fahye | books. everyone loves books.

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: no music. want music back. wah.

books. everyone loves books.

Alright, so we're playing the 15-books-I-would-take-away-to-college (or get stuck with on a desert island, whatever) game. This is an interesting exercise, because this isn't my 15 favourite books. (I love Good Omens to pieces but know it back to front by now.) My list reflects the books I'd read again and again and again and again, mostly because they have had - and are still having - a great impact on me and my style, and because reading any of these invariably makes me feel like writing. That's something precious.

Comment with your own list? I'm curious. And always on the lookout for new things, despite my staggeringly long existing to-read list.

Julian Barnes: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Robert Dessaix: (and so forth)
Jostein Gaarder: Sophie's World
Neil Gaiman: American Gods, Smoke & Mirrors
Peter Hoeg: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Elizabeth Knox: The Vintner's Luck
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club
Terry Pratchett: Night Watch
Tom Robbins: Skinny Legs And All
William Shakespeare: The complete works. Shut up, it's a single volume, it counts as one. I will fight anyone who claims otherwise.
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
John Varley: The Golden Globe
Jeanette Winterson: Art & Lies
Diana Wynne Jones: Howl's Moving Castle

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rather than Howl's Moving Castle, I would take the Dalemark Quartet.

And also not go to college.

Also, I would take The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, which was possibly the most important book I ever read whilst at university.

Oh, I am strongly behind the not going to college idea. I would go through intense trauma if I actually had to leave behind all of my books but fifteen. Two-thirds of my books are at my parents' house as it is, and that's painful enough.

Tell me about this important book!

It was just such an amazing, fascinating book. It's translated, obviously, because it was originally written in Japanese around about the year 1000 by Sei Shonagon, who was a lady in waiting at the court. Uh, the Japanese court. Anyway, it's basically her diary. And it's just - the style in which it's written is so beautiful, and so lyrical. It's filled with these awesome ideas and things, and also it's weird because it was written a thousand years ago, but it's beautiful and poetic and I can understand a little Japanese, so I have tried to read it in Japanese but I don't think I quite get it, not really.

Try this link (http://www.alcheraproject.com/archives/25b.htm), which is just a bit of a description, and this link (http://www.bianca.com/shack/bedroom/hate/shonagon.html), which is an excerpt from the text. This particular section is a list of hateful things.

Even now, I still write my own journal (not this bantha_fodder one, obviously) in a painful attempt to mimic her beautiful prose. And the lists. I love her lists.

Hmmmm... off the top of my head, if my roof was falling in and leaking onto my bookcases, the below would be the first things I grab:

Eric Segal's The Class because it is too wonderful for words, and hits me the same way every time I read it.

Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird because there is no such thing as reading it too many times, and because I love Atticus, Finch, Jem and Boo.

Nelson DeMille By the Rivers of Babylon because once you start, you will not be able to put it down until it's finished. This one he wrote when he still could write, before he realized that Stuart (blech) Woods was making more money than him.

Frank Gilbreth & Ernestine Gilbreth Cheaper by the Dozen because even though it may be a 'kids' book, it's hysterical, and an interesting and humorous slice of life earlier in the 20th century. Bears no resemblance whatsoever (thank goodness) to the atrocious Hilary Duff movie of the same name.

John Jakes North and South and Love and War. I'm a canuck, but these civil war sagas (the first two novels of a trilogy) are amazing.

I'll be back later after I've been some thought into it. :->

There is nothing wrong with a good kids' book! Diana Wynne Jones is totally not adult literature, but I love her works :)

You definitely told me to shit up in your e-mail, which is a typo I am now happily revealing to the world. Also you already have my list, but for the purposes of meme:

Robert Dessaix: Corfu + (poss.) Twilight of Love
F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise
John Gardner: The Art of Fiction OR Moral Fiction
Eugène Ionesco: Rhinocéros + Le Roi se meurt + Tueur sans gages + Fragments of a Journal OR Present Past Past Present
James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man + Stephen Hero
Hilary Mantel: An Experiment in Love + (poss.) A Place of Greater Safety
(poss.) Terry Pratchett: Small Gods + Only You Can Save Mankind + Johnny & the Bomb

The only thing which I really regret is that there is no poetry here.

