This has been going around Facebook. One is to pick eight to ten books they think are important. My list is both longer and shorter than I was instructed because I don’t like to do what I’m told when told to do it, or how.
I am still looking for the book, or books, where I can say: my friends live here. Books are art imitating life to me because I always feel like I’m on the outside looking in whether I am reading the book, watching the movie, or hanging out. The Magicians is the closest I come to that dynamic but I’ve read that book too recently to say, “this is where my friends live.”
Your expectations are yours; mine are my own. Here is my list.
(1) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
I’ve read this book so many times and so many books about Benjamin Franklin that I’ve lost count of both. Benjamin Franklin typifies what being “American” is to me and perhaps if I had a broader perspective: human. My civic values are very much shaped by this. If I put together a reading list for a young person about what it meant to be an American and a human this list would top the bunch, with Ellis’ Founding Brothers and McCoullough’s John Adams.
(2) The Count of Monte Cristo & The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
I’ve alternately related, throughout my life, with Edmund (in both stories). They’re very instructive and not unlike the Darth Vader narrative in Star Wars shows us that anyone is capable of redemption and forgiveness not matter how aggregious their sins. I haven’t read a book by Alexandre Dumas that I didn’t like and oddly am not enamored with C.S. Lewis or his books and I always hope the Lutherans Facebook-ing his quotes hither and yon read a bit deeper. Concordians: you’d be appalled at your hero.
(3) Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
I enjoyed this book and found it so unique that I gave it as a gift to Dr. Ashby, which on my part showed a superior level of chutzpah. If you haven’t read the book I’d obviously suggest it to anyone who loves reading. Wizards in Great Britain are what crappy novels about vampires are to you and everyone else who apparently likes vampires. I worked with a woman who was a terrible reader and she said she liked country music and her favorite book was Twilight. I am a judgmental cracker but to say you ‘love reading’ at that is your favorite book outs you as a liar; it’s like saying you’re a Beatles fan and your favorite album is Yellow Submarine. If books were Batman Twilight would be Ben Affleck. I esteem this book higher than Harry Potter, which is an endorsement (as all your friends live there) and The Magicians.
(4) A Christmas Carol
Alexandre Dumas is my favorite foreign language author; Charles Dickens is my favorite ‘foreign language to you’ author. I learned to read from the King James Bible so I count Elizabethan English as a language all its own to feel smug, I realize that Dickens is Victorian but everything progresses through time and space. A Christmas Carol reminds me annually (although, sadly, not yet this year) what Christmas is really about. For those of you bemoaning “the war on Christmas,” Santa is the war on Christmas. Read this book, if not the Bible in a translation less inclined to be friendly to the monarchy.
(5) For Whom the Bell Tolls
And anything else – even Old Man and the Sea – that Hemmingway has to throw at me. Until I was overweight I shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch – before it was cool, yea hipsters – because Hemmingway did. I still shop at Brooks Brothers for many reasons but mainly because Hemmingway did. That’s part of why I use Moleskin notebooks (only). Yes, mom, if Jeremy did it I would do it, too. If Hemmingway did it I would as well. Benjamin Franklin informed me on what it was to be American, Hemmingway informed me on what it was to be awesome. I love his writing, I love his style. One of my housemates in college once told my debate partner, “he’s in bed with his boyfriend right now,” and much money in bets changed hands, but I was reading A Farewell to Arms.
(6) The Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Flannery is my home girl. Flannery’s short stories taught me that you have to shake your head at this crazy world and laugh at the hypocrisy.
(7) To Kill a Mockingbird
I have read this so many times that I am on my third copy of the book. I can’t seem to find it on the e-reader, which I find to be utter rubbish. This book speaks to my otherwise inept sense of justice.
As a bonus, Books I wish to read:
(1) Elle in Bloom
This was written by someone I went to university with that (drum roll) I’ve never met. If you weren't in my program or on the debate team I probably didn't know you. She was pointed out to me once in the building with the incredible acronym, and her husband was once described as “very nice but conservative” but I otherwise don't know her personally. If you knew the exact tiny, middle school like university I went to you'd be appalled. She asked me to read the book, which is a brave thing to do because I am a horrible person when it comes to being handed someone else’s soul for critique.
(2) Doctor Zhivago
As much as I love French Literature the Russian stuff seems unruly and daunting. I’m afraid I’ll read it and say, “cool story, bro.” Also, Bean and I had a pediatrician named that. I’d also like to readGulag Archipelago.
(3) What the Dickens
I read Wicked before it was an awful Broadway production. I love how he took someone else’s story and told it in his own way. I’m not the person who watches the new Star Trek and complains it isn’t like the old one, it is different and that is okay.
(4) The Glass of Time
This was written by Michael Cox and is the sequel to a book I enjoyed but wasn’t important to me, The Meaning of Night. I enjoyed the book a great deal but it wasn’t something that I would give as a gift or put in someone’s hands, tell them it was dangerous to their love of books and then run like a hobbit.
(5) The Once and Future King
I cannot reliably say I finished it. I think I have, I can’t promise you that I did. It bothers me that I cannot finish that or The Catcher in the Rye. I really think I’ve read that book but I cannot promise that I have. When I spent eighteen months in the cast I read voraciously (the complete works of Dickens in two months, I don’t watch TV) but I a great deal of what I read blended into a magical steampunk journey through Regency and Victorian Britain and the American West. My mother once said that there was something "weird and sexual" about the way a friend and I passed Catcher between us and was convinced we'd hollowed it out to hide drugs. Really, we just did it to make her worry. I should actually read it. I'm not sure I have. I try to avoid books that seem cliche (vampire books, I'm looking at you!).
Ooh, some good stuff there! I haven't read all of them, but as one of my resolutions is to read more books, it's a double bonus to have found you still blogging! You AND books! Yay! (*cough* I hope you remember me. *cough*)
Posted by: Pandionna | Wednesday, 01 January 2014 at 01:35 AM