The books you love.

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What are your favorite books? Use the same criteria I did: the books you will keep rereading until you die, the books that move you, the books that make you think, the books that cause you to go beyond what's written on the page. You don't have to list ten, although you can if you want; just tell us what you love.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Answers

If I could only take one book to a desert island, that book would be Watership Down by Richard Adams. It is, hands down, the most perfect book I have ever read. My father gave it to me when I was 11, saying that some people thought it was a book for young people, but he thought I would understand that it was not. And even at age 11, I understood that. I have read it probably about fifty times. In the first few years after I read it the first time, I would read it, finish, and flip right back to the beginning to start over.

Other books that belong on my "best ever" list...To Kill A Mockingbird, which I read for the first time this spring and was blown away by the absolute simple perfection of every word...Deerskin and The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, both "young adult" books that made me want to be more than I am...The Archivist by Martha Cooley...The Great Gatsby.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


And thank you for asking....

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Lincoln's Dreams, Connie Willis
A Fine and Private Place, Peter S. Beagle
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy
Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman
A Night in the Lonesome October, Roger Zelazny
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
Replay, Ken Grimwood
The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Color of Light, William Goldman
Good Times/Bad Times, James Kirkwood
Les Jeux Sont Faits, Jean-Paul Sartre
Legion, William Peter Blatty

The Pat Conroy selection probably seems strange, but the language in this book is wonderful. There's a chapter about Charleston that begs to be read aloud, so you can feel the weight of the words on your tongue. The same can be said of the Steinbeck book.

Of all of them, Man's Search for Meaning is the one that moved me the most. It's about the author's experiences in a concentration camp. It spurred my interest in the subject and eventually led to me getting my master's degree in European history.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Ack. Sorry about the formatting up there.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Beth, I'm surprised A Tree Grows in Brooklyn wasn't on your list.

Mine:


I knew someone would ask about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I was pretty sure it would be you. It might make the top fifteen under different criteria, but not this list. I love it for sentimental reasons, mostly.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I could probably do ten children's books as a separate list. Bridge to Terabitha would definitely be on it.

I'm going to have to dig out my copy of Watership Down. A lot of people list it, and it's been too long since the last time I read it.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I've sadly found that I lack the ability to read fiction any more. For the past five years or so every time I have sat down with a work of fiction I find myself rereading the first two or three pages without absorbing any of it, and generally getting annoyed with the flowery language that no one uses in real conversation. Then I throw it aside. Actually, no, wait, I did manage to get through Fight Club. Someday soon I'm going to write an entry on why Fight Club was one of the most conservative movies I have ever seen... anyway...

Most of my favorite books are non-fiction because of this...

Rebel Voices - an anthology detailing the history of the first 15 years or so of the IWW, mostly reprints of essays and articles of the time.

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn's famous work detailing U.S. history from the oft neglected perspectives... colonial era from the perspective of the Arawak, the post-revolutionary period from the perspective of the poor farmers for whom nothing had changed, etc. etc. Probably the best book I could reccomend to anyone, ever.

Lies my teacher told me - James Lowen's critique of the way history is taught in high school, analyzing the six most common history texts and finding them a shallow account of one-dimensional presidents and generals.

Memiors of a Wobbly - Hank McGuckin writes a short autobiography about his train-hopping hobo life, joining the union, and eventually founding the Agricultural Workers' Organization.

Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky and Herman's book detailing how the media in the U.S. acts exactly as we would expect state-owned media in dictatorships to act. The book is lengthy and academic, but the first chapter is indespensible. It shatters the idea that "media control" is some mysterious men-in-black agency and details how self-censorship works in this country. The rest of the book is dedicated to analyzing coverage of several foreign policy issues and supporting their thesis. By the end of this book it's impossible to doubt them, although the evidence starts to get really repetitive.

