How to Name Some of My Favorite Books/Stories/Poems, a Handy Flow(ish) Chart

The other day, someone asked me my least favorite question:

"What is your favorite book?"

Honestly, how can I answer this? It'd be like choosing my favorite reason for existing. It just can't be done. Whenever I am asked this question, I usually list a bunch of "groups," such as Classic Russian Literature, American Realism, etc., and then throw in some specific names of writers (Chuck Palahniuk, Kurt Vonnegut, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, David Foster Wallace, etc.) for good measure. 

The trouble is I can't recall a time when I wasn't reading. Most parents have to drag their kids kicking and screaming to get them to read a single book. My parents had the problem of getting me to stop reading. In elementary school, I would often be reading four or five books at once. My mom once asked me why I read so many at a time. I told her that when I get bored with reading one, I can switch to another until that one becomes boring and I switch again. My mom then asked me why I didn't just do something else when my book became boring. She told me I gave her a look like the thought had never crossed my mind. 

Today, my friends are also annoyed by how much I read. Once I was over at a friend's house with my small close group of friends. We sat down at the kitchen table and the newspaper was lying on top of the table. I casually pulled it closer to me when it was suddenly snatched away from me by Paige. "Kelly, no. Every time you read something, you get lost in your own world and are lousy at conversation," she explained and took the rest of the newspaper into the other room. 

After being asked that stupid question of my favorite book for the umpteenth time, I figured out  a system, a process of elimination where I could name my favorite book/story by trying to narrow down the pool of options. It goes as such:

1. Is the Author American or European?
1. American 
1. Is the Author Living or Dead?
1. Living
1. Is the Author a Man or a Woman?
1. Woman
1. Sloane Crosley
1. I Was Told There’d Be Cake
2. Alice Walker
1. The Color Purple
3. Harper Lee
1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Man
1. Chuck Palahniuk
1. Fight Club
2. Survivor
3. Stranger than Fiction
4. Diary
5. Lullabye
6. Choke
7. Tell-All
8. Rant
2. Dean Koontz
1. Odd Thomas
2. Forever Odd
3. Brother Odd
4. Odd Hours
3. David Sedaris
1. Naked
2. Dress Your Family in Jeans &  Corduroys 
4. Alan Moore
1. V for Vendetta
2. Watchmen
3. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
5. Cormac McCarthy
1. No Country for Old Men
6. Stephen King
1. The Green Mile
2. The Shinning
7. Frank Miller
1. All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder
2. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
3. Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
4. Sin City
5. 300
8. Max Brooks
1. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
2. Dead
1. Did the Author Die by “Natural Causes” or Committed Suicide?
1. Suicide
1. Ernest Hemingway
1. A Farewell to Arms
2. The Old Man & the Sea
3. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” 
2. Sylvia Plath
1. The Collected Poems
3. David Foster Wallace
1. Consider the Lobster
2. Up, Simba
3. “Ticket to the Fair” (essay)
2. “Natural Causes”
1. Kurt Vonnegut
1. Slaughterhouse Five
2. God Bless You Mister Rosewater
3. Breakfast of Champions
4. Bluebeard
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne
1. The Scarlet Letter
2. Collected Short Stories
3. John Steinbeck
1. East of Eden
2. The Grapes of Wrath
3. Of Mice & Men
4. The Pearl
5. The Winter of Our Discontent
4. F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. The Great Gatsby
2. This Side of Paradise 
3. The Beautiful & the Damned
4. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” 
5. “Babylon Revisited” 
5. Allen Ginsberg
1. Howl and Other Poems
6. Charles Bukowski
1. Run with the Hunted (poetry)
2. Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (poetry)
3. Love Is a Dog from Hell (poetry)
4. What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (poetry)
5. The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps (poetry)
6. Slouching Toward Nirvana (poetry)
7. Come On In! (poetry)
7. Pearl S. Buck
1. The Good Earth
8. Truman Capote
1. In Cold Blood
2. Breakfast at Tiffany’s 
9. J.D. Salinger
1. The Catcher in the Rye 
10. Mark Twain
1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
2. Life on the Mississippi
3. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson
5. “What Is Man?” (Essay)
11. Edgar Allen Poe
1. “Lenore” (poem)
2. “The Raven” (poem)
3. “To Helen” (poem)
4. “A Dream Within a Dream” (poem)
5. “Annabel Lee” (poem)
6. “The Bells” (poem)
7. “The Fall of the House of Usher” 
8. “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” 
9. “The Oval Portrait” 
10. “The Masque of Red Death” 
11. “The Pit and the Pendulum” 
12. “The Tell-Tale Heart” 
13. “The Gold-Bug” 
14. “The Black Cat” 
15. “The Tale of the Ragged Mountains” 
16. “The Premature Burial” 
17. “The Cask of Amontillado” 
12. Raymond Carver
1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (collection of short stories)
13. Willa Cather 
1. O Pioneers!
2. My Antonia
14. Stephen Crane
1. The Red Badge of Courage
2. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
15. Betty Friedan 
1. The Feminine Mystique
2. European
1. Is the author from the United Kingdom or continental Europe?
1. United Kingdom
1. Is the author alive or dead?
1. Alive
1. Terry Pratchett
1. Good Omens (co-author)
2. Neil Gaiman
1. Good Omens (co-author)
2. Coraline
2. Dead
1. Oscar Wilde
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray
2. An Ideal Husband (play)
3. Lady Windermere’s Fan (play)
4. The Importance of Being Earnest
2. James Joyce
1. Finnegan’s Wake
2. “The Dead” 
3. Rudyard Kipling
1. Tales of Horror & Fantasy (collection of short stories)
4. Bram Stoker
1. Dracula
5. Jane Austin
1. Pride & Prejudice
6. Aldous Huxley
1. Brave New World
7. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
8. Thomas Hardy
1. Jude the Obscure
9. Douglas Adams
1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
10. Beatrix Potter
1. “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” 
2. “The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin”
3. “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny”
4. “The Tale of Two Bad Mice”
5. “The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle”
6. “The Story of Miss Moppet”
7. “The Tale of Tom Kitten”
8. “The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck”
9. “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies”
10. “The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse”
11. “The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse”
2. Continental Europe
1. Is the Author Russian or Other?
1. Russian
1. Dostoevsky
1. Crime & Punishment
2. The Brothers Karamazov
3. The Idiot
4. The Devils
5. Notes from Underground
6. House of the Dead
7. Poor Folk
2. Leo Tolstoy
1. Anna Karenina
2. War & Peace
3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
3. Vladimir Nabokov
1. Lolita
4. Maxim Gorky
1. The Lower Depths (Play)
5. Alexander Pushkin
1. “The Bronze Horseman” (Poem)
2. Other
1. Hilarie Belloc (French)
1. Matilda, Who Told Lies & Was Burned to Death
2. Franz Kafka (German)
1. The Metamorphosis 
2. The Trial
3. The Grimm Brothers
1. “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was” 
2. “The Twelve Brothers”
3. “Rapunzel” 
4. “Hansel & Gretal” 
5. “The Fisherman & His Wife” 
6. “The Valiant Little Tailor” 
7. “Cinderella” 
8. “The Riddle”
9. “The Seven Ravens” 
10. “Little Red Riding Hood” 
11. “The Singing Bone” 
12. “The Girl Without Hands” 
13. “The Elves & the Shoemaker” 
14. “Sleeping Beauty” 
15. “Little Snow White” 
16. “Rumplestiltskin” 
17. “The Golden Goose” 
18. “The Gold-Children” 
19. “The Peasant’s Wise Daughter” 
20. “Snow White & Rose Red” 
21. “The Glass Coffin” 
22. “The Peasant & the Devil” 
4. Hans Christian Anderson (Danish)
1. “The Little Match Girl” 
2. “The Little Sea Girl” 
3. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” 
4. “The Ice Maiden” 
5. “The Princess & the Pea” 
6. “The Red Shoes” 
7. “The Snow Queen” 
8. “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” 
9. “Thumbelina” 

*Titles italicized are books/novels/collections unless otherwise stated. 

**Titles in parenthesis are short stories unless otherwise stated. 

This was a complicated little piece of organization to create. I know I've left a large number of authors/writers but it was all just too much. I don't even know if I could honestly get through all of it when that stupid question is brought up in conversation. Maybe I should laminate it on some handy index-sized cards and pull them out whenever it is necessary.

And yes, I am that big of a literary dork that I made a chart that uses the process of elimination to identify some of my favorite books/stories/poems. I regret nothing.

Love you.
Mean it.