Your Favorite Books?

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It’s a time of year for gift giving. If you were going to give someone your top ten books, what would those ten books be? My friend Janet writes:

I wish your readers would share “what they reread.” If you put it that way: all of Jane Austen every couple years. All of Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter and Harriet mysteries (in order!), Lord of the Rings, Jane Eyre, the Harry Potter books. I love myth and epic and romance. I go back to these over and over. 

I found it really hard to settle down and write my list. I wish it could sound brainier, more literary. In fact, I’ve read some fat, immensely literary books more than once (okay, okay), but my list will surprise my American Literature students. Although I’ve read The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn multiple times, the books I would buy my friends for Christmas are less well known. I love The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone, anything by Penelope Fitzgerald (I’ve reread The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels multiple times), The Dubliners by James Joyce. And Flannery O’Connor — especially her short stories. 

There were a few books I read this year that I’d like to reread, and I have been pushing all my friends to read: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (brainy, but worth it), Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson, and The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick. (The last three are not “brainy,” but no less willing to plumb the depths of human quirkiness.)

Now that Janet has reminded me, I wouldn’t mind rereading Dorothy Sayers. I’ll start with Gaudy Night. 

But–a life list of favorites? Every title makes me think of several more. I have deliberately avoided poetry here.

Okay, your turn. What would you reread? What books do you tell your friends to read?

Finding a Voice

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“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” ― Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

I was killing time in a book store earlier, and I picked up Theo Pauline Nestor’s Writing Is My Drink. It is exactly the sort of book I find addictive: part memoir, part writing how-to. What I thought as I sucked up the print on the first few pages, was I should have written this book. 

All right, I didn’t have the alcoholic, single mother (my mother has never touched alcohol except to once — recently — take a sip of my Chardonnay and declare that it was not sweet, and she was married to my father for 58 years). But as a child I did have that feeling — at least at times — of trying to make myself very, very small so that no one would see me. I did have that feeling — at times — that no one could see me, no one could hear me, and no one would miss me if I disappeared. I don’t think I’m at all unique in this; in fact, I think that all of us have that feeling at one time or another. And writers, even more so.

Writing is a way of making oneself visible.

I didn’t buy the book (and I regret not having it, not being able to spend all evening reading it). I did, however, buy John Greene’s The Fault in Our Stars for one of my 20-year-olds. A young woman — a clerk — peeked over my shoulder and said, “If that’s a gift, wrap it with a box of tissues.” I asked her who she could compare to Tamora Pierce for one of my other girls, and I was treated to a 20-minute rave about a book … Title Escapes Me … but I bought that one, too. I have now bought a book for everyone living in my household.

My work here is done. 😉

My top ten vs. Hemingway’s…

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from Aerogrammestudio.com

I have read most of these books, and all of these authors with the exception of Thomas Mann and George Moore (I don’t know how I have managed to avoid Mann; he is one of my husband’s favorite authors). But in numerous ways this list bugs me, so I thought I’d blog about what I might put on such a list.

I am happy to see Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights on Ernest’s list, but where are the other women? By all means, read Dubliners (read it once a year), read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and James. But on my top ten list you will find instead of W. H. Hudson, Rumer Godden (start with An Episode of Sparrows). Look up the Joan Acocella’s essay, “Assassination on a Small Scale” about Penelope Fitzgerald, and then read Fitzgerald (start with The Beginning of Spring). If we’re talking strictly classics, then we can at least get Jane Austen on there, and the other Bronte sisters.

A list of ten books–from anyone–probably can’t do justice to one’s personal tastes. Where is Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain on Hemingway’s list? What about William Faulkner? What about Toni Morrison? Of course you have to read Graham Greene. The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory are probably my favorites. Another one I’ve reread is The End of the Affair. Rereading…although it’s been a few years, A Tale of Two Cities by, of course, Charles Dickens, is a book I’ve read numerous times.

Read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Read Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter. Oh, and how about Carson McCuller’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter? 

There. I feel better now. What do you reread?bookheart

…on your willingness to acquire knowledge about hidden parts of yourself…

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P1050116I have been reading a book recommended to me by a friend, and I want to recommend it to you.

“Marriage is a psychological and spiritual journey that begins in the ecstasy of attraction, meanders through a rocky stretch of self-discovery, and culminates in the creation of an intimate, joyful, lifelong union. Whether or not you realize the full potential of this vision depends not on your ability to attract the perfect mate, but on your willingness to acquire knowledge about hidden parts of yourself.” (Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want)

The thought strikes me that a “willingness to acquire knowledge about hidden parts of yourself” is what is required for any journey, including writing a novel.

The photograph is of my girls in San Francisco.