The Zinn Reader - worth it for his essays on war alone. I think one of the things I like about Zinn is that even though he is a history professor, he writes like a normal human being.

the Bachman Books probably the only work of fiction I can put on here, and even so I haven't read them in like six or seven years. These were stories Stephen King wrote and published under the name "Richard Bachman", basically to see if his writing could survive on it's own merit or if it needed the "Stephen King" name to sell. Well, it failed miserably so the stories were republished... Thinner on it's own and four others (The Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) in one collection. I bought this book in 6th grade at a used book store for a dollar and read it cover to cover. I didn't really like Roadwork but I cried reading The Long Walk when each of the characters died. I reread the book every few months until sometime during college when I had so much other reading to do that I couldn't spare the time. I wonder if I would even enjoy the book now or look at it as juvenile trash? I wonder if they can still print a story about a high school kid shooting a teacher in the classroom and holding everyone hostage.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I loved Watership Down. Its not a favorite, but it is a fine fine book.

I have a few children's books I still reread when I am down, but my all time favorite young adult author, Ellen Raskin, wrote the fabulous book "The Westing Game" and it totally changed my life. It was so smart!

I loved "French Lessons" by Alice Kaplan, about a woman's relationship with the french language. This is not a year in Provence story. I think its great because its about how learning can change your life.

And the book that follows me throughout my life is the very schlocky "Marjorie Morningstar" by Herman Wouk. I read it whenever I feeling like I really am a Jewish American Princess. I then realize I am not one. or at least, not one like Marjorie!

And a favorite essay: "Goodbye to all that" by Joan Didion. I've recently become disenchanted with her but that is a great moment in her writing.

And finally, I will mention just one of Paul Auster's books: the "New York Trilogy". After reading these, I had to read more, and became much more aware of writing and what it was doing. Also, Paul Auster is either or has become a sort of mythic writer/person and I find all that rather fun.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I can't believe Lisa Houlihan used "word" in the way that she did. I am either horrified, or flattered because I was the impetus for the first time...

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Melissa, please be horrified, yo. Horror would better keep me from using it again, which would be very. very. bad. I'm just sayin'.

We now return to our regularly scheduled lisa, who merely Capitalizes Strategically.

Oh, and I didn't have to mention only ten? And A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was struck for being merely a sentimental favorite? Then I should probably strike Shell-Seekers. What about those books you want to be a favorite but haven't read enough times yet? I'm unschooled in labor history to a degree I wouldn't want David Grenier to know about, but I'm a faithful fiction junkie:



-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


Ah, it takes a book thread to get me to post. My mother not be shocked.

My all-time favorite book, the best ghost story I've ever read and yet also the single best love story I've ever read is one that never shows up on anyone else's list. But I'm telling you people this is an amazing book. It's so good I use it as the "thank you for taking time out of your life to join us today" tchotcke at my wedding.

Madeleine's Ghost by Robert Girardi.

It's so hard to sum up the plot quickly because it's such a complicated book, interweaving past and present, New York and New Orleans. The protaginist, Ned, is a grad student who is avoiding his school work and takes a job researching the life of a nun a local priest thinks could be the first saint that lived in Brooklyn. His research involves New Orleans which brings up memories of a lost love from his college days. At the same time, his apartment is haunted (rocks fall from his cieling) and his strange but affecting group of friends are dealing with their own problems.

I read this book every summer. I cry, I laugh, I sigh when it's over. Read it.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


A lot of these are children's books, so I'd like to skip my adult choices and be the first to mention the two Winnie-the-Pooh books, the main two Alice books, and "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4," by Sue Townsend. Forever within reach.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

I figure you all know my favorite children's books because I talk about them more often, but that list would probably look like this:

I'm probably missing a few.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


This was a really good thread on children's books.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Before I list, I just want to express my sadness for those people who don't re-read books. You know the type: the poor things who simply don't understand why I've read "To Kill a Mockingbird" 28 times. I bet half of the books I read are re-reads: it's like having a conversation with someone you love--so what if you can finish their sentences for them? That's the beauty of it. And now:

1. "To Kill A Mockingbird": 28 times and counting. I was once at the point where I read this bok three times straight through--I read the last page, and fliped right back to the first.
2. "The Great Gatsby"
3. "Crime & Punishment"
4. "A Wrinkle in Time"
5. "Catcher in the Rye" [I can see Holden falling from favor someday- -but that day will be far, far in the future] & "9 Stories" [cheating, I know]
6. "Anne of Green Gables"
7. "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" [I've read it once thus far, but it's destined to be a big repeater]
8. "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" [I think I've inspired myself to re-read that right now, actually...]
9. "Mrs. Dalloway"
10. "Hamlet" Yeah, yeah, so it's not a book...Thrift, thrift!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001



I'm so glad that you linked to that old children's book forum topic...wow, that was a great discussion. And it reminded me of the very moment that I decided Lisa Houlihan was a Super Person (tm): she is the only other person I know who had not only heard of my adored childhood favorite picture book, Tikki Tikki Tembo, but knew his entire name, yo.

