Favourite versus best
Reactor asks Do You Distinguish Between “Best” and “Favorite” Books?
Of course I distinguish between best and favourite. It's wild to me that there are people who don't make that distinction, as in the quote in the article. People of exceptional taste I suppose. It also makes me a bit sad because it suggests something very pristine.
I always make a very specific distinction between my favourites and the things I believe are the best. With the proviso that 'best' translates to 'best to my mind' on still-subjective ideas like craft, or merit. What we love is so specific to who we are. I can say 'my favourite' with authority because I am the sole expert in my taste and preferences. I don't think anyone can say The Best with authority, but they sure do.
Many of my favourite books are my favourites because I imprinted on them when I was young. And later favourites are in that vein. I can see a direct link between the dense mythology of Watership Down and the snippy epicness and lifelong antagonism of Vanity Fair leading straight to my favourite book, Wicked - not the book itself but my love of it.
Wicked, I think, is a much better book than people who haven't read it might assume, especially if they are thinking of the musical which bears almost no resemblance. But I would never go to bat for it being The Best. For fun read one star reviews of your favourite books or indeed any book, including the widely agreed-upon consensus Best.
Who has the authority to say 'best'? At most there can be a general consensus in that direction but there is always going to be dissent. Generally the closest I can get is "Yes, I absolutely understand why people would think that." Jeanne Dielman voted greatest film of all time? Yes, I absolutely understand that. Other times it feels like the emperor has no clothes.
I'm in the enviable position of my favourite film, which I also refer to as The Worst Film due to emotional damages, being widely acknowledged as actually great - often appearing in critics' lists and such. In fact my girl is the highest new entry on the above Sight & Sound list. Fancy!
But other films, my goodness. Some I recognise as actively objectively bad but that doesn't mean I love them any less. Maybe I love them even more for it.
I adore D.E.B.S. Easily one of my favourite films. You've probably not seen it and that's fine. I would not expect you to. It's a hilarious low-budget spy parody with ladies kissing. The cheap CGI is embraced, some - some - of the dialogue is clunk, it often doesn't make sense plot-wise. But it's so charming and absolutely not trying to be anything it's not. It gets quoted all the time in my house and is one of our most regular rewatches.
Top 100 lists seem to function as ragebait as much as anything else. An aside: when I put "top 100" into DuckDuckGo it offers me "top 100 golf courses" as the first result. I assure you, this is not personalised. The New York Times best books of the 21st century had everyone frothing at the mouth. People love a list and they love arguing about them even more.
The Guardian this year had the podium as Middlemarch, Beloved, Ulysses. The Guardian readers' have Lord of the Rings, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice. Ulysses isn't on the readers' list until number ten, Beloved until twenty. The critics put P&P at nine - Lord of the Rings doesn't make the top hundred.
These lists and their differences tell us a lot of things but I don't think anything about bestness. Tracking these changes would be really good fun and I'm sure people have.
The critics can make their lists for everyone to argue about, and some people can nurture their exceptional taste - objectivity and subjectivity be damned. I've got my favourites. Some of them are definitely bad, some of them are pretty good. And I love them all.