books. everyone loves books.

[fahye]

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

Comments

[bantha-fodder.livejournal.com]

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.