Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

[dante_kent]

Hello and welcome to Day 2 of (100) Days of Summer (ugh I'm the worst seriously apologies SO PRETENTIOUS). It was such fun hearing from all of you about shipping preferences, so now I'm going to grill you some more. Let's get to it.

So I caught a bit of A Room With A View (the one with Helena Bonham-Carter) a few days ago, and it got me thinking.

Comments

[lynnenne]

I used to read a lot more books than I do now. These days I read mostly fanfic. :D

It's going to sound crazy pretentious, but War and Peace had a huge impact on me. I read it at a time in my life when I was going through some huge changes, personally and spiritually, and I completely connected with Prince Andrei. I remember a line about him realizing that his life was just beginning at 31, which was how old I was at the time, and I still remember that feeling of discovering myself anew.

I adore Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Not only is it beautifully written, but it's set in Cape Breton, the island where both of my parents grew up, and where I spent every summer as a child. I knew every one of the characters in that story. And the love story is both heartbreaking and gorgeous.

Great Expectations is a book I could read over and over again. People complain that it's the darkest novel Dickens ever wrote, but it's still funnier than 90 percent of the English canon.

A friend recommended Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm to me as possibly the funniest novel ever written. She was right.