Books I probably read at least twice a year
Harry Potter, JK Rowling. Hands down, collectively. Every time I read them, I come away with something different. Right now, Rowling's depiction of grief and depression suddenly resonate more than they once did. Also, her plotting has made me more aware of the strings lesser writers pull. And the woman is funny.
Pride and Prejudice. I mindlessly adopted Twain's attitude towards Jane Austen, and when I had to read P&P for class, I promptly pulled out the barbecue sauce to slather it on all those words I had to go and eat.
Revelatory reads: my world changed for having read these books. Or the writing was so good it makes me want to cry, that I'll never be able to do that.
Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain. In 48 hours, my 8-10 page paper on the intersection of Otto von Bismarck and Mark Twain is due. I have started flipping through the books I bought on and of Twain a couple weeks before. With LFE, I forget about Huck Finn, forget about blood and iron, and am permanently and forever in love with Mark Twain. I get a B-plus on the paper, but I don't know what it's about.
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood. I thought I was all outsmarting Atwood, but I was wrong. I'm not as smart as I think, and every now and then someone needs to remind me of that. Figured it would be a Canadian.
Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin. All y'all know I talk about my aminals too much. Their behavior fascinates me. In college I did some research (from a touchy-feely perspective) on animal welfare, specifically the welfare of the animals we eat. I love eating animals. Eating animals is one of the reasons I'm glad to be alive. So I want the animals I eat to have led reasonably pleasant existences. Temple Grandin talks about how this is possible, but also what constitutes a reasonably pleasant existence for an animal. I babbled for weeks about this book, and her earlier Animals in Translation, to any captive audience I could find.
Quarantine, Jim Crace. Jesus is a feckless (dirty hippy) who accidentally saves the life of a thoroughly evil man. The writing, oh, the writing makes me weep. It's stark, and brutal, and beautiful.
River Town, Peter Hessler. A memoir of two years in the Peace Corp teaching English in a town that hadn't seen Westerners in living memory. Every student has a horror story in his family's background, and that was normal.
Required reading that took me five years to come back to
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. My great-great-grandfather killed his wife. I owed it to him to give his book another chance.
The book I'd take to the deserted island
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson. It's the history of how we know sciency stuff. The writing is engaging, and breezy, and enjoyable, but there's so much information I could read it all the way through, put it down, go have lunch, start it up again, and immediately find myself in awe of all the stuff I didn't know.
Books I'll never finish, God help me, I've tried.
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad.
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.
Books that should have made a list of mine, but didn't.
His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman. God help him (or not), the man just isn't funny. Loved the books, but probably won't read them again because they aren't funny. Even if they do include a Texan and a talking polar bear. For weeks, I dreamt about having a polar bear cub, even when my husband told me I couldn't have one.
Lolita, Nabokov. Loved the book, own the book, don't see myself ever reading it again.
Okay, that's enough for now.
Bonus update:
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Walter Moers. Because who knew the Germans had the whimsy?
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Comments
Spud, it's an incredible read.
This here reading list of mine is getting awful long, but Quarantine sounds like something I might like, and LFE probably should go to the head of the line though I feel like I probably read it or part of it. That's going to bother me until I find out. Hey, you can't make Twain languish in some queue, now can you. I went audio with Animals Make Us Human and listened to it in the car while I was working, so I probably missed some of it -- lots of information in there -- but I intended to find it in book form and go back through it and read the parts I liked best. I've always been interested in how animals see the world. When Elephants Weep is another good one along those lines and so is Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas -- I think that's her name. Conrad is a little tricky. You could try wearing an eyepatch and drinking a little rum with it.
(And I want to hear about how your great great grandfather killed his wife? It was a fire...right? Surely there's a post in there.)
That explains too much.
Rated.
Love Harry Potter. And yes, the woman is damn funny. She can also do scary--the Dementors give me the willies.
Lea, I just finished Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There, about wandering around Europe, and I enjoyed it but then it got ruined by a stray remark of my father’s, that Bryson was so cynical and disparaging about so many of the things he saw. So while I do think he’s very funny to read, I wonder how enjoyable he would be in person.
Tom, now you see why I’ve been around here less. I’ve been reading some actual books.
T. Michael, just promise me you’ll start at the beginning of the Harry Potters. And thank you for the recommendations. I own three copies of HoD, one from school, one nicely bound edition from my father, and one when I was traveling and felt confident that I had the right inspiration, and this time I would read it. It continues to languish in my queue.
Bellwether, I listened to The Golden Compass, which has an excellent audio production, and that probably helped carry me through it. I really did enjoy it, but an occasional joke wouldn’t have ruined it. And yes, it was a fire. My father says it would have been nice if our family’s one brush with greatness could have been less gruesome, but we don’t always get to choose that kind of thing.
Nick, yes, those were the things I was reading at 16. I’m afraid it does.
Gwool, Gatsby deserves better than what a bunch of bored sixteen-year-olds can bring it. Much better.
emma, absolutely. Reading her has given me patience with both my animals. And by explaining how they think, she does a good job on how we think too.
Eric, it should be on more lists. Twain should be known for more than the boy books.
Shiral, I read them once, and that will probably be plenty. I really wanted to like them too, between the politics and the daemons and the fact that I can’t think of another epic featuring a girl as the unquestioned hero of the story. I liked the movie only for Sam Elliott and the talking polar bears. And how thoroughly perfectly Nicole Kidman was for her part too.
Leeandra, no rush.
Patty, the writing in Gatsby is so beautiful. My eyes glaze over on descriptive passages, but not here.
I loved Gatsby, too. It's wasted on highschoolers in my opinion.
Lisa, I can tell you that. Bailey properly identifies you as her pack leader, and you will be alert, and you will protect her. But you should read the books anyway, in all your limitless free time.