids the awful pain of cutting just to reach an arbitrary number.

Here are the results of my experiments:

Books: http://beckchris.com/the-lists/literature-lists/my-five-star-books/
Films: http://beckchris.com/the-lists/movie-lists/my-five-star-films/
Music: http://beckchris.com/the-lists/music-lists/my-five-star-albums/