My Fives Lists (Because It’s Way Too Hard to Come up with Hundreds)

“Did you make a list of all the Hundreds?” people ask after they’ve read MATCHED. They sometimes seem surprised when I tell them, “No.” I haven’t made those lists because they wouldn’t be my lists—I would choose very different things than the Society would. I can’t imagine anything more tedious than trying to come up with the lists that a dystopian government would make. But, it’s been very fun coming up with a few lists of my own—books and songs and paintings that I would just have to keep. (Although now that I look at it, I do have one painting on my own list that the Society chose for theirs as well. So maybe I should go ahead and put together the Hundreds! )

These are my current favorites—I do change from time to time—but for the most part, these pieces of art are ones that I’ve loved for years. I’ve listed them in no particular order—I love each of the five on each list equally.

Top Five Books
1. Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler
2. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
3. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
4. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
5. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Top Five Songs
1. Empty by Ray La Montagne
2. The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen
3. Captain of a Shipwreck by Neil Diamond
4. Downbound Train by Bruce Springsteen
5. Dustland Fairytale by The Killers

Top Five Paintings
1. Chasm of the Colorado by Thomas Moran
2. Office in a Small City by Edward Hopper
3. Widows and Orphans, by Kathe Kollwitz
4. Water at the Temple of Sinawava by Jim Jones
5. A painting of my children done by my mother, Arlene Braithwaite

With the exception of the painting my mother did of my kids, you can find information about all of these artists and their work online. Sometimes, I can’t believe how lucky we are to have so many beautiful things in the world. Can you?

A former English teacher (who still keeps her license current, just in case!), she lives with her husband and three sons outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. She loves reading, writing, running, and listening to her husband play guitar.

You can learn more about the MATCHED trilogy at the official MATCHED website.

On today’s blog tour Ally Condie talks about the artwork in CROSSED at Novel Novice!

Today’s blog tour takes us to Page Turners where Ally Condie writes about art within the trilogy.

Today’s blog tour takes us to the Matched-Trilogy where Ally Condie talks more about the backstory of Ky and Xander’s names!

Today is day three of the Crossed Blog Tour which takes us to the Frenetic Reader to learn all about Ally Condie’s road to getting published!

Hollywood Crush: Did you know right away that you’d need to write “Crossed” from both Cassia and Ky’s perspectives. Did that pose any challenges?
Ally Condie: I knew right away. I just didn’t see how there was any other way to do it geographically. And their experiences were so important. I kind of thought of the first book as Cassia’s book and she changes a lot. But this book I always thought of as Ky’s book. Cassia is very important; she’s still definitely the main character in this series, but this is the book where we finally get to know Ky, and I knew there wasn’t any way to do it if it weren’t in his mind.

It was challenging. I feel like Ky keeps things close to the vest, even with himself in some ways, so it was kind of hard sometimes to get his voice down on paper and tell me a little bit. Otherwise it was easy. I feel like he’s a pretty straightforward guy. Mostly it was just fun to have a new perspective and discover him a little bit.

Find the rest of the interview at MTV’s Hollywood Crush