HAHAHA so I did.

This Side of Paridise, APOGS and Portrait of the Artist are on my shortlist. And I find it interesting that my two favourite Dessaixs are different to yours, though I haven't read Twilight of Love yet.

I would have Gaiman's poetry-prose and Shakespeare's sonnets, but I would also kind of like my complete works of Whitman or Keats.

HOHOHO TYPO QUEEN!

It's interesting to me, too! Even when we put the same authors (rarely . . . ) we didn't come up with the same books. My reasoning in re: Dessaix is that I adooored Corfu like a long, hazy summer. It made me want to go to Greece and, I don't know, do warm things. Actually, I associate this same warm feeling with much of This Side of Paradise.

Twilight of Love is wonderful to me. It sort of minces around in that very Dessaix-y way, mince mince mince OH LOOK I ARE A CLEVER BOY!!1 JA! mince, but all of a sudden you're in Soviet Russia and there are guns going off in the street and everything is coming down around your head and, and, it's also about friendship, which is quaint but also quintessential. Ja?

(and so forth), on the other hand, I never managed to finish. Dessaix's self-consciousness, like John Gardner's, is a real block for me.

Poets I would like on hand include Hilda Conkling (http://www.fullbooks.com/Poems-By-a-Little-Girl.html), whose work I don't even OWN, Stephane Mallarmé, the Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950 (ANTHOLOGIES COUNT), & Coleridge.

Excellent list. Personally, I'd replace Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Stoppard's Arcadia, which is my favorite modern play ever ever ever and is the kind of thing I only dream of writing, but it inspires me all the same.

I'd also throw in some Seamus Heaney and, if we are counting anthologies, my Anthology of Romanticism--one-stop shopping for Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, etc. WOO.

There would probably be others, but I am brain-dead this morning, so this is all I have.

I haven't read Arcadia, because I fail at Stoppard fangirlism. Clearly.

And that anthology sounds SO GOOD. I am a huge sucker for Romanticism in all areas except my own life :D

OMG. You MUST read Arcadia (or, you know, see it, if that's ever an option). It is brilliant and amazing and it is about everything, literature and science and math and sex and reason and intuition and Romanticism and Classicism and academia and history and I LOVE IT SO. And of course, because it's Stoppard, it's hilarious and incredibly thought-provoking and inspiring. We did a production of it my freshman year in college, and I was on the crew for it, so I probably saw it 20 times, and every single time I saw it I caught something new. Just unbelievably good.

And yes---Romanticism is my favorite literary period, definitely. Actually, I like the whole 19th century quite a lot (Tennyson! Dickens! Hardy!), but particularly the Romantic period.

In no particular order:

Neil Gaiman: American Gods, Good Omens
Bret Easton Ellis: Rules of Attraction, Glamorama
Chuck Palahniuk: Invisible Monsters, Fight Club
Michael Cunningham: A Home at the End of the World
William Golding: Lord of the Flies
Hubert Selby Jr.: Requiem for a Dream
Dennis Lehane: Mystic River
Elmore Leonard: Out of Sight
Andre Dubus III: House of Sand and Fog
F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise (For serious, I love it so much already)
Tony Kushner: Angels in America
S.D. Perry: Resident Evil: City of the Dead

If I owned Angels in America, it would be on the list. As it is, it goes on my theoretical list of DVDs I could watch forever and ever.

I usually lurk about but I swear I am slavishly admiring of your BSG fic and drabbles; I may have commented once or twice but I may have been too shy? So I'm doing the brave thing for two reasons...one this is a meme I can't resist and two you used my Cristina I'm in Hell icon a few posts back so I <3 you! My new pretend boyfriend is Greg House so if you like that show expect icons in the next few weeks!

Anyway, the books:

Coming Through Slaughter and The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje (because the emotional intimacy this man gets across in a single sentence gives me wet dreams for weeks)

Cloudsplitter and The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks (and it's still hard for me to reconcile these two books are written by the same authour)

Stranger Music by Leonard Cohen

Light in August by William Faulkner (although I would settle equally gleefully for The Sound and the Fury)

Watership Down by Richard Adams (my username doesn't make this predictable?)

