Readers and writers blog

Lots of us make lists, and some of us actually pay attention to them. But someone else’s lists? Not likely — unless, that is, they come from a wonderfully eclectic and weirdly charming weblog called The List Server.

For example, you may know the world’s largest island (Greenland) or the largest lake (the Caspian Sea) or even the largest lake on an island (Nettilling Lake on Canada’s Baffin Island), but . . . what about the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island?

Ha, that’s Vulcan Point in Crater Lake on Volcano Island in Lake Taal on Luzon in the Philippines.

Don’t believe it? Well, the author of The List Server, who lists herself only as Cath, gives us a link to the source of the information in her Aug. 8 entry — the Elbruz Organization, an Amsterdam-based scientific and educational group that knows all about islands and lakes.

The latest entry we found, Nov. 2, was a list of rare hummingbirds of the United States. Guess what? A green-breasted mango was spotted in Corpus Christi, Texas, in November 1997. The last time one was seen in Texas was in 1992.

How about the history of hot sauce? Bad news for Texas. According to Cath’s June 5 entry, the first bottled cayenne sauces appeared in 1807 in, ohmygawd, Massachusetts.

Hungarian tongue-twisters? One of the worst listed in the April 11 entry is “Give me a mouthful of wall, said the wall-eating wooden horse.” Of course, that’s a translation. You’d have to try it in Hungarian. But Cath’s source, the First International Collection of Tongue Twisters at http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/, also lists 2,749 other tongue-twisters in 108 languages, including English, which begins with, you guessed it, Peter Piper and his pickled you-know-whats.

You know, Cath’s first entry, April 8, started innocently enough — a list of American quilting designs. The next day, of course, it was a list of 38 strangely named fruit fly genes, then the Hungarian tongue-twisters and it was off to the races.

Here’s a sample listing of the lists (how derivative is this?):

• Names of monster trucks (April 14), including the Raminator and its useful colleague Towasaurus Wrex.

• Yodeling phrases (April 15).

• Nineteenth-century picnic luncheon menus (April 21).

• All 56 of Saturn’s moons (April 26).

• Yo-yo tricks (May 8). Yeah, we know Walk the Dog and Shoot the Moon, but how about Warp Drive and Worm Hole?

• Extreme croquet events (May 26), including one in Nevada where trucks with oversize tires smash six-foot balls through giant hoops.

• Names of pinball machines made in 1931 (June 26).

• Songs featuring cowbells (July 13).

• Butterfly species named for the punctuation-like markings on their wings (July 15).

• Extremely expensive desserts (Aug. 15), led by a chocolate confection topped with an 80-carat aquamarine that goes for $14,500 at the Fortress, a luxury resort in Galle, Sri Lanka. (You eat the chocolate, pocket the gem.)

• Famous cheerleaders (Aug. 21). (Guess which U.S. president is on the list?)

• Facts about Rubik’s Cube (Oct. 9).

• Oldest currently registered .com domains (Nov. 1).

We told you it’s eclectic and weird. What we can’t tell you is why we find it so disarmingly charming. Maybe it’s because each new entry comes, as we baseball fans like to say, straight out of left field, each a surprise. We explain the baseball expression because we suspect Cath is either an Australian or maybe a New Zealander. Why else would her Sept. 2 entry list the steepest streets in Dunedin, New Zealand?

The mystery of her identity — she offers no autobiographical information — may also add to the appeal.

But at the bottom of it is this: While Cath doesn’t do much writing other than her lists, her selections show the skill of a very good editor. And all good editors (we emphasize the word good because we’ve met enough bad ones) are good writers.

For those and other reasons, The List Server is the latest addition to our blogroll of well-written sites.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTES: 1. We found The List Server through the blogroll of another excellent site, The Vapour Trail.

2. The headline on this entry is a line from Stephen Foster’s 1862 song “Beautiful Dreamer.”