At the risk of incurring a piling-on penalty as the millennium closes by releasing yet another Best of the Century list, here goes.
Today's list: Best books.Nobody else's. Mine.
Like most Americans, I let other things get in the way of books. Work, TV, sleep, golf occasionally, movies, eating. But I love to read, and every time I sit down with a good book, I have a hard time stopping.
After racking my memory, these are my submissions as the best books I've read that were published in the 20th century:
1. "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry
2. "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara
3. "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
4. "King of the World" by David Remnick
5. "Marathon Man" by William Goldman
6. "Misery" by Stephen King
7. "Goldenrod" by Herb Harker
8. "The Firm" by John Grisham
9. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
10. "The Fist of God" by Frederick Forsyth
If you haven't read any of these books, I would say you are in for a literary smorgasbord. Then again, maybe not. Reading is such a subjective thing. On a list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century recently released by Modern Library, not a single one of my top 10 made it.
The top book of the century according to Modern Library is " Ulysses" by James Joyce, which I have not read, and I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to it.
If they can leave "Lonesome Dove" off their top 100, maybe we're not on the same page.
"Lonesome Dove" is so good I read it throughout a vacation in Hawaii. Sitting in a lounge chair on Waikiki Beach, I might as well have been in Montana with Gus and Call and Newt and the rest of the boys from the Hat Creek Cattle Company.
I read "Lonesome Dove" so hard and so long I ended up offending people by not answering them and forgetting dinner, which is pretty much my criteria for making the top 10.
Included on my top 10 are two books from my all-time favorite writer, William Goldman, and one book each from Stephen King, in my opinion seriously underrated as a writer because of his usually far-out subject matter ("Misery" stays away from the occult and is a basic real-life nightmare about a writer trapped with a crazy lady in a remote mountain cabin), and Frederick Forsyth, the English spy writer who is yet to write the book I don't want to read.
I'm not a big John Grisham fan - of the paperwork superstars, I would rate Nelson DeMille far ahead of Grisham - but "The Firm" made my list because I stayed up all night to read it.
"King of the World" is the Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali story by David Remnick, in my opinion the finest pure writer in the group, while "Killer Angels" is the kind of historical fiction novel (of the Battle of Gettysburg) that gives historical fiction a good name.
"Goldenrod," a love story written by Canadian Herb Harker, cuts to the heart of relationships so well it could make a cowboy cry.
If you haven't read my top 10, perhaps you've seen it.
With the exception of "King of the World," every book has been made into a movie. And "King of the World" is only a year old, so there's still time.
None of the movie versions has been as good as the book. Not even close, although "Lonesome Dove" and "Princess Bride" are excellent films, and Dustin Hoffman plays a terrific Babe Levy in "Marathon Man."
Still, the best a movie can ever hope to do is scratch the surface of a good book.
If you like the movie, get the book. And if you love the movie, you're going to offend people when you read it. Count on it.
Lee Benson's column appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to (Benson@desnews.com) and faxes to 801-237-2527.