Of course, reading that list makes me want to chuck my entire reading pile and dive back into my children's books, newly on shelves in neat rows only one book deep for the first time in their lives.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


a hem: tikki tikki tembo no sa rembo chari bari ruchi pip perri pembo

I read it all the time to my daughter.

Anyways - favorite books - not a whole lot of science fiction readers on this forum - eh?

in no particular order:

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Dune - Frank Herbert
Watership Down - Adams
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Midsummers Night Dream
Slaughterhouse Five, and Galapagos - Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles - Bradbury
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Dick
Clockwork Orange - Burgess
Memos from Purgatory - Harlan Ellison
I Claudius - Robert Graves
Forever WAr - Joe Haldeman

Okay, way more than 10, but those are some of the books that have been almost worn out from the repeated readings. Ones I always return to when I want to read "something good" and cant find anything new.

A good thread, thanks, made me go look through my books - now the problem is picking out which one of these to read tonight.

- t

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I think your list probably looks a lot like Jeremy's list would, Tracy, although he'd have at least one thing by Umberto Eco, plus probably The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Our reading tastes don't overlap much, although I think it's mostly just prejudice -- when he convinces me to read something, I always like it, and he usually likes the books I pick out for him.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

1. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
2. Middlemarch, George Eliot
3. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
4. Immortality, Milan Kundera
5. Lost in Translation, Eva Hoffman
6. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
7. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
8. Possession, A.S. Byatt
9. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
10. Patient, Ben Watt
Of all of these, Patient by Ben Watt (one-half of Everything But the Girl) stands out as something I don't recommend nearly often enough. It's a stunning piece of personal narrative, about his battle with a sudden and nearly fatal illness which completely changed his life.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

If I had been including nonfiction books, Into the Wild would have been on my list.

Others on the nonfiction list:



-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Hey, Melissa, does that mean your Janet Lambert collection is more easily accessible now? Could you remind me again when you won't be around?

There are a few nonfiction works on my list, but if I were to have a separate list, I'd add:



-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Laura, my cherished (and hard-won) (and totally incomplete) Janet Lambert collection is certainly out and displayed. And protected with laser beams and an attack robot dog.

However, you two can begin building a collection, thanks to the amazing people at Image Cascade Publishing (www.imagecascade.com), who have reprinted ALL of the Penny Parrish and Tippy Parrish books, as well as all of the Beany Malone and Belford books by Lenora Mattingly Weber.

Go ahead. Start hating me now.

Incidentally, I haven't read a damn thing on Gabby's list of favorites, which reminds me that Possession has been sitting on my "waiting to be read" pile for eight months. I think I've been waiting because I'm afraid it will be too much like The Archivist, or vice versa? Anyone read both? Is this a silly fear?

And I'm so happy that Lisa and I are not the only Tikki Tikki Tembo fans...

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Like David Grenier, I don't read much fiction anymore. I can't claim, though, that any nonfiction work has so moved me that I expect to re-read it, except maybe The Great Democracies, Vol. IV of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, by Winston Churchill. His diction is trance-inducing. The fiction books I go back to now are comforting, simple favorites, mostly from childhood:

Anything by Roberston Davies (even the ghost stories), especially the "Deptford trilogy": Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders;

Any Sherlock Holmes story;

Any P.G. Wodehouse story (even the golf stories);

Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis; and the only really complex story that I like,

More Die of Heartbreak, by Saul Bellow.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Shoot me now, for saying something like "you TWO can begin building a collection" in a literary forum topic.

Obviously, I meant "you too.."

Sigh.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Oh, Lordy, this one is hard. I've been packing all of my books for the last three weeks, and it has been immensely hard not to sit on the floor reading straight through some of my old favorites!

