Introducing The List: The Prodigal Guide to life’s 100 best

The Prodigal Fool was Tweeting with @Hodinkee recently about a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. “It’s one of my all time-favourites” he wrote. “Us too” replied @Hodinkee “it’s on ‘the list’.”

Of course, ‘the list’.

We’ve all done it. If you’re passionate about anything, whether it’s cars, movies or garden gnomes, it’s not long before you start drawing up lists in your head and debating them furiously with like-minded friends. The top ten essential gadgets to take on a pan-European road trip. The five best Italian restaurants in New York. If you had to par down your watch collection to only three pieces what would they be? Come on, admit it, if you’re anything like us, you’ve spent many a wine-fuelled evening on these sorts of debates.

So, today, driven by what comes naturally to fanatical idiots like us, we’re launching a new centrepiece for the site – The List: The Prodigal Guide to life’s 100 best.

You’ve read hit-parade lists before. Ours is a little different.

Firstly, because it isn’t complete yet. Secondly, because it never will be, and thirdly because we’re not going to write it (well not on our own anyway). Don’t worry, we’ll explain, but first let’s look at what The List is supposed to be about, what its ultimate goal is.

The first question to most will be: “life’s 100 best what?” Well, that’s the thing; we don’t know yet. Our aim is to settle on the list of 100 ‘things’ that we believe represent the very best that life has to offer. Yes, yes we know life is about much more than material things. The love of a good woman, your first-born’s smile, the contentment derived from doing selfless good deeds. That’s all true and there are many other places on the web if that’s your bag. Here at The Prodigal Guide, we’re focussed on the things you can spend your money on. But we’re not just about spending money. Our aim has always been to highlight excellence, to pick out the very best available. As Edreams puts it “savouring and commenting on life’s most accomplished objects and the experiences they provide.”

Where does the idea come from? Well, we were partly inspired by this guy who, in sharp contrast to ourselves, has been trying to shun consumerism and par his life down. Yeah, from an ideological perspective, we seem to be poles apart. At first we scoffed, we laughed, we even have uttered the odd expletive. But then a niggling thought occurred to us: change the concept a little bit, make it about finding the 100 best things that collectively represent excellence as we define it and you have a Prodigal challenge we would definitely want to rise to.

So, back to what makes this list different. Well, here’s how we see it working:

• It isn’t complete: What you’ll see in the The List today is our first, very rough cut, based on the topics we’ve covered on The Prodigal Guide to-date. We’ve sketched out some cateogires, left others blank. The ideas is that as new things come to our attention they might earn a place on The List.
• It never will be complete: Once we do have a full list of 100, that doesn’t mean our passion for cars, films, food, gadgets, travel and watches is likely to be satiated. Far from it. What it does mean is that for anything new we may want to add to the list, we’ll have to decide what to take off. We’re open to modifying cateogries or simply the things that win each category. As long as the result continues to represent our most well-judged summary of life’s finest.
• We’re not going to write it alone: That’s right, we’re opening this one up to all our readers (yes both of you!). Any suggestions for categories we should use or items that should be added or deleted will be considered. If necessary, we’ll put them up to a vote.

And with that, we present The List as it stands today

Come back often to watch it grow – and don’t forget to let your voice be heard.