Previously posted elsewhere... 15 BOOKS

15 Books in 15 MinutesShare. Saturday, June 20, 2009 at 6:45pm | Edit Note | Delete
This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose...


Just a note: to ask me to pick only 15 books that will always stick with me is like asking an alcoholic to pick one last drink, or a gambler to make one last bet... there are just too many books that have meant something to me or spoken directly to me in one way or another throughout my life. and while it would seem that i randomly picked them up and read them at certain points in my life, i sometimes think that "they" chose "me" at very specific times, when the words on the pages would mean something more to me than just a good storyline, when there was some element in them that i would never have seen otherwise had i not been at that stage in my life. books are amazing and strange gifts, we can read them when we are 22 and find beautiful truths in them and then pick them up again at 32 and find something altogether different and meaningful. that said, here i go:

these first 3 have to be linked together just because they all happened to be read in one summer, the summer that i began my love affair with books:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird-Harper Lee. ok fairly obvious and extremely common is what you are thinking, but my all time favorite none-the-less. i was 11 when my dad assigned this and the next book on the list to me to read over our summer vacation in florida and from the moment i began Mockingbird i was changed forever. it opened my eyes to what books could be, and do, and mean to different people and it just so happenes to be an amazing book. i was lucky. it's still my favorite book of all time, and possibly, the one i've read the most. someday, i'll be able to afford a signed first edition...
2. The Good Earth-Pearl Buck. not a favorite of anyone else that i'm aware of, but an amazing story of loyalty, courage and struggle that really spoke to me, even at 11.
3. Agatha Christie, if i have to choose one-Ten Little Indians. my grandmother owned the entire Agatha Christie collection. Miss Marple as well as Hercule Poirot. she lent them to me one by one over several summers and i ate them up, i couldn't get enough. i truly believe that it shaped my thought processes(?), for better or worse. to this day, whenever i pick one up to thumb through, they take me back to summers at my grandmother's house, sitting on her patio swing, reading and smelling her mint plants on the breeze.

the next two i must give full credit to my brother for recommending:

4. Ethan Frome-Edith Wharton. if you have never read this book, you must go out tomorrow and buy, borrow or steal it. it's only 90 pages long and can be read in a day, which is exactly what i did when craig handed it to me one afternoon. how to explain it concisely? monotony, frustration, gloom, surprise, brightness, feeling, then, well, i can't tell you the "then" part...that would ruin it.
5. Brideshead Revisited-Evelyn Waugh. i must admit that this should really be at the end of this list, if we're going in chronological order. this is the only book i have never finished, or rather, that it took me 13 years to finish. which i did thanks to craig harrassing/embarrassing me into picking it up again. i don't know what my problem was when i was was 23, but i read it cover-to-cover last winter and had 2 gargantuan epiphanies which will stay with me forever.

ok, in no particular order:

6. A Handmaid's Tale-Margaret Atwood. amazing picture of what life could be like in the future due to the current struggles of the day. well, actually of the 1980's, which was when it was written. most definitely my second most often read book. i've been told of a movie version which is supposedly a good translation of the book, but i'll never watch it. why mess with perfection?
7. Roots-Alex Haley. i'm sure this book needs no description. i loved it, every page.
8. The Diary of Anne Frank. i remember reading this in 7th or 8th grade and having the truth and the horror of the holocaust hit home. i cried off and on for about two weeks. i recently read it again with G and she had the same reaction i did, "i will never forget this diary and her story as long as i live, mom." which is as it should be.
9. Things Fall Apart-Chinua Achebe. fantastic book that describes the life and culture of an african man and his family. wonderful.
10. Kon Tiki-Thor Heyerdahl. i was assigned this for an anthropology class and read through it in a night(i was a little sleepy in class the next day, yes). it's the journal of five men who decided to sail from the west coast of south america to the polenysian islands using only balsa log rafts and ocean currents. it showed me that you can do almost anything that you set your mind to, provided you research it well.
11. The Aeneid-Virgil. again, i was assigned this in college and loved every page of it. are there people out there who don't love mythology?
12. A Room With A View-E.M. Forster. SUCH a wonderful book. poor, confused lucy finally finding herself, melancholic george, tactless mr. emerson and snobbish cecil. hmmm...maybe i'll read it again.

and some short stories which in turn piqued my interest so much that i then devoured almost everything else written by the author:

13. The Lottery-Shirley Jackson. who hasn't read this? and, well, if you haven't, get on it. a perfect example of how to write a story that keeps one intruiged with virtually no information and then smacks you in the gut with utter shock at the end.
14. Young Goodman Brown-Nathaniel Hawthorne. puritans, withcraft and your wife. and the possibility that it was all a dream... insidiously terrifying.
15. A Good Man Is Hard To Find-Flannery O'Connor. or Everything That Rises Must Converge, or Revelation...well, they're all amazing which is probably why i own three books dedicated to her short stories. the tension she builds as well as the changing of the characters in this story are truly amazing. she's the best.

and that's it. i'm sure as soon as i log off of fb i will want to rush right back to the computer to type out some honorable mentions(which, believe me, i've already thought about and decided against twice). these books are wonderful and amazing to me, but maybe they are because i read them at the right times in my life. i whole heartedly recommend each one of these to you to lose yourself in, maybe they will hit you as hard as they did me. and if they do, maybe it's not because you decided to read them because of this list, but because they chose you at this point in your life.

and yes, G has a reading list the likes of which you've never seen awaiting her....