I'm afraid this is more like a random sampling of a top 50 or so, since I just can't say for certain that these are my favorite favorites. They have, however, all been read many, many times and will be read many, many more. I'm limiting myself to two "non-adult" books, or this list would have to just go on and on forever.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett (man, I'm a sap)
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison (I think. Beloved is a close second, for me.)
The Sun Also Rises or maybe A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway. Tough call, that one.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
Franny and Zooey, Salinger
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Dune, Frank Herbert
Le Mort D'Arthur, Thomas Malory
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, Richard Bach

I'm sorry, did you say ten??

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


No more italics. Sorry 'bout that!

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

You realize, Melissa, that you're an enabler.

I think I still have some money left from that tax refund.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


No, Laura, I'm just protecting MY collection.

Perhaps I might have a teeny interest in turning people onto the work of Janet Lambert, oh she who wrote fabulous teen books back in the 50's, but that's probably just a rumor. And I certainly wouldn't suggest that anyone curious buy Star Spangled Summer, which was my first and still my favorite, oh no.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


No one ever talks about The Secret History, and that book more than so many is its own world. But people either loved it or hated it on Amazon.

Beth, I just read In Cold Blood, and I was a lot more impressed than I planned to be.

Into the Wild surprised me by being better than Into Thin Air. An easy comparison, since they're by the same author. Of course Krakauer's personal involvement with the Everest story was high, but the connection he felt and expressed with McCandless in Wild evoked so much more shock and sympathy. Or would if you sympathized with McCandless, which I didn't. Or not with how he died. It was his own life therefore his own choice, but he was nothing but stupid on his final trek. Nonetheless I was filled with envy for both Krakauer and McCandless because at least the both of them knew/know they're alive [kicks cube wall petulantly].

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Oh, I did sympathize with McCandless although obviously he made some terrible choices. I think the reason that book was better than Everest was that Krakauer had some distance from his subject. I've read a lot about the Everest incident, and Krakauer's take on the subject was controversial, to say the least. He was a little defensive in the book, especially the second edition.

I don't think he was only defending himself against the other survivors, either. I think there was a lot of guilt evident in his writing. Understand that I'm not saying *I* think he did something wrong or that he was responsible for anyone's death, but I do think he was too close to the situation to be very objective.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Off topic:

Oh yes. I don't think you can hold anyone accountable for the deaths and injuries, but you'd have to be made of stone not to feel guilt for surviving. (I've heard some Holocaust survivors feel guilt in the same way.) I liked that JK acknowledged in his intro that he got flack for writing so quickly, and I do think it was therapy for him which isn't necessarily fair for the reader. Happily he's a good enough writer that it didn't read like your basic "writing cure" book. I didn't know there was a second edition; I'd like to read both to see the differences. The differences between the original Outside article and book show the therapy aspect, but still his pacing and structure as well as the basic stringing together of words are breath-taking, pun intended.

JK wasn't personally involved in McCandless, but he went through the same life- threatening stupidity CM did. That he happened to live was, as he admits, dumb luck. Again, the personal connection, if not personal involvement, added so much to the tale. I might be too unyielding, and I wouldn't want his family to read my words and be hurt by my lack of sympathy, because it's not their fault, but CM was stupid. Going into the wild without the knowledge native inhabitants have built up over millennia and assuming it would come to him merely by his deep connection to the earth is one thing; starving to death with a whole moose you don't have the common sense to preserve properly is quite another.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Hmm. My understanding from the last chapter of Into the Wild was that he didn't starve to death; he was poisoned. Krakauer thinks he was killed by eating the seeds of a plant that was otherwise not toxic. Still stupid, I suppose, but not as stupid as starving to death with a ready food supply at hand. And McCandless had done a lot of research on native plants and food sources; the toxicity of the seeds that killed him was not known or recorded in the available literature.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Correction (looking at the book right now): he hadn't done a lot of research, exactly, but he'd read about the food sources of the indigenous people in the area, and he was gathering his food accordingly. His mistake was eating the seeds when the book didn't say anything about them one way or another.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Yes, (from what I remember from reading the book two years ago), he starved to death because he mistook another plant for a wild potato plant. This other nastybad plant makes it difficult for your body to metabolize food, and treatment now is to eat a lot. He didn't have a lot else to eat and already had no fat reserves. So he poisoned himself with a plant that's very easily to confuse with a good plant; the result of the poison was that his body couldn't process food; end result starvation.

