Alternative to list()

Suppose I have a dataset with 10 columns, let's call it "foo".

Now if I want to extract out only column 2 ~ 8, then I know I can use =
either:
    foo[ ,2:8]
or
    fooNew <- list( foo[ ,2:8] )

(Is there any other alternative, just out of curiosity?)

But, if I only want, say, column 1, 4 and 7, I tried:
    fooNew <- list( x =3D foo[ ,1], y =3D foo[ ,4], z =3D foo[ , 7]  )
then when I type=20
    fooNew
I got a list of:
 $x
  ....
  ....
 $y
  ....
  ....
 $z
  ....
  ....

However what I really want is for them to be in vector/column form.  How =
would I do this?