Put the blame on meme: “Don’t take too long to think about it. [Yeah, right.] Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you, for whatever reasons. This isn’t your top 15 canon or even books you’d necessarily recommend, just books that have made their mark on you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. [Ha!] Tag some friends, including me.” All right, RFM.
Equipped with lousy reading recall, I might not handle an intelligent conversation on the content of these books. But most of them stick with me for secondary reasons, remembered for the context and environment in which they were read, or the intense emotional response they elicited. With the exception of Misery, I would drop everything to relive any of them. So, 15-ish, roughly in order read (titles linked to LibraryThing):
- Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss: Ah, reading as a contact sport or dramatic recitation.
- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien: Fell a little in love with Justin, was inconsolable for days after finishing it. Repeatedly.
- Misery, by Stephen King: Cheap creeps relished around age 13 while the family van wound through the Colorado Rockies.
- Black Boy, by Richard Wright: First half was assigned reading in junior English, but I couldn’t put it down, ignored my teacher during class to read ahead through the second half, and obsessed on RW a good while.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson: Funny, angry, and insane, it channeled lots o’ fantastical high school angst.
- Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain: First brush with L.A. lit, an affair to remember.
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor: Uh, wow.
- If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): Earnest, naive undergraduate discovers metafiction on a hot summer night.
- A Concise Introduction to Syntactic Theory: The Government-Binding Approach, by Elizabeth Cowper: Favorite textbook ever! Generous portions of technical whup-ass served with creamy saccharine vending machine coffee in the charmingly stale Ballantine Hall student lounge.
- Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Spiders’ Nests), by Italo Calvino: First novel I read from cover to cover, painstakingly, in the original Italian. By the window overlooking Via Dal Lino.
- Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, and Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut: Beloved absurdist WWII satires of the hyphens and numbers! To crack either book is to risk hyperventilation.
- Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities), by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): The only academic paper I’ve really been proud of I wrote on this book. Spent a LOT of time with it. In grungy cafés along Bancroft Way.
- Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner: Wherein lieth the revelation that nonfiction about land development and water policy can be totally thrilling.
- The Ticket Out, by Helen Knode: Perfect noir for a particular rut, living and loving and dying between Culver City and Los Feliz.
- The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West: Cockfights, midgets, degenerates, Los Angeles aflame…dig that scene!
Your 15? And maybe I’ll pick on some FB peeps.
You have written an intimidating list that makes me feel like a Philistine.
OK, sitting here at the kitchen table in a post-Assam-tea&truffle stupor, I’ll try flying by the seat of my pants for a change.
1. Dr. Seuss’ ABC’s (age 2 – 5, how I learned to read; also made my brother & sister crazy by walking around the house spouting rhymes all day) & Sylvester the Mouse with the Musical Ear by Adelaide Holl (age 5 – 10, given to me by the Mitchells when I was sick with measles; about a mouse who lives in a guitar and who hates development)
2. Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson (age 6 – 12; quintessential Esther Hyde; inspiration for my first book—still unpublished—Love, Buff)
3. Gene Stratton-Porter (Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Michael O’ Halloran, The Harvester, Keeper of the Bees, The Magic Garden) (6th grade on; heartland values and romance passed down by my beloved Grammie & Grandpa Hyde)
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (8th grade; first classic romance; LOVE Timothy Dalton & Zelah Clarke 1983 film version)
5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery & The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (Jr. High & High School; Dad read Mom TLP in the early 1940’s and I like what Gibran has to say about love and letting go of your children)
6. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (9th grade; stunning look into a different world, also read Richard Wright and Jonathan Kozol with the teacher who kindled my love of writing by requiring us to keep a journal)
7. The Hobbit & The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (first read sophomore year HS, a book a day while home after appendectomy & had nightmares about Black Riders; gave a set to Steve while friends in college; later read aloud multiple times to boys & Steve; own 4 sets: original paperback HS set, Steve’s paperback college set, 50th anniversary hardbound set Mom gave me, and paperback set with PJ film covers)
8. Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell (sophomore year HS; would have dropped Latin if I hadn’t gotten hooked on Cicero by this), The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald (met Fitzgerald in college freshman yr.; joy of Greek culture with amazing prof Steve Heiny)
9. Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet) (sophomore year college read from my great grandmother Lillian Hyde’s clothbound set with vintage prof + taught these for 6 years)
10. The Dark is Rising (series of 5 books) by Susan Cooper (first read as part of Newbery Medal winners while pregnant then later read aloud to boys & Steve and listened to fabulous books on tape recording; ties with Tolkien for quality of writing and mythology)
11. Last Light Breaking by Nick Jans (during Iditarod research in early 1990’s; gorgeous nature writing plus insight into Inupiat culture)
12. The Mask of Zorro by Johnston McCulley (read aloud to boys, weakness for double identity along w/ The Scarlet Pimpernel; love Anthony Andrews/Jane Seymour film of TSP; hate mean & vengeful Anthony Banderas films untrue to Zorro’s identity as incredibly cunning, noble protector who fights in defense only)
13. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (taught, read aloud to boys, love 1980 Chris Sarandan film)
14. Nop’s Trials by Donald McCaig (Millicent may have recommended, love of man for his Border Collie, read aloud to boys; quintessential dog lovers’ book)
15. Jane Austen (discovered Austen via 1980 Pride and Prejudice David Rintoul film, also enjoy 1995 Colin Firth version and 2005 Keira Knightley one; Sense & Sensibility love 1995 Emma Thompson film and also 2008 Hattie Morahan version, Persuasion love 1995 Ciaran Hinds film version; after repeated film viewings can now enjoy reading the books)
I realize I’ve cheated by combining titles . . . Deal with it! The original list took about 10 minutes followed by a scan of my bookshelves. Might have compiled the titles in 15 minutes. Took me an hour to look up authors and film versions and type. Don’t think I can add links in a comment and probably all my careful title underlining will disappear. Thanks for a pleasant hour! Congrats on your nephew Kevin Michael Gough, born today!
Mary, hooray, I love your list! I also love picturing your kitchen table post-tea stupor.
So, I list a lame Stephen King book and you feel like a Philistine? Allow me to submit for 15 lashes with a wet noodle for totally forgetting The Hobbit; it could replace Misery on my list. Vivid memories of my folks reading it aloud to us, and Dad teasing me for having hairy hobbit toes.
1. the mouse hates development? Is it a hippie?
5. I want to read The Prophet. I see great quotes from it all the time.
10. Have to add Cooper to my reading list too.
15. The girlie classics somehow escaped me (too busy reading Hunter S. Thompson, I suppose), but I sense an Austen project coming on.
So sorry that WordPress ate the underlines. You could post your list on OS? I was tagged for this meme on Facebook; the culprit is a friend with initials RFM.
You have piqued my interest in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. I will put it on my very long list of books to read. As for the title, truer words were never spoken. Sigh.
Alright. Fine. I have been schwacked with the gauntlet which has lain dormant at my feet for weeks. I’ll just do it. (With a footnote that Mary’s scan of bookshelves, looking up films, underlining for goodness sake, does not begin to smack of impulsive list-making but rather carefully researched thinking. You are about to witness spontaneous impulsive at her best.) I’ll see if chronological works, but be ready for non-sequentiality.
1. Tolkien for the dessert island with the life-motivating themes of the power of one small person, me, to make a difference in a world ravaged by overwhelming evil. Tolkien for Hope.
2. Jane Eyre, the book, as none of the 7 film versions does it justice entirely, each having a different flaw. (Mary, really, Timothy Dalton quintessential tall-dark-handsome as Rochester? Not happening.) Captivating, re-read so many times since first read obscurely hidden in adolescence.