Furthermore I question the premise that a moose could have sustained him. Isn't the basis of the Atkins diet that protein=good and carbs=bad? Eating protein makes you feel full (good dieting strategy) but doesn't make you as fat (good weight loss strategy) as the same # of calories from carbs and fat. So I wonder whether the moose, if he had been able to preserve it, would have kept him alive. Probably he would have lasted until those three separate parties with six people total showed up, anyway.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


No, that wasn't Krakauer's theory by the time he published the book; that was the theory in the Outside article, but he abandoned it by the time he wrote the book. He had the seeds of the safe plant tested, and they turned out to contain poisonous alkaloids.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

I'm not even going to try to answer this question, since all of my books are packed and I'm fickle at the best of times, but: am I the only one who confuses Rikki Tikki Tembo (I can't do the whole name but I know the rhythm of it) with Rikki Tikki Tavi the brave and valiant mongoose? Is that just sick?

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Melissa, I think you will find that The Archivist and Possession are very different. Although the stories have certain similarities, the writing styles were so different that I really didn't compare The Archivist, which I read more recently, to Possession. I enjoyed both a great deal, but Possession was definitely more work to get through. I think they are both beautifully written, but Martha Cooley's style is quite a bit more accessible. I haven't read any other Byatt, but I think Possession is worth the work.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien.

THE GLASS BEAD GAME by Hermann Hesse.

THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY by Robertson Davies.

THE NINE TAILORS by Dorothy L. Sayers.

THE DEVIL IS DEAD and FOURTH MANSIONS by R.A. Lafferty.

THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGY by Mervyn Peake.

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Doestoevsky.

VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsey.

THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY by Isaac Asimov.

THE DOORBELL RANG by Rex Stout.

ULYSSES by James Joyce.

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS (for that wonderful Pan sequence.) by Kenneth Grahame.

BLACK EASTER by James Blish.

BLACK MOON, RED MOUNTAIN by Joy Chant.

THE ISLAND OF THE MIGHTY, by Evangeline Walton.

MORE THAN HUMAN by Theodore Sturgeon.

THE WORM OUROBORUS by E.R.R. Eddison.

Just in fiction. For nonfiction I have another list.---Al of NOVA NOTES.



-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


I meant RED MOON, BLACK MOUNTAIN. The best Tolkien-influenced fantasy ever.---Al.

PS. My nonfiction list.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING by George Ellis.(Of the purpose of the universe, by an eminent cosmologist who cowrote with Hawking.)

ORTHODOXY by G.K. Chesterton.

THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES by Mortimer Adler.

MERE CHRISTIANITY by C.S. Lewis. (MIRACLES a close second.)

LOST IN THE COSMOS by Walker Percy.

Oh, and back to fiction---the funniest short story ever written:

"Uncle Fred Flits By" by P.G. Wodehouse.



-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


tikki tikki tembo no sa rembo chari bari ruchi pip perri pembo gets a second nod, as does Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston. Pick up an Erskine Caldwell collection sometime. And All the Kings Men, Robert Penn Warren.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

These are books I reread every year. They're a subset of my favourite books.

1- The Gadfly: Ethel L. Voynich (out of print, hard to find, definitely worth the search)
2- The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood
3- Spring Torrents: Ivan Turgenev (sorry Beth--but I have to recommend the Penguin translation!)
4- Aimez Vous Brahms?:Francois Sagan
5- One-L: Scott Turow (okay, autobiographical account of his first year in law school, but it's always in my bag...)
6- A Persian Requiem: Simin Daneshvar
7- Too Dear For My Possessing: Pamela Hansford Johnson (again, out of print, along with its 'sequels' An Avenue of Stone and A Summer to Decide)
8- To Kill A Mockingbird: of course...
9- Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee: Meera Syal
10- The Moon and Sixpence: W. Somerset Maugham

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001


Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle: This book has helped me through several essays.

