One of the occasional challenges of running a meta-list website is having to explain to people that the rankings on the meta-lists are not my personal opinions.  I compile these meta-lists after collecting lists made by other people and combining them; the more original source lists an item is on, the higher it is on the meta-list ranking.  I do keep my own personal lists of favorites, but I don’t include them in the meta-lists, because I prefer to focus on lists created by academics, critics and other experts, not the average person.

But for those who are curious about my own personal opinions, I am providing the links to my lists of favorite movies, books and albums:

My Five-Star Films
My Five-Star Books
My Five-Star Albums

Why five stars instead of Top 100 or some other defined number? Well, if you love books, movies, and music as much as I do, and you’ve ever had to come up with a Top 10, Top 25 or even Top 100 list, you know how painful it can be to cut your list of favorites down to the required number.  Many years ago I decided that this pain is unnecessary. I have many more than 100 favorite books, albums and movies and I don’t see the point of eliminating items from the list just because of an arbitrary number.  My approach is to rate every film I see, book I read and album I listen to on a 1-5 or 1-10 basis.  Then the list of favorites makes itself, with no pain: every item that I rated five out of five (or 10 out of 10) stars goes on the list, with no numerical cutoff.  There is also no worrying about whether you like the number 1 item more than the number 2 item and so on.  Everything with five stars is a winner – there’s no competition among equals. The resulting lists, although considerably longer than Top 100 lists, depict my tastes and interest much more accurately than any arbitrary Top 10 or Top 100 list could ever do.