Book Love
I have this great friend named Trevor. I haven't seen him in years, but he's one of those people who seems like a spiritual twin. Yesterday, he tagged me in an email conversation about favorite books. Here's what I wrote back to the group.
Trevor, I don't know that I've ever received a better compliment than being included in a group of "people whose lists [you] would almost kill to see."
I have lots of favorite books for lots of different reasons. Out of courtesy to you all, I had to make rules for myself: no more than five books per category; no mentioning a writer more than once.
Books that rescued me from Very Bad Places: The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott The Diamond in the Window, by Jane Langton
Books I've re-read the most times: Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis
Cookbook upon which I rely most heavily: The Way to Cook, by Julia Child (Though, YOU GUYS, I just got Kenji Lopez-Alt's The Food Lab for my birthday yesterday. I've read 40 pages so far this morning, and I am deeply infatuated.)
Books in which I see myself mirrored most clearly: Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner Kaaterskill Falls, by Allegra Goodman The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls Here Be Dragons, by Sharon Kay Penman
If at gunpoint I could choose only one book by my favorite British writers not otherwise mentioned: Middlemarch, by George Eliot Persuasion, by Jane Austen Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens The Dead Secret, by Wilkie Collins Possession, by A.S. Byatt
Same thing, gunpoint, favorite Americans: The Children, by Edith Wharton The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Shining, by Stephen King Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Books that made me laugh the hardest: Make Way for Lucia, by E.F. Benson The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Books that made me sob the hardest: Dancing on Broken Glass, by Ka Hancock Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White The Happy Prince and Other Stories, by Oscar Wilde The Collected Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
Books in the sweet spot on the Evocation-Aesthetic Venn Diagram in my brain: A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco Orlando, by Virginia Woolf Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Picture books I most love reading aloud to my kids: Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak Little Bear, by Else Holmelund Minarik The Piggy in the Puddle, by Charlotte Pomerantz The Zoom Trilogy, by Tim Wynne-Jones Busy, Busy World, by Richard Scarry
Books that most terrified me: The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James The Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe Ghost Story, by Peter Straub Long Lankin, by Lindsey Barraclough The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
Speculative fiction most influential on my own writing: Was, by Geoff Ryman The Magicians, by Lev Grossman Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson Stranger Things Happen, by Kelly Link
Books I've discovered and most loved since starting my MFA: The War that Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park Symphony for the City of the Dead, by M.T. Anderson Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby Lester's Dreadful Sweaters, by K.G. Campbell There you have it. I wish people still blogged, so I could tag all of my friends and ask you to make your list of favorites. But you can tell me in a comment. :)