The Stand by Stephen King: Harold Lauder, his most memorable and frightening character, is in this book.

Man Descending by Guy Vanderhaeghe: A great anthology that I keep coming back to.

Mordecai Richler died last night, so in honour of him I will reread Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang tonight.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001


In no particular order: Judge on Trial: Ivan Klima Damn this is good.
G: John Berger Brilliant plus the sexiest book ever.
Life A User's Manual It's really long and literally nothing happens till the last page. Most excellent though.
The Book of Imaginary Beings: Jorge Luis Borges Good stuff. Kind of creepy.
The Dogs Who Came to Stay: George Pitcher Best dog book ever.
The Wrench: Primo Levi Sometimes known as The Monkey's Wrench.
Winter's Tales: Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen) Short stories. Lovely.
To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf
The Man Who Loved Children: Christina Stead Like all her books, depressing but so freaking excellent.
The Trespasser or Women in Love or The First Lady Chatterley: DH Lawrence Pick one at random. They're all great.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

And no one will be able to read that. Didn't mean to run it all together.

That's what I'm here for. -- B

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Jessie, I absolutely confuse Rikki Tikki Tavi with Tikki Tikki Tembo. In fact I think it was my resolution nevermore to confuse them that led to my second, adult memorization of the kid's name. Ooo, and I loved that animated version of Rikki Tikki Tavi. The cobras scared me to bits as a child. "If you move, I will strike. If you do not move I will strike."

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

"The Stand by Stephen King: Harold Lauder, his most memorable and frightening character, is in this book." When I was about 15 or 16, and read that book, my mental picture of Harold was a friend of mine at the time who seemed to be somewhat like him. As time passed, the association proved to be more and more accurate.

While we're on the subject, I wanted to ask (and maybe this is worthy of its own topic, a decision I'll leave to the beautiful and talented Beth), how do you perceive the stories you read? Do you create mental movies, with each character taking a definite physical form in your mind's eye, or do you just absorb the words intellectually?

The best books for me are the ones that can make me forget I'm reading, so I'm seeing the story in my head. Sometimes the characters take on the form of people I know with similar names or character traits (often in spite of the author's physical description), sometimes they're celebrities, and sometimes they're just made up.

I still remember picturing actor Roy Scheider as the main character in King's 'Salem's Lot, probably because I had seen Jaws at about that same time. Years before, when I was probably 10 or 11, I had read a science fiction novel called Neptune One Is Missing, about a manned flight to Neptune that had suffered a malfunction and needed rescue. Two Russians and two Americans were aboard, and one of the Russians was named Sergei.

Well, I was a 10-year-old boy from the rural American South who knew nothing of Russian names, so I read it as "Serge," and equated it with "Sarge," as pictured him as the only Sergeant I was aware of at the time — Sgt. Carter from the Gomer Pyle show.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

To confine myself to ten, subject to change without notice, and allowing only one work per author...

Middlemarch probably belongs on there, but I can't say for certain. I "read" it for a survey course that required that we skim through it at warp speed. It looked like the best book in the course; pity we didn't have enough time to read it properly...

Arcadia is better than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for that matter, but the latter nevertheless remains my favorite Stoppard play.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001


Just wanted to say "thanks" to Beth for editing my previous runtogetherformat post, and turning it into a proper list. :-)

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Melissa: I found really no confusion between both Possession and the Archivist. I really liked them both, but for very different reasons. I think you will enjoy Possession a lot also. The most fascinating part for me in the Archivist was the part about his wife going slowly insane. It was the best I had ever seen that subject handled (from that perspective) since Charlotte Gilman and the Yellow Wallpaper.

And I knew all of Tikki Tikki Tembo's name also!

Here's my list (today anyway!)

Little Women
Wrinkle in Time & A Ring of Endless Light
Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammet

Aftermath: The Remnants of War by Donovan Webster...I use this one a lot in my classes as it provides a great perspective on what happens to the land after a war has been fought there. The part on France in WWI is alone worth the price of the book.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. This is probably my favorite of all books. He is a wonderful writer on so many levels. This is not science fiction, it is just plain beautiful.

