Top Ten Lists OR The Agony and the Ecstasy

John Cusack in High Fidelity

A few days ago, I felt like I'd stepped into the novel High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. The novel's endearing anti-hero, Rob, played by John Cusack in the movie, is a record store owner and pop culture and list-making obsessive. Rob and and his record store co-workers are constantly creating "Top Five" lists, such as the Top Five Elvis Costello Songs and Top Five Favorite Records.

Now, on the face of it, this sounds like a fun exercise, and it can be. But as I tried to create a list of my own Top Ten CDs for the library's Staff Picks page, I found myself obsessing over what to include à la Rob and his friends. How many and which Bruce Springsteen CDs to include? Is three too many? (Nope.) How can I decide between the Beatles White Album and the 1967-1970 compilation I listened to incessantly as a teen? (I didn't. I ultimately selected 1, a compilation of their singles. While music purists like Rob might mock that choice, it IS the Beatles CD I listen to most these days--it's the one on my iPod.)

My final list can be viewed on the library's Staff Picks page here. You can also easily access the Staff Picks page by clicking on the link on the catalog homepage. (It's on a tab on the upper portion of the page, right next to the bestsellers link.)

There's something for everyone on the Staff Picks page, from Cathy's Top Documentary Films to Ms_Fitz's Top Nonfiction Picks to Teen Librarian Joanie's Teen Fiction Picks. There's even a Top Magazine List--Jackie's picks, including some lesser-known but really cool magazines like Tin House and Bust.

Inspired to create your own lists? You can do so in our online catalog. After logging in to your account, go to My DPPL, click on My Lists under My Collections, and select Create a New List.

Want to create a Top Five List of your own, à la High Fidelity? Share one in the comments section below!

How Do You Define a Five-Star Book?

That's the question I asked myself as we rolled out our new online catalog a year ago. Mycatalog, as DPPL calls it, allows you to rate books--and CDs and more--from one to five stars: according to mycatalog, one is "poor" and five is "great."

But does great = perfect? Or does great mean a book you simply love, flaws and all? Or does it mean something else?

Jude the Obscure, a longtime favorite, was the first book I rated five stars after I created my account. My thinking at the time was: I love it and I wouldn't change a thing about it. I rated Spooner by Pete Dexter five stars as well using the same criteria, although it's a very different sort of book: comic rather than tragic.

Then I read The Inverted Forest by John Dalton and my criteria morphed, consistency be damned. The Inverted Forest is a strange and wonderful book set primarily at a summer camp, and it features a disfigured man who works as a camp counselor, tending not to the children he anticipated but to severely disabled adults. I looked forward to settling down with this singular book each evening in a way I hadn't in a long time. Was it a book in which I wouldn't change a thing? No. I felt there was extraneous material at the beginning of the book that pulled the book out of shape and that could have been cut or summarized. But I gave it five stars anyway. I loved it too much not to, and I'd just finished it and was still on a high.

Obviously, rating books isn't a science and is incredibly subjective. And how you rate a book can be influenced by factors such as how recently you finished it, your mood at the time, etc. That said, I think rating books is a helpful shorthand and a great way to track the books and authors you've enjoyed (and those you wish to avoid). You can can keep your ratings and lists private or share them with others.

Here's a link to some of the books I've read and rated in the past year, as well as some of my all-time favorites. And here's a link to some of the books read and frequently rated by the Readers' Services staff. Want to know more about a book than just its rating? Click on the book's title to see if there are any reader comments.

We hope you'll rate and comment on what you read as well. To get started, log into your mycatalog account, move your mouse pointer over the My DPPL tab, and click on Completed to begin rating books. Questions? Call or stop by the Readers' Services desk.

And feel free to post your thoughts on how you define a five-star book and any five-star books you've recently read.