A Room With A View by E.M. Forster (I've read it over 30 times and I could read it infinitum and still find something small and new; truth beauty courage love, George yells from the treetops; and is tattooed into my skin)

Voltaire by Candide (because HEE!)

I, Claudius by Robert Graves (one of the best books ever...srsly!)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy because I couldn't tire of this book even if I made an effort...

Any book by David Sedaris or Joe Queenan just for additional comic relief

The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre because it is the standard suspenseful thing but with so many layers in the relationships that it takes you completely by surprise!

The Ramayana for spiritual purposes

An anthology of poetry...

here's where it gets really tough...Tennyson, Heaney, Thomas, Lawrence, the Romanticists, Eliot, Keats, Browning, Rilke? Tugs me so many ways...I guess I'll be fickle and narrow it down to two, Tennyson or Rilke. Either would provide me with years and years of things to consider...and if that's my criteria then I suppose Dante should be in there, too...

Tennyson wins by a millimetre edge for purely sentimental reasons *ahem* In Memoriam *end ahem*...

K. So this is definitely the stranded on island scenario because have no doubt every single book I owned went with me to university (*cough* some years ago *cough*).

House icons! Ooh! I am in great need of some of those :D

OMG MICHAEL ONDAATJE. The only reason The English Patient is not on that list is because I lent my copy out and so it was not on my bookshelf to remind me of how much I love it.

Your list sounds amazing, and I've never actually read any of them (though I own Anna Karenina and I, Claudius, and have been meaning to track down some Rilke for ages.

Yes, House icons. One of the many many balls I have in the air! I have become completely obsessed with this show in the last week (and dragged my poor father down with me, hee!) I really need to stop gawping at the TV screen and actually put the DVD into the computer and *ahem* make some screencaps (or I could just do that while re-watching the eps I've "downloaded"...? Not that there's anything wrong with illegal downloading or anything...)

It's a good book list (anything MO makes me weak-kneed), but of course there are a million things I'm sure I'm leaving out which is why I love that you've posted this meme because your choices and the choices in the comments are all so interesting!

I noticed this in another of your journal entries and I had to cheer:

"In even geekier news, the Co-op was having a sale and I picked up, for the grand total of $9.80, a book about the race to discover the etiological agent of the Black Death, and another called The Encyclopedia of Plague & Pestilence, which is thick and shiny and covers every major human epidemic in history. DENGUE. INFLUENZA. WEST NILE. CHOLERA. OMG."

I love anything to do with immunology, virology, public health, epidemiology, the history of infection and epidemic, etc. I picked up a used book about Lassa fever a long time ago for .50 cents and it set me on a total tear...one of my favourite all times books in this vein is "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett which is probably outdated by now, but still, a very fascinating read!

...goes back to contemplating House icons...moves said endeavour up on list of priorities...

I am pleased to announce that I bought S1 THIS VERY MORNING :D It is probably a good thing that my laptop is dead, as otherwise I would feel compelled to rewatch it all and neglect my uni work.

(The fact that he specialised in infectious diseases is just another reason to adore House.)

What is it about infectious diseases? So alluring. So horrifying. And somehow simultaneously the tiniest and largest reminder of the fragility of humanity?

Pretty much every single day I contemplate giving up on everything, converting my financial life into liquidity and giving over to some NGO. And I'm an artist with a vaguely astute and never pursued science background. I would be largely useless to them, save my drive?

Don't neglect your Uni work. Here's why, and totally selfish, too! If you do, I won't get to read about it, and I do enjoy your posts on that!

I am so totally obsessed with House for two reasons...

The wait for new BSG is SO hard and also Greg House = my art school professor (GR)...complete with the wierd interactions, drug forays (mine and his) total emotional removal, misanthropy, general crabbiness, wierdly intimate moments, so closely dancing the line of propriety, Oedipal interest, the list goes on...

Really hope you enjoy your new DVDs. I bought them two weeks ago and after thrice viewing had to torrent 1-14 of this season to get up to date.

I don't know, but they're SO FASCINATING. One day I will hunt down some infectious disease geek!icons, though I doubt they're a very popular thing on the intarwebs :D

I won't go into my long rant about how much I wish I had downloads that worked/a country that screened things at the same time as the US. Hooooouse *pines*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

books. everyone loves books.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject