I am not a grinch. I do not complain about jazzy Christmas carols, even though I’ve never been a fan. I do not moan about boozy lunch arguments, since I quite like getting sozzled with my family. If pressed, I will even go so far as to defend your right to watch Love Actually.

But one holiday institution has got me down this year.

It all started with the New York Times Book Review a few weeks ago. The cover of the 2 December edition featured an illustration of several readers, some young, some old, one with a hipster beard and beanie, inside a shaken snow globe full of books. “Holiday Books,” was the title.

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But this whimsical presentation belied the horror that dwelt within. That’s right. I’m talking about the 100 Most Notable Books list (as well as 100-or-so additional suggestions, just in case that wasn’t enough).

“Holiday books?” Excuse me, but it would have to be a bloody long holiday.

And so we come to my Scrooge-like complaint: I want to ban year-end, best-of culture lists. Books. TV. Movies. Whatever.

I understand these annual catalogues are designed to be helpful, to guide us through a world in which almost unlimited entertainment options create confusion and uncertainty.

But the sheer number of oversized lists published each year has the exact opposite effect, filling us with guilt about how much we’ve missed already, reminding us that every choice we make represents a missed chance to do or consume something else, leaving us even less sure of what to select as we sit stunned before the nightmarish Netflix menu of life. When did the weight of culture become so crushing?

Can we agree on 10 TV shows, 20 books, 30 movies and 40 albums? I think we can

Of course, I know deep down that these lists are not compiled by a single reader or viewer and are not meant to be a suggested course of cultural consumption, but it’s hard not to feel attacked by them, especially when they’re everywhere.

This very publication released a list of the top 50 shows of the year. Fifty! That’s almost as bad as 100 books, though not quite, perhaps because I already feel guilty about spending too much time on my phone and not reading enough.

I mean, I suppose if I did nothing else with my free time, I might be able to get through the Times’ list, but that would be next year gone, and I would have to put off all the great new books of 2019 until 2020 and so on, year after year until the sweet release of death.

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That reading life would be pretty miserable too. I would have no time to smash through an airport novel, dive into an author’s back catalogue or re-read a classic (a book that nobody admits to reading for the first time, to paraphrase Italo Calvino), let alone start with the movies and albums.

At the very least, I demand that the world’s media outlets keep their year-end lists to an achievable length for the cultural medium they concern: enough to get through while also consuming some oldies, some oddities and some trash. Can we agree on 10 TV shows, 20 books, 30 movies and 40 albums? I think we can.

If not, I will continue to take these lists as a reminder that my short time on planet Earth is relentlessly ticking away, that I’ll never have time to do all the things I want to, and that even if I were to achieve something as awe-inspiring as creating a notable work of art, it would only be one among hundreds of other notable works of art, soon to be forgotten along with the rest as everyone who has ever heard about them ages, dies and turns to dust.

But I hope it doesn’t have to be like that, because, as I said, I’m not a grinch. Anyway, Merry Christmas.