I have heard a myriad of logical reasons and a bathtub full of creative logic by different writers. George Orwell (Wouldn’t that be a clever name for a character in a book? Hm-m-m.), in an essay entitled, Why I Write, lists four straightforward reasons to write. The first reason is egoism. The “desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get back at grown-ups that snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc.” The next reason, aesthetic enthusiasm, is “the perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.” Orwell’s third reason is historical impulse. The “desire to see things as they are to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.” I am much more in alignment with Anais Nin who said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” His final motive for writing is political purpose. It is a “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

Who started Book Lists, anyway? Was it a wayward Confucian monk during the Tang Dynasty who listed his favorite tangrams? Maybe a Greek playwright trying to make some cash on a side hustle? Some of that Quid Pro Quo stuff? Oh, no…wait…that had to be a Roman. Maybe Julius down at the scriptorium decided to make the good citizens of Rome aware of which parchment scrolls were selling. So, who gets to make up the list of Top Ten Books of the year? And what does that even mean? And why ten? Is it the Top Ten best-selling books, Top Ten most intriguing books, Top Ten how-to-make a box books, Top Ten genre-specific books?