(some) favorite books

[heresluck]

melymbrosia brought up favorite books.

My current core list:

Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
A. S. Byatt, Possession
George Eliot, Middlemarch
T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems & Plays
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
E. M. Forster, A Room with a View
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Naomi Shihab Nye, Yellow Glove
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of

Comments

[ivorychopsticks]

Wow, nice and appropriate icon.

The "favorite books" list always leaves me open mouthed and stuttering. Favorite how? Favorite when? What context? When I see other's lists I want to ask them the same questions, so I enjoyed your "why" as much as the list itself.

Now, I own dozens of books I haven't read yet, and go on cheerfully accumulating more. Re-reading's something I enjoy sometimes, but I am also powerfully conscious of how much new stuff there is, and I want that too -- want it more.

I'm so with you here! Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in books; there are so many published, and so many I want to get involved with, and I want both the comfort and the adventure.

You've inspired me to think about this again and look over my bookcases. Fun!

[heresluck]

Favorite how? Favorite when? What context?

You're so right. I'm always torn between the impulse to make lists and the knowledge that no list can ever quite cover everything. I tend to compromise by having a *lot* of lists; Favorite Nonfiction is its own list for example.

...I want both the comfort and the adventure.

I really like that way of putting it.

You've inspired me to think about this again and look over my bookcases. Fun!

I consider that very high praise indeed. Yay! Books!

[sisabet]

I went through the exact same thing with the exact same book when I was 13.

[heresluck]

I consider it one of the great literary injustices of my life that I didn't read Pride and Prejudice until I was 22 and out of college. I didn't know about Austen until I was in college, and then I never got around to reading her until after graduation when the movie of Sense and Sensibility came out, which I wanted to see but of course I had to read the book first because I'm like that. So that was the first Austen I read.

When I finally read P&P... I started it after lunch, skipped dinner to finish reading it, ordered in Chinese food so I could turn right around and re-read it without pausing to make something to eat, and was up well into the night reading it a second time. Had I read this at 13, I would have been completely obsessed with it, and I would have read it 10 or 12 times already instead of a paltry 4. I am seriously bitter.

[ex_greythist387]

Ooh. Likewise--I skimmed Emma for the GRE subject exam, then went back and inhaled the Austen I could find easily. It seemed curiously like cheating to have graduated as an English major without reading Austen, afterwards. Admittedly I haven't gotten to the juvenilia yet, ~8yrs later, but I'm a medievalist, not a student of the early English novel. :)

[sisabet]

I understand the lack of access to books growing up - my mother actually was very supportive of me reading - there just wasn't a bookstore nearby and she hated the library and by the sixth grade I had read everything in my schools library. Since we lived so far out in the country, she was able to arrange for the bookmobile to stop by our house every two weeks. Every other summer Thursday was my favorite day. Good times.

But reading was different then - and I think a lot of that is based on psychology. I become very attatched to stories - this is just how I am - but I was even more so as an adolescent. The stories I loved then were more real to me than a lot of people that I knew. Which is possibly a scary reaction

[heresluck]

My parents were supportive of the reading thing in theory, but neither of them does much reading, so they just kind of didn't get it. My mom, in particular, had no idea how *fast* I read. She'd only take me to the library every 3 weeks (the length of the check-out period), and there was a ten-book limit; ten books might last me as long as a week, if they were long and I made myself ration them, but no way could I stretch it to three.

I become very attatched to stories - this is just how I am - but I was even more so as an adolescent. The stories I loved then were more real to me than a lot of people that I knew.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And this is one of the things that's changed for me: now that I actually know people I *care* about, books aren't as overwhelming. It's not that books affect me less; it's just that actual people affect me more.

I want books. I need them. I have a ton that I haven't read yet but I need more... The more unread books I have accumulated the calmer I am.

Yep. truepenny and I have this theory that it's a function

[oyceter]

Yes! I lived in Taiwan from yrs. 9-18, and there was a severe lack of English books of the variety I wanted to read (sci-fi/fantasy). So I would go through my bookshelf about once a year -- probably read everything there at least 4-5 times, depending on how recently I bought the book, and lugged back ten paperbacks, chosen very carefully, whenever we went to America. Now that I live here and have access to the bookstore I work in, which lets me borrow books, the library, and the various other large bookstores here, I've stopped rereading as often, which makes me a little sad, like abandoning old friends. But there are just too many things out there I need to read.

[heresluck]

Now that I live here and have access to the bookstore I work in, which lets me borrow books, the library, and the various other large bookstores here, I've stopped rereading as often, which makes me a little sad, like abandoning old friends. But there are just too many things out there I need to read.

Yeah, exactly. I keep promising myself a Summer of Rereading, when I'll go back to all the stuff I've been vaguely wanting to reread for the past, oh, ten years or so.

And yay bookstore employment! I got my first bookstore job when I was 16, which helped a little, but it was a crappy chain bookstore in a mall -- the only bookstore in town -- so I had access to more stuff, but I still didn't know what to read. By the time I got the bookstore jobs I held in college and for the first part of grad school, I made full use of the benefits. *g*

[oyceter]

Yeah... in college I'd reread every summer and winter vacation when I went back home, because I'd be there for a few weeks without access to anyone else's books but mine again.

Oh! I would have died for a crappy chain bookstore back at home! I used to be so happy when we'd land at an airport and I could go to one of the newsstands cum bookstores. It was always hard to pick stuff to read for me because I knew those 7-10 paperbacks would pretty much have to last me the year. So during summers I would have my mom just drop me off at a bookstore or library for four hours or so, where I'd sit and read anything I wasn't sure I wanted to buy.

[lisajulie]

somewhat late to the fair - sorry!

My parents _understood_ about reading. We had books around the house, we went to two branch libraries every week, went to used book stores, and went to the wonderful big book sale every year. We gave so many books as presents that we had a separate pile of recycled wrapping paper that was just paperback book size.

So, my experience was one of "never being able to catch up" - that books were being written faster than I could read them.

That still doesn't stop me from being completely addicted to books. I can't take a book in to work, I'll read it rather than working. I can't leave a book on the front seat of my car, I'll read it at stoplights. And, my alarm clock is set, not for when I have to wake up, but for when I have to start getting ready to go to work.

[heresluck]

You mean I can't blame it all on my parents? Rats.

*g*