My favorite books.

[valis2]

I'm certain there's a meme somewhere for this, but I'm too lazy to try to find it. I'm just going to list some of my favorite books and why they're my favorites. Yep. In no particular order. And by favorite I mean favorite. This is not the Best Books of All Time list...it is the valis2 list of favorite books.

• Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Oh, this book absolutely astonished me. It is one of the best books I have ever read. You must think when you read this book, through and through. It is like an elaborate onion. Layer by layer the story emerges. The book follows a middle-aged woman who might or might not be mentally unstable, who is visited by someone who claims to be from the future. It is an incredible exploration of possible futures and I cannot say enough about it. This book challenged me. It is an incredible book.


• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. This story, about a "babbitt" (cog) in the giant machinery of society, is so simple and innocuous, yet so complex and insidious. Every time I read it I am reminded of the character of the States, and how it grew to become the country it is now. This novel is so well-written that you feel as if you are there, in the twenties, amid Prohibition and Progress and yet in the constrained middle class. It captures perfectly the despair and the drama and the ridiculous nature of the time. I love this book. Every time I read it I become stuck in the Babbitt narrative and for the next few weeks I end up with a Babbitt narrative in my head commenting on everything that is happening. Lewis reportedly wrote three times the final word count and pared it down. The results are impressive, and it brings to life an era long gone that still has repercussions in our everyday existence.


• The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle. The language is incredible. Never have adjectives served a higher purpose than this work. The characters come alive, they sing, they mourn, and it still haunts me to think of the terrible curses and deep loves that they bestow upon each other. Every scene is so lyrically written that it makes me weep because I can't ever imagine being this talented a writer.


• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I love the Hobbit. The Rankin/Bass animated feature is so firmly implanted in my head that even reading the first line makes me remember John Huston's voice. I can still sing most of the songs. My family listened to the soundtrack over and over again. And I read it over and over again. Beorn and his wonderful animals, the spiders of Mirkwood, the wonderful wood elves...I love it so much. And now, re-reading it years later alongside the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I can see so many wonderful subtle things that rise up in the book...Bilbo is transformed by the ring, becoming a leader, changing into someone who will hide the Arkenstone. It's a wonderful book and I appreciate it even more now.


• The Time Master Trilogy by Louise Cooper. When I was eleven or twelve I began reading this trilogy. At this point I've re-read it every year or two. I love it tremendously. Cooper wrote it when she was in her early twenties. It's the story of a man who might not be just a man, and a woman who has a will of steel. It's set in an imaginative world where Order and Chaos are enemies. At this point Order has a death-grip on the world, and has nearly completely shut out Chaos. Where it goes next suprised me and intrigued me. I still love it because it has my favorite romantic pairing ever, and it is so unusual and fascinating. The two main characters resonate, they live, they breathe, they love. There is one character who is a bit more of a villain than I thought plausible, and who goes a bit over-the-top, but honestly, this trilogy has aged tremendously well for me. Sometimes when you re-read beloved books something is missing later. This stayed true for me. I still love it. It has just been reprinted by Mundania Press and I'm going to purchase several copies for friends.


• The Junior Classics 1: Fairy Tales and Fables (Popular Edition) from the Young Folks' Shelf of Books series(1938). This is a collection of fairy tales I purchased just a few years ago at a used book sale. I was astonished to find two of my very favorite fairy tales within, in the exact versions that I had read them years ago. The two tales are called "The Little Humpbacked Horse" and "Wassilissa the Beautiful" and are credited to Post Wheeler. They’re Russian fairy tales and they really affect me in a way that most don’t, probably because I read them as a child. They are very magical and wonderful.


• Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Yeah, I know, it’s technically a play, not a book, and I’m really beginning to wander from the book format. But Macbeth transformed Shakespeare for me. It was the first Shakespearean play that I really understood. Once I found his remarkable use of language, his angst, and his clever, beautiful words, I never looked back. His plays are thick with meaning, and Macbeth is a tightly wound, coiled spring of a play that grabs you and won’t let go.


• Anything by Katherine Porter. Really, anything. My favorite is "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall". At first I thought it was a great story. Then over the years I began to read more into it, and I realized the depths of it. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. It follows the story of a single, independent woman during World War I and the Spanish Flu Epidemic, and it’s an astonishing piece of work.


• Anything by Kate Chopin. "The Egyptian Cigarette", "The Storm", oh, I could go on and on. An incredible writer. She was brutally condemned by critics after "The Awakening", and wrote almost nothing afterwards. It wasn’t until the fifties that someone re-discovered her. "The Awakening" is something I re-read every year or two. It is astonishing, the portrait of a woman who feels confined by society and doesn’t know where to go. She has no outlet to become herself. It is a powerful novella.


• The Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An incredible story. A woman wants to get out. But she is a silly little goose, and must rest instead.


• The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. I still think of the lead character. Paks is a girl who wants to escape her father and the little farm she lives on. She becomes a soldier. The middle book is not as interesting as the first and last. She is completely transformed by the end of the trilogy. The military details are not overpowering, they are fascinatingly presented, and the story is engrossing. Paks is reserved and strong of heart.


• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I know, predictable, but those of you who understand the book’s power will know what I mean when I gnash my terrible teeth and roll my terrible eyes.


• Robin Hood. By Howard Pyle, Gilbert, etc. I’ve read at least seven versions, and I still love the tale, and dream of the Green Woods.


• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Was there ever a comic that caught and held me like this? The collected issues of this graphic novel are such an astonishing journey, full of chance encounters that aren’t really chance, characters that are deep and engrossing, and a beautiful retelling of myth and legend woven seamlessly into our time. My love, respect, and awe for this series is huge.


• Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F Scott Fitzgerald. A short story that explores popularity and inner fortitude.


• The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Such tight, perfect prose, breathless, tense, amazing. Buck the dog is transformed from his lazy Santa Clara existence into a creature of the Wild.


• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. An amazing science fiction novel that explores how the lack of gender might affect a race of sentient beings. I still think of it now. An amazing exploration of a strange love.

I can’t stop! There are so many more. Maybe I’ll add part two later...must go to bed now.

Comments

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

wow, I can't believe you've never read any Philip K. Dick, after seeing what kind of books you love so well.

I should look for the Marge Piercy book at the used bookstores I haunt -- it sounds fascinating. My favorite Fitzgerald short story was "The Ice Palace," (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/icepalace/icepalace.html) though they are almost all universally wonderful. I'm inordinately fond of GATSBY but don't remember having read any of his other novels. But the short stories are delicious.

It's weird...I KNOW that I've read "The Jilting of Granny Wetherall," but I can't seem to remember it now. I read a lot of Porter short stories a couple of years ago (I know it was since I've moved to NYC because I remember reading her on the subway) but no particular images are coming to mind at the moment. I remember finding them all wonderfully well-written and rewarding -- I just don't remember many details now.

I've been reading Willa Cather (for the first time) lately, and I posted elsewhere about a novella of hers called "Old Mrs. Harris" which I found to be one of the best things I've EVER read. Favorite novels for me include Aldous Huxley's EYELESS IN GAZA, Philip K. Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH and one which I think you might really enjoy (given your list above), Edith Wharton's SUMMER.

Other than Ms. Cather's "Old Mrs. Harris," probably the best thing I've read recently was W.G Sebald's devastating (though understated) essay called "On the Natural History of Destruction." And last year's runaway hit was David Foster Wallace's INCREDIBLY amusing book of essays called A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN.

Anyone knowing me (or reading my lj) would be aware that I'm researching a project involving the poems written by soldiers during and after the Vietnam war, so I suppose my list of "favorite" (or at least "essential-to-me") books would probably have to include one of the major anthologies of this Vietnam soldier-poetry, or, if I had to pick but one volume by one of the poets, Bruce Weigl's SONG OF NAPALM.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I love the Ice Palace story as well. That's another story that somehow has lodged itself in my consciousness and pops up from time to time.

Porter is one of my favorite authors. Her stories invoke Texas, Mexico, NYC...many places. She was truly a wonderful writer. I connect with her work.

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

Nice book list! Some of these I really want to read now. I've only seen the cartoon The Last Unicorn. I now have new books to add to my ever-growing list! I now want to do my own. Thank you for sharing. *is a literary h0r*

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I would *definitely* recommend the Last Unicorn. It is so lyrical and beautiful, yet funny at times, yet despairing, yet...I could go on and on.

Glad to see you here! I love your writing.

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

I know I adored the cartoon, so I shall definitely pick that book up, along with a few others. Books are one of my many passions.

And thank you so much, thansk for friending me! ♥

[aramintasnape.livejournal.com]

Macbeth is fantastic. It was the first Shakespeare play I ever read - in English Lit at school when I was about 14 - and remains one of the few I actually enjoy reading. I love Shakespeare, but in most cases I prefer to see the plays performed in the theatre rather than reading them. This one works for me both on paper and on stage.

The first two on your list sound interesting - I'll have to check those out.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I think that Shakespeare's dramas/tragedies work well on paper and on stage; his comedies are better on stage.

Macbeth is such a great work of art. I love MacDuff.

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

i don't know if you know that I've written incidental music for substantial productions of several Shakespeare plays: Romeo & Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night's Dream and just two months ago: The Tempest. Much Ado was the best experience (and my favorite score of the bunch of them).

I think my favorite Shakespeare play is still Othello, though. I enjoy "the Scottish play" too, but have never worked on a production. Did you know that among theater people, we always call Macbeth "the Scottish play" for obscure superstitious reasons? In particular, you're not supposed to say the name Macbeth inside any theater unless you're actually doing the play. I have NO idea where that came from, but it's universal all over the english-speaking theater world, all over the world.

I guess I basically agree with you that the dramas/tragedies work better on the page than the comedies do, but of course they're ALL better on stage than on the page. :)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Now that you say that, I do seem to recall something, probably from the Elizabeth McPherson novels by Sharyn McCrumb, because apparently Ms. McCrumb is either a drama major or a theater geek and always references acting in Shakespearean plays.

That must have been a lot of fun to score those productions.

The Tempest is my other favorite play, so world-weary, so understanding of human nature...

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

I think there's a meme for this too. I remember starting on it a while back and even posting what I'd come up with. I'm pretty sure I meant to come back and add more to that but obviously I never did.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Looking at your entry, I realized that one of the books that I thought of when I was first compiling this entry in my head is missing...JKR's PoA/GoF. ha! I'll definitely have to write a sequel entry.

[agatha-s.livejournal.com]

I love "Bernice Bobs her Hair". I've read many stories by Scott Fitzgerald, but this is the only one that really stayed with me. It's so thrilling when Bernice does what she does at the end.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

"Scalp the selfish thing!" *giggling*