Once in a while I list my favorites of something as a way to triangulate my identity. Today I listed some of my favorite novels. Earning a living through my writing and becoming a novelist are two of my most important aspirations, not necessarily in that order, so it seemed sensible to have a canon to look up to. After all, if you don’t know what you’re aiming to reach, what are you even aspiring for?

These were some of the names that came up in my mind:

• Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets by J.K. Rowling
• The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• Hear the wind sing by Haruki Murakami
• The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald
• Post Office by Charles Bukowski
• Second foundation by Isaac Asimov
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway
• If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino
• The catcher in the rye by J.D.Salinger
• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• Swag by Elmore Leonard
• No longer human by Osamu Dazai
• The pillars of the earth by Ken Follett
• Kneller’s Happy Campers by Etgar Keret
• Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

I also remember liking books like “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea” (a beautiful illustrated edition that I borrowed from the library) and Galliano’s circus, but this is so far back in my memory that I don’t know if I still like them. These are just novels, mind you. I have an entire list separate from this for short stories, and similar examples for movies, animated series, television series, graphic novels, songs, instrumental music, and so on.

But the point is, I noticed my feelings in operation when I was putting together this list, and it was a curious mix. One feeling was “Why are the books I like so normie? Everybody likes Normal People and Norwegian Wood. There’s nothing unique about my taste. Isn’t there anything more unique that I liked, like how Samurai Jack and Primal are niche series that nobody I know has watched?” I also didn’t feel a fierce love for most of these novels, the way I do for say Samurai Jack or Avatar the Last Airbender, making me question if novels were even the form I was supposed to be working with.

Another feeling was, “I remember enjoying Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Notes from the Underground. Yet, none of these books feel like favorites to me. I admired them, but I don’t love them or feel passionately about them. Is this a problem, that my taste is more contemporary, and not classic?” Whenever I picked a favorite, I was also imagining how I would recommend that pick to a friend, and if the description did not seem poetic or eloquent enough, it interfered with the liking I felt when I picked the book.

All of this to say, that even in the privacy of my mind, while putting together a list of favorites for myself, I was conscious of how this list would be seen and perceived. It’s an extension to what I wrote yesterday in the fear and desire of being seen.

I expect my favorites to change over time, and I also expect some childhood favorites to remain favorites even as my critical ability improves. It’s an interesting snapshot of the things I enjoy at any given point in time.