Disclaimer: all top tens subject to change without notice
Ten Greatest Books (non-Australian, see separate list below)
The Mists of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Doomsday Book – Connie Willis
The Shining – Stephen King
Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
Adventures of Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren (we named our daughter after the author)
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
The Witching Hour – Anne Rice
Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Ten Greatest Australian Books
The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton
The Stone Mage and the Sea – Sean Williams (he has so many to choose from, but I loved this whole trilogy)
Tower of Ravens – Kate Forsyth
Angels in the Architecture – Mary-Rose MacColl
The Girl Most Likely - Rebecca Sparrow
Daughter of the Forest – Juliet Marillier
Bottersnikes and Gumbles – S.A. Wakefield
The Darkness Within – Jason Nahrung
The Inquisitor – Catherine Jinks
Monster Blood Tattoo – D.M. Cornish
Ten Greatest Poems
“Tithonus” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Ode to a Nightingale” – John Keats
“Ozymandias” – Percy Shelley
“The Second Coming” – W.B. Yeats
“Rhapsody on a Windy Night” – T.S. Eliot
“In Memoriam, A.H.H.” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Beowulf” – Anonymous
“The Wanderer” – Anonymous
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” – Anonymous
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – S.T. Coleridge
Ten Greatest Pop Songs (non Led Zep, see separate list below)
“Dream Police” – Cheap Trick
“The King is Half Undressed” – Jellyfish
“Union City Blue” – Blondie
“Gigantic” – The Pixies
“Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” – Smashing Pumpkins (almost a tie with everything else on that album)
“Schizophrenia” – Sonic Youth
“God Save the Queen” – Sex Pistols
“The Game” – Queen
“Champagne Supernova” – Oasis (almost a tie with “Keep the Dream Alive” by Oasis)
“Born to Run” – Bruce Springsteen (God help me, I said it)
Ten Greatest Led Zep Songs
“Kashmir”
“What Is and What Should Never Be”
“Over the Hills and Far Away”
“Friends”
“Ten Years Gone”
“Dazed and Confused”
“Going to California”
“Immigrant Song”
“Houses of the Holy”
“Bron-yr-aur”
Ten Greatest Movies
Lord of the Rings trilogy (yes, I cheated)
This is Spinal Tap
Finding Nemo
The Wedding Singer
Highlander
Dead Man
Bladerunner
The Empire Strikes Back
The Lost Boys
School of Rock
Ten Greatest TV Shows
The X-Files
Lost
Firefly
Friends
The Simpsons
Thunderbirds
Captain Scarlet
Jane and the Dragon
90210 (original series)
The Goodies
Ten Greatest Ambient/Post-Rock Tracks
“City in the Dust on my Window” – Hammock
“Interrupted” – Saul Stokes
“Dry Retch” – Donnacha Costello
“Even When You’re Never Awake” – Stars of the Lid
“Structures from Silence” – Steve Roach
“Endless Repeat of Waves on to a Landscape” – Deepspace
“Overture (for other halfs)” – Brian McBride
“A Red Dream of Sails” – Harold Budd
“1/1″ – Brian Eno
“Ephemeral” – Vidna Obmana
Ten Best Concerts I’ve Been To
Sonic Youth (1989, 1991, 1995)
The Cure (1984)
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts (1982)
Jeff Buckley (1994)
Smashing Pumpkins (1996-ish)
David Lee Roth (1988)
Indigo Girls (1995-ish)
The Cult (1987)
U2 (1984)
Iggy Pop (1988)
Picking anything depends on your mood at the time. I think you are brave for trying. Why limit yourself to just ten?
The scene from the Lost Boys with that saxaphone player. Goodness, am fanning myself just at the thought of it. He would be in my top ten for sure.
Wishing you all a very Merry One for tomorrow. Hope the morbidly obese man in the red suit is good to you.
Love and political correctness,
Lynn and Critters
Totally agree with you about The X Files being the best show ever. That’s just fact
No other shared top tens. But I, too, am a person who enjoys rating EVERYTHING. (e.g. top 3 fruits: lychees, paw-paw, nashi).
Merry Boxing Day!
Suzannah, I like NONE of those fruits. Lychees! Yuk! Like eating eyeballs! Cherries, plums, and strawberries for me.
I cleaned out my filing cabinet the other day and found a special WHO weekly X-files issue from 1996. I put it aside to show you, but now can’t find it anywhere. Having babies fries one’s brain.
K
Hmmm,
I USED to like lychees but after that eyeball comment, I’m not so sure – but considering the things I see and do in a day – eating eyeballs is the least of my worries.
Am a bit of a stone fruit addict.
I agree about The Doomsday Book but still hate The Mists of Avalon. Have you tried Jasper Fforde? Laughed myself silly.
Great checking out your website and seeing what you’ve been up to… congratulations…
Melanie
I think i was at all of those gigs bar jeff buckley, dlr, and the indigo girls
Books, Poems and Pop songs I agree with. As to TV shows since I quit TV at 15 never went back to being addicted. Movies wise I’ll watch anything that has sci-fi, action, supernatural stuff and horror/gore.
As Kim Wilkins is one of the 3 authors I’m addicted to reading it gets boring for me when waiting for them to publish their next book.
I remember waiting forever for The Resurrectionists to come out and when it did I could not put the book down. Ended up finishing the book in 3 and a half hours. I read too fast and wish authors write and publish faster. -__-
Well, heavens to Murgatroyd, I thought we’d have a lot more in common, but then there is a generational gap going on here. Ok, matches:
Books 5
Poems 3 (I am a great fan of Beaudelaire and Poe)
Pop songs 0
Zep ALL!
Movies 4
TV 1 (X-Files)
Concerts 1 (U2)
Why do you look back upon Grimoire and shudder? Okay, what follows is better crafter, but this was a good story. I could not put it down. It wasn’t a bit sophomoric at all. It was an early work and you still had lots of room to grow and grow you have done.
topiaries. who knew they were scary?
I read the infernal and a few other books by Kim Wilkins years ago, I leant them to a friend shortly after. They were returned to me a week ago, I have already read The infernal again and have started with Grimoire. I went online to find a list of all the Kim Wilkins books in order of published dates and was disappointed to find that the Kim Wilskins website is no longer in existence. Could someone please help by sending the the full list of her books so that I may source them and read them from the first to the last published.
I would appreciate any assistance in this regards.
Trudy-Lee, this is the Kim Wilkins website, and if you go to the “bio” tab you’ll find a complete bibliography. Welcome.
Hi Kim
Loved your list of books, particularly the Australian one! I have read many of those listed. Just wondering if you have read any of Glenda Larke’s books. I’ve just started reading the first book in her third trilogy – I think you would probably enjoy them as they are not what you might expect?
Cheers