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

[fahye.livejournal.com]

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

[brynnmck.livejournal.com]

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.