Last Wednesday, in the car on the way to Thanksgiving, Chad was telling me about his blog post on different kinds of "'favorite' book lists." I had a rotten headache and, without realizing it, was well on my way to an excellent case of car-sickness, so I was only listening with half my brain. Across the other half, book titles quietly floated past. When I noticed this, I realized that my backbrain had come up with its own definition of "favorite" and was tossing up titles.

So, two things resulted from this. One, of course, was a list of book titles. The other was a question: when confronted with the question, "What are your favorite books?", is there any definition of "favorite" that comes first to your mind? Or is it solely dependent on the context?

I'm putting my definition and list behind the cut tag, to avoid prejudicing any instinctive reactions on readers' parts.

(Cross-posted to rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan because I said I would.)