Moveable Feast by Hemingway. It always makes me want to pack my bags for Paris though. I have also enjoyed Michael Reynolds' biographies a great deal.

Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. I just love how he made us care so much about that crew. It is his writing ability that I love so much in this one.

Fate is the Hunter by Ernest Gann. The best book about flying ever, hands down.

Bellwether by Connie Willis. She is just so smart, I read it every year to remind myself of that.

I also reread a couple of Travis McGee mysteries every year. John D. MacDonald had a great way of capturing Florida that always makes me homesick. And Trav always kicks butt too!

Lisa and Beth, regarding the Into the Wild discussion you were having, there was a bit more written about that up here in Fairbanks at the time of CM's death than there probably was anywhere else. The general consensus among the authorities was that he starved to death, the berries thing never was an issue until the book was published and has been widely discounted up here. Also, he could easily have survived for a very long time if he shot a moose and prepared the meat correctly. But that wasn't the point so much or the reason why most people in Alaska were unsympathetic. Krakauer did not mention that if CM had turned the other direction on the river and walked a very little ways he would have come to a trolley bar set-up that is used by surveyors and hunters to cross the river when it gets high. He could have gotten out that way. He also could have crossed the river at several other locations if he had followed it further, it was passable. We talked about this book in one of my grad classes and found that people either hated CM for giving up or loved/admired him for embracing the wilderness myth and literally dying for it. He has definitely created quite a cult following among people who go out to that bus to remember him. A friend of mine is working on her second book of essays about Alaska and one of the topics is CM and the myth about him that Into the Wild has created.

As for me, I think that Krakauer kind of fell in love with CM and all that he supposedly stood for. Not love-love, but you know what I mean.

I just finished Close to the Shore about the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey and it blew me away...if anyone is looking for a summer book that will keep you off the beach!

Colleen

PS. You should all avoid Melissa as much as possible. Because of her I know have way too many Ultra Lounge CDs and I've spent a fortune on children's books. Melissa is BAD!!!!!!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


Oh, Slickery I read Madeleine's Ghost a couple of weeks ago and absolutely adored it. You are right on the money on that one, it is a total keeper.

And I also should have added A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. My grandmother grew up in the Bronx, but she always said that book was her life and encouraged me to read it for the first time. It is a sentimental add I guess, but still a critical one.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


If I can singlehandedly increase the sales of children's books, I will be a happy girl. Thanks for the compliment, Colleen. :-)

I have to tell you - there are few things that impress me more than a man who loves Little Women.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


"If you move, I will strike. If you do not move I will strike."

Way to give me nightmares, Lisa. Thanks a lot.

That *terrified* me as a kid. Almost as much as the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz and the creepy clown thing from Poltergeist.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


Don't talk about the creepy clown thing! If you talk about it, it will hear you and it will come here. Don't talk about it anymore. Next person to mention it gets banned, BANNED, I tell you.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

(Clarification: I don't actually remember a creepy clown thing from Poltergeist, but all creepy clown things are bad and must not be mentioned.)

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

You mentioned it. Are you banned?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

You said "it." BANNED.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

What are you, one of the Knights who say Ne all of a sudden?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Ok, I know I shouldn't play moderator and all but I've started a thread to talk about what scares the bejeezus out of you. That way we can go back to talking about stupid ol' books here.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Yay, Colleen, someone else that has read Madeline's Ghost. At last there is hope for my cult. . .

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Wow, I'm not the only re-reader! I have re-read every book I own; if I don't like a book well enough to re-read it, I give it away. I'm also not the only one who still likes children's books, and I can't tell you how pleased I am about that.

Here are my favorite children's books:

- The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin
- Fifteen, by Beverly Cleary (or any of her teen romance books)
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg
- Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (I love the whole series!)

