Top Fives with the Kid

The internet works in mysterious ways.

Recently I got a comment from a heretofore unknown person, Olivia at Books in Blankets.  It was a nice comment, so I drifted over to her blog to browse.  I liked what I saw, and fell down one of those "let me now stalk this blog's archives" rabbit holes.  She wrote a post awhile back about her five favorite books, the ones she'd keep if she was only allowed five books for the rest of her life, which thankfully is a hypothetical situation.

I mean, can you imagine?

Anyway, this ended up starting a game for my ten year old and me last night after dinner.  We picked our top five in several categories.  Then, at her insistence, we had to pick our number one.  SO HARD.  But also just for fun, so I tried to not get too obsessive about getting the "right" answers.

And now, highly influenced by Olivia's post, I'm sharing our choices with you.  Feel free to play along in the comments!  (Thanks, Olivia!)

DOGS
The kid's picks:

• Burmese Mountain Dog 
• German Shepherd
• Corgi
• Siberian Husky
• Pomeranian

My picks:

• Siberian Husky 
• Newfoundland (I would've chosen Burmese Mtn. dog too, but wanted variety)
• Scottish Terrier
• Australian Shepherd
• Golden Retriever

  

  My beautiful Tilly Jane.  You can't tell from here, but she had one brown and one blue eye.  And she was so FLUFFY!

I grew up with a Scottie, and we added a Husky when I was in 8th grade.  The Winemaker has terrible allergies--and winemakers need to be able to use their sense of smell--so my poor kids aren't able to have cats and dog.  So all of this is highly theoretical, and based 99% on the dog's looks.  Her number one choice was Pomeranian "because I couldn't decide between Huskies and Corgis!" and mine was a Husky.  

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WILD ANIMALS:

The kid's picks:

• Polar bear
• leopard
• white tiger
• harp seal
• African elephant ("Which is different from an Asian elephant, Mom.")

My picks:

• caribou
• grey wolf
• Siberian tiger
• sea otter
• blue whale

What can I say?  We're mammal fans.  Her top choice was the white tiger, but she whispered her answer so her stuffed leopard wouldn't be offended.  I went with wolves.

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BIRDS

Hers

• bald eagle
• red tailed hawk
• chickadee
• barn owl
• downy woodpecker

Mine

• kestrel falcon
• snowy owl (Hedwig!)
• chickadee
• pileated woodpecker
• stork

Top choices were the hawk and stork.  I so loved seeing actual storks and their gigantic nests when I was living in the Baltics.

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MOVIES

Hers

• Harry Potter series
• The Princess Bride
• a recording of the Nutcracker ballet
• The Lion King
• Zootopia

Mine

• Up
• The Princess Bride
• Life is Beautiful
• Lord of the Rings (since apparently we can choose series)
• The Sound of Music (which I kind of have to sing along with)

We watched Princess Bride together recently and have been quoting it right and left, so we both chose that for our current fave.

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FLOWERS

Hers

• trillium
• daisy
• water lily
• rose
• bluebell

Mine

• trillium
• Gerbera daisy
• Indian paintbrush (how's THAT for an insensitive name?  Love the flower though.)
• lupine
• calla lily

Her favorite is the water lily, which I did not know.  Mine is the trillium, which she did know, give that it's her middle name.  

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And now for the good stuff!  She insisted we separate our books into two categories, because she wanted to be sure we had a cookbook, but didn't want to give up any fiction for it.  Also, she declared series to be acceptable as one answer, then chose all the long series she could think of.  I held myself to a higher standard.  Ahem*.

NONFICTION

Hers

• a book about wolves
• a book about Lithuania
• a book about animal care
• How to Cook Everything
• grandma's gigantic National Geographic atlas 

Mine

• The notebook I've handwritten recipes in for the last 20+ years
• Traveling Mercies
• Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditerod
• Oregon Geographic Names
• Hiking the Columbia River Gorge

She settled on the atlas as her number one choice (which is so cool, I think), and I'd have to hang on to the recipes.  

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And--grand finale--

FICTION

Her list

• Chomp
• the four Babysitter Club graphic novels
• the infinity number Warrior Cats series
• the Magic Treehouse series
• the Harry Potter series

My list

• The River Why
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• Left Hand of Darkness
• The Singing Tree
• The Handmaid's Tale

That was super hard, of course, because we were both thinking about length and complexity as much as "did I love this book?"  If you don't have many books, you want them each to be meaty.  For a more complete look at my favorites you can either click on the "Falconer's Favorites" page above, or check out my "100 Books I Could Survive On" shelf on Goodreads.  I should go in and do some ruthless curation of that--I don't think I've updated it in a couple of years, and there might be some bumping required.  

* Okay, if I HAD allowed myself to pick series, I think I'd have:

• Reginald Hill's Pascoe and Dalziel series, with 24 progressively better mysteries total
• Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series, with only three books, but so inventive and moving!
• Neal Shusterman's Unwind series is one of those trilogies that expanded to five books, HURRAH!
• L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, because as much as I love HP, Anne was my childhood series
• Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series, because even when the recurring characters piss me off, the mysteries are so much more than mysteries. Plus Barbara Havers is my alter-ego.  I would love to not give a fuck as spectacularly as she does.  

Play "top five" with YOUR family!  I think our topic choices say as much about us as the items selected.  What categories would you include?  What are some of your top fives?