To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us [Paperback]

Sasha Cagen (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 6, 2007

What Do Your Lists Say About You?

More and more, we are a nation of list-makers, from grocery lists, New Year's resolutions, and things to do before we die to DVDs to rent and people we've kissed. In To-Do List (based on the popular blog of the same name, todolistblog.com) Sasha Cagen celebrates the humble to-do list, exploring the ways these scribbled agendas reflect our personalities and passions.

To-Do List is both a celebration of lists and a peek at the lists that others create. Broken down by subjects like "Daily Lists" to "Sex Lists," it's a fascinating collection of lists from everyday people to the well-known:

1. Novelist Nick Hornby's list of desert island discs
2. A therapist's secret fears ("I HATE having to think about clients in relation to my hair or clothes")
3. A shopping list from chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse
4. A woman's accomplishments before her thirtieth birthday ("Hot air ballooned over the Serengeti," "Danced on a table in Vegas")
5. Qualities one man is looking for in a future wife, including "Chews with her mouth shut" and "Will let me give my first son the middle name of 'Jacob'"

With each list, Cagen offers the story behind it and a prompt for readers to compare notes and take their own stab at a similar list.

Voyeuristic and interactive, To-Do List will show you just how much -- and what -- your lists say about you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sasha Cagen is the author of Quirkyalone and the founding editor and publisher of To-Do List magazine and its corresponding blog, todolistblog.com. She lives in san francisco.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (November 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416534695
• ISBN-13: 978-1416534693
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #773,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sasha Cagen is an author and entrepreneur who builds communities around passions and new ideas. She is most well known for coining the term 'quirkyalone,' a person who prefers singledom to dating for the sake of dating.

Her first book Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics (Harper San Francisco, 2004), a singles manifesto for a new generation, spawned a holiday, International Quirkyalone Day (Feb. 14), a growing alternative to Valentine's Day that celebrates all forms of love, an online community, and a movement. Find out more at quirkyalone.net.


Sasha's second book is To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us (Simon & Schuster, 2007), a collection of 100 real, handwritten lists and the stories behind them. She began collecting lists as the founding editor and publisher of To-Do List, a print magazine that used the idea of a to-do list to explore details of modern life, and became fascinated by them because they are such a window into our everyday lives.

Among other major recognition, To-Do List was named Best New Magazine of 2000 in Utne's Alternative Press Awards, Reader's Choice.

She continued the project on todolistblog.com, a blog that publishes handwritten lists.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars More like, "What do these lists reveal about these people?" January 6, 2008

By A reader

Format:Paperback

I bought this book on a whim. I should have looked at it in the bookstore, because otherwise I wouldn't have purchased it otherwise.

While the lists in here are interesting and makes me think about the lists I make, I can't say I really cared to constantly read someone else's list about his or her relationships, what to do next, what they want in life, etc. I would have preferred an expanded explanation that the author has prior to each section. I had thought there might be an examination of handwriting, numbered lists versus not numbered, how list writers phrase or order their items, etc.

It is perhaps a little too voyeuristic for me. It was my fault for not looking at it in the bookstore. I urge you not to make the same mistake and to physically flip through it if you want to buy it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Add This One to the To-Read List August 10, 2008

By Deb

Format:Paperback

A List of 10 Reasons To Read This Book:
1. A voyeuristic slice into the scribbled lives of "the listmakers of America (and the world)" and the items on their minds
2. An entertaining collection of hand-written (on whatever paper was handy at the time) to-do lists from 100 real-live listmakers
3. Revealing, insightful, or just plain interesting commentary on each list (by the original listmaker)
4. The challenge of deciphering the listmaker's (unedited!) scribbles, which in some cases are decorated with fun doodles and unintended(?)/unidentifiable spills
5. Insight into the power of list-making--from helping us feel a bit of control in an otherwise-unlistable, chaotic world to giving words to the (often nagging) mumbo-jumbo circulating our minds
6. Endless DIY list ideas for creating your own lists, including "Places Where I Would Like To Get Frisky" "Foods I Want to Try" "My Qualities That Someone Else Will Appreciate" "A Sexual To-Do List for My Partner" "Thoughts to Remove from My Head" and "Ten Reasons to Be Happy Today"
7. "Garret Love" (a new standard of love line-by-line'd on p. 118)
8. Sasha's clever one-line comments following each list
9. Validation that you are not alone in your list-making obsession, uh, I mean tendency
10. Being able to cross off one item in your "Books to Read" list upon completion of this book

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not at the top of my to-do list, I'm afraid January 9, 2008

By Emma

Format:Paperback

I was kind of disappointed, I was expecting something more along the lines of the universality of Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World or PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, but it was not nearly so satisying. There were fewer lists and a lot of narration from the author and background information about the creators of the lists...sometimes too much information to make them likeable, and sometimes just plain voyeuristic without any emotional impact. I wished the lists were allowed to stand on their own a little more. Some folks may enjoy it, in fact, the things I disliked may be the very things someone else would like, but it wasn't my cup of tea and I wished I had looked at it before buying it.