I received a copy of Literary Listography to facilitate my review. As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with these books or not.  There’s a whole Listography series.  They’re journaling books based entirely on lists.  Each two-page spread has an illustration on the left page and a list “title” on the right, with lines to make your list.

The original Listography Journal was fairly general.  The others since then have been thematic.  In the beginning, at least, they seemed to be geared to the stereotypical partying college student, so there were a lot of less-than-wholesome list titles.  As the author has grown up, the books seem to have matured, as well, and later books in the series are more respectable and (in my opinion) more fun.  (I think the illustrations have improved, too.  They’re still quirky, but they’re not so weird.)

Literary Listography

I say all that just to make sure you know that if you’re checking out earlier books in the series, you’ll definitely want to do your due diligence (especially if you’re going to give the book to a teen – yikes!)  This one I found pretty clean, overall, ‘though not intended for little eyes. There are a few list titles that are, shall we say, “romantically inclined”?  But they’re tactfully worded.  If you’re not comfortable with them you can readily skip them, but they don’t (at least in my opinion) have vulgar titles.

By now you might be thinking, “sheesh, if she has to say all that, is there really anything to recommend about the book?” I’m just exercising an abundance of caution to ensure I don’t mislead anyone!  The vast majority of the journaling list prompts in Literary Listography are completely benign.  Some are playful and silly.  Others are thought-provoking.  Some you’ll probably finish at a sitting; others you might mull over for a while or even add to over time.

There are, if I counted correctly, 72 prompts in the book.  (1-4 fall into that category I was warning you about, depending on just how conservative you are.)  There are genre-based lists.  Lists about books that made you feel a certain way. Lists about books that impacted you.  Books you loved or hated.  I don’t want to get too specific because I want to honor the author’s copyright!

Here’s a picture to give you an idea of the illustration style, and the layout:

I thought it would be fun to finish off this post with a literary list of my own, so here’s a list of Children’s Books I Love:

(This is probably not exhaustive. This is more-or-less off the top of my head.)

• Where the Wild Things Are
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Goodnight Moon (for the sentimental value more than the story)
• The Snowy Day  (My daughter used to say, “by Adderradack Keats” 🙂 )
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (I actually say that when things have been really rotten — that it’s “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.”)
• The Lightlings
• the Mini Masters series (especially In the Garden with Van Gogh)
• Harold and the Purple Crayon

I know I have some less-conventional favorites that I’m drawing a blank on.  I’ll have to go digging through our shelves later and add to the list!