The 50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 Years

As has been commented before on this blog, lists of the "top/most {insert adjective here} books" may often seem arbitrary and objective (and even questionable - e.g. the alleged BBC books list that goes around on Facebook).

The SuperScholar website has released a list of the "50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years". The list contains the usual suspects, such as Atkins, Spock, Friedan, Dawkins, etc., but also some other more interesting selections - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

I particularly applaud the inclusion of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life.

As is often the case, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has been incorporated as one item, coming in at number 35.

Check out the list and let me know what you think. How many have you read and consider to be worthy choices? Is it too limited to restrict the list to 50?

Princess Party

Today, with my pastoral care class, we did a kind of self-esteem building activity.

This term, we have been watching the film Ever After, and discussing it along the way. The film teaches us to remain true to ourselves and not to "be overcome by evil {stepsisters}, but overcome evil with good" (NIV Bible, Romans 12:21). The main character, Danielle (Drew Barrymore), gets her prince in the end through courage and honesty, not by devious means.

We linked this to the upcoming royal wedding of Kate Middleton (a "commoner") and Prince William. I showed them an article from The Courier-Mail, "Website puts royal gloss on Kate", and we discussed random questions such as:

• If you were Kate Middleton, how would you be feeling right now, with your wedding not far away?
• Do you think Kate Middleton is under pressure to live up to expectations of being as good a princess as William's mother, Princess Diana?
• Is Kate's weight loss in preparation for the wedding a bad sign of the stress/responsibilities to come, considering Princess Diana was anorexic/bulimic when she was a princess?
• How do you think Kate is coping with all the media attention?
• Do you think she feels pressure to produce a male heir?
• How are things different these days now that princes can choose whom they want to marry, rather than having to marry someone chosen for them by their families (cf. Prince Henry's frustrations in Ever After)?

You might also want to look at an article discussing Kate's "princess training" which she is currently undergoing, the official website for the royal wedding preparations, and/or look at Princess Mary of Denmark (as an Australian commoner married to royalty).

I then tried to link the discussion to Psalm 139, about how we are all princesses in God's eyes because we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14), and that you don't need to marry a prince to be a princess! (Aww....)

Next, we proceeded to make a right royal mess by crafting our own princess crowns out of cardboard, ominous amounts of gold glitter, fake jewels and whatever else we could get our hands on. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera again so I can't show you any of the lovely creations!

Some of the students said they would go off to their next class wearing their crowns and command the teacher to bow to them...!

We finished the lesson by eating pink cupcakes. A happy, sticky ending.