Here are my favorite grown-up books:

- East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
- The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler
- The Anna Papers, by Ellen Gilchrist (or any of the books dealing with the Hand family)
- 9 Stories, by J.D. Salinger (or any of the books dealing with the Glass family)
- Persuasion, by Jane Austen

My LEAST favorite book is a horrible Nicholas Sparks book that somebody got me as a gift because they knew I like to read. I don't remember the title, but it was dreadful. It made me angry that he got paid any money for "writing" it.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


Regeneration/The Eye in the Door/The Ghost Road, a trilogy by Pat Barker. My god, great writing. what else can you say?
Two sci-fi stories with a lot more in them than most, including genuinely good writing:
Dawn - by Octavia Butler
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin

Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
The Ventriloquist's Tale - Pauline Melville
The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie
The Man In The Black Coat - a collection of stories and plays by russian absurdist Daniil Kharms. so strange and funny and dark.
The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Shulz. For dreaming and crying.
Moby Dick - I just read it, and half way through I realised I was a different person than when I started it. made me love reading thick stuff again. about to re-start it.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami. weird and deadpan- funny stuff.
Notes from Underground -Dostoevsky. when I'm feeling bitter and want to wallow in it, laughing nastily.


-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001


Most of the comfort books I move to a new place first are fairly predictable - Brideshead Revisited, The Secret History, The Flight from the Enchanter, selected Nancy Mitford and Tom Wolfe and Michael Lewis and Douglas Coupland and Jay McInerney. There are a few odd ones though: Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller (who I'm convinced must be related to The Gus), Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing by Robert Paul Smith, and the three satirical thrillers by Trevanian.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

I love book lists! I didn't think I could pick just 10, but this list sits OK with me after all.

- Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, by William Cronon
- Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, by Robin Kelley
- City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in LA, by Mike Davis
- Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, by bell hooks
- The Prison Diaries of Antonio Gramsci
- Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault
- The Sea of Light, by Jennifer Levin
- Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris
- The Sun Also Rises (b/w A Moveable Feast), by Ernest Hemmingway
- Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison


-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001


I’ve just started reading books again after a shamefully too-long period of reading nothing but newspapers and magazines when I was a journalist. I find I’m having a hard time enjoying fiction like I did when I was younger. Hence most of these books, I read 20 or more years ago. The only one that I’ve read in the last 15 years – Bragg’s memoir – is also the only one that was written during that period. In no particular order:

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Richard Wright, Black Boy, The Outsider Earl Thompson, A Garden of Sand Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers Stephen King, Salem’s Lot Bernard Malamud, The Natural, The Assistant, The Fixer, John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin’ Herman Wouk, City Boy Charles Portis, True Grit Jimmy Breslin, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight James Kirkwood, Good Times, Bad Times Fundamentals of Health Insurance (in case my boss is reading this.) Marmaduke Rides Again (Not really, but when I was in sixth grade, my teacher gave us credit for reading books. We kept a list that we submitted to her each week. I put Marmaduke on one list, and Miss Knox, a prim, but goodhearted spinster, very reluctantly gave me credit for it. She also grudgingly let pass “The Great Brain,” which was a fairly new book at the time and she hadn’t heard of it. She thought it sounded like science fiction, a genre of which she disapproved. Miss Knox is one of the teachers to whom I owe a lot, and I dedicate this list to her.)

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001


Okay, it's official. I just finished Moby Dick and it goes into the top ten. It bumps off either The Color Purple or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; I'll have to think about it.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

10 of the best books. Sure! I mgiht not remeber the authors though. (In no real order)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle (wil read until the day I die) A House Like a Lotus by Madeline l'engle (my fav. novel) The Harry Potter Books (they kick ass!!) *i'm counting this as 1* The Fall by Camu Ros. and Guil. Are Dead (no better play exist in the theater of teh absord, except maybe waiting for godot) 100 Anos de Soledad/100 year of solitude (Best Spanish book i've ever read ) Catch-22 (it's just a good book) 1984 (Classic if there ever was one) The Horror anthology I used for my english class (damn i wish i had my college books with me!) In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by john Gribbin (What can I say I'm an astronomer at heart)

But of all these I msut say A Wrinkle In Time is my favorite. I know is a children's book, but I think it's great. As a child it made me think, inspired me, and just plained entertained me! I have read it at least 15 times over, and will read it again. Well not any time soon since i don't currently have a copy of it. I loaned it to a frien dand never did see it again. I really don't care all that much, since i can jsut go buy another copy. But this book, even today makes me happy.

There's more, but not enought time nor energy,

Jose

*i would fix my spelling errors, but frankly i don't care.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001


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