ten most important books

[heresluck]

A while back, truepenny and Mirrorthaw and I were talking about books over dinner (...yeah, there's a surprise) and Mirrorthaw brought up the notion of one's own Ten Most Important Books. Not favorite books, or best books, but the most important. Truepenny pointed out that such a list requires not only picking the most important books but deciding what "

Comments

[par_avion]

You're mention of retold stories makes me curious if you've read Wicked, and what you thought. If you've discussed it here before, feel free to tell me to go search.

I'm proud of you for standing up to your professor. (Not that that really means anything since you don't know me and it was awhile ago.)

Little Women would also be on my list. I didn't own that many books, and reread this often. I read it again this winter, and despite the adverbs running amuck, I still cry when Beth dies, because it hurts Jo so much.

[heresluck]

I've seen Wicked, but not read it yet. Is this a tacit recommendation? *g*

And thank you for the comment re: the professor. It would have been a more meaningful thing if I'd had any respect for him, but he was a pretty unimpressive specimen, so it wasn't so much standing up to him as giving him the logical smackdown. Heh.

[tzikeh]

If you haven't read Wicked, and you have a love of retold stories, I recommend it. Of all of his retold stories, that is by far the best and most engrossing.

I also have a huge predilection for this ... sub-genre? And now I think we should do a meme about the best retold stories. ;)

[par_avion]

Have you read the Neil Gaiman short story "Snow, Glass, Apples" ?

I loved it. If you like this subgenre, that story alone is worth the cost of his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors.

[par_avion]

Catching up on comments today.

When I first read this, I thought you meant that you'd "seen Wicked" as in seen the musical version of Wicked. Hee.

I do like the book. I also like the musical, although there are significant differences between the two. And I agree with tzikeh that Wicked is the best of his retold tales. I was disappointed in and often confused by Lost.