3. Nevada by Zane Grey. Grandpa Hyde’s bookshelf, Grammie’s chair by the window. Duty over love, self-sacrifice, the mysterious nature of the western U.S.
4. Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy – The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, forget the 3rd title (and NOT looling it up, as you can see.) Truly captivating, real possibility of historical blended with fiction.
5. Dark is Rising series Susan Cooper. A must read at the winter solstice, annually. Brilliant children’s literature, a Harry Potter precursor (read in French & English both, thank you).
6. Dear Enemy by um, yeah, look it up. A Grammie Hyde book that I’ve always loved, in the form of letters between the protagonists. Adorable socialite turned ngo flaming do-gooder and the reserved Scots docturrrrr.
7. Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boy’s, Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott. Real friends, role models.
8. Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea. Read and re-read just to get to that first Gilbert-Anne kiss on the bridge. Ahhhhh. Waited a longggg time for that.
9. Magnificent Obsession, The Robe. Both (I think) by Lloyd Douglas. Also from the Hyde grandparents bookshelf/chair where I lived most of my summers. The Magnificent Obsession armed me for life.
10. Michael O’Halloran, Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles. The Gene Stratton Porter connection to my in-laws home, my almost island, Katie’s wedding, all came later. I leave the well-trod path to claim Mickey and Peaches as my favorite though I love them all.
11. The Hunt for Red October etc up to when the greedy sloth stopped writing his carefully crafted and woven plots and farmed outlines out to subordinates who write like schoolboys, the cad. (Easy to hear the voice change – Rainbow Six was not Clancy.) But I truly lost myself in the complexities of the weave when he was on his own. Abhor his arrogant empire, so glad that this falls on evil eleven.
12. George R. R. Martin Game of Thrones, Feast of Crows, forget the order and others in the series. Fantasy for adults (like, x-rated in occasional moments) but creating a vividly real world and 3 dimensional characters.
13. Nancy Drew for the years of building up to adult mysteries.
14. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Yes, language issues for freshmen, but love the story & characters. Had a grad class prof want to publish my paper on Miss Havisham in the Dickens journal. Wonderful storytelling. And yikes, since you cheaters did it, Shakespeare, especially Romeo & Juliet, mostly because I’m so familiar with it having taught it, but also Midsummer’s Night Dream for Sarah, the Amazon Queen, and Twelfth Night.
15. Saint-Exupéry for The Little Prince but more as an adult, for Wind, Sand, and Stars, Night Flight, etc, all poetry in prose. Throw in a book of 19th century French poetry, with Lamartine, Baudelaire, Théodore Gautier. Oh Lord. And Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s magnificent saga, in both languages.
Ok I’m out of numbers, but that’s not to say that there are not more. Like the famous Sarah, I may have to throw out the clothes to pack more books in this suitcase. I reserve the right to come back to this.
Please note the non-stop (except for a moment with Dad and a rosebush on the front porch) random rant. Love you for torturing me. Hurts so good.
Stream of consciousness be damned. The other George R. R. Martin’s are A Clash of Kings and Song of Ice and Fire.
My P.S. list:
a. Carry On Mr. Bowditch. seafaring, hero of math and navigation.
b. While Still We Live and others by Helen MacInnes. 1940s spies and love.
c. Chinese Handcuffs. Every social issue a teen needs to face.
d. Forgotten Fire. Armenian genocide. Who knew, besides Hitler???
e. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. There are sequels but this is THE BEST. If you’ve read Jane, you HAVE to love the literary police.
f. The Secret Garden, The Little Princess. Shameless delight.
g. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. Terrific, admirable child reader fantasy.
h. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. The sequels are diluted, this is great 2 timing.
i. Secret Life of Bees. Coming of age is 60s south. Fab beach read.
j. Swastika Over Paris by Jeremy Irons. Life story of Paulette Sarcey so inspiring that I found her in Paris and befriended her.