Tag Archives: Books

Pretty books: Recent acquisitions

So my attempts to journal my reading here have fallen by the wayside, other than the occasional recommendations of books I loved. If you’re that interested in the minutiae of what I read (some people are–it’s crazy!), you can always check out my thread on LibraryThing.

I still like to share my acquisitions, especially when they are pretty. Lately I’ve been on a ghost story kick. Here are three ghost stories I recently picked up.

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Very pretty, aren’t they? The first one is a novel; the other two are short stories.

A foundational reading list…

I promise that this is the absolute last reading list I will post. Ha ha, no.

What if you are starting your reading completely from scratch? What should you read to have a good foundation on which your future reading will rest? What are those books that sparked legions of imitators and inserted themselves permanently in our shared cultural consciousness?

This is my attempt to craft a foundational reading list, one that is not only easily achievable (no, you don’t have to read Ulysses) but also enjoyable. Published in the previous two hundred years (1810-2010), these novels offer a variety of viewpoints, genres, and styles. Yet all have been highly influential on how we see ourselves as human beings. I consider these the essential books–all truly worth reading.

Is this list perfect? Of course not, but it’s a great place to start. One book always leads to another, and I hope these books will lead the burgeoning reader on to further discoveries.

Sixty books may seem like a lot. So why not set a goal of reading one book a month? Or even read one a week (or so) and power through the list in just over a year. Many of these selections are short and, more importantly, they’re fun to read. I’ve arranged the list in chronological order, but tackle them any which way. The most important thing is to keep reading and to love your reading life.

By the way, I have omitted children’s and young adult books from this list. That would be another list in itself.

  1. urlPride and Prejudice by Jane Austen* (1813) – The choices that women must make.
  2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) – The first science fiction novel, the modern monster.
  3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) – A woman lives life on her terms.
  4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) – A woman desperately pursues a life that might fulfill her.
  5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884) – To grasp our shameful American history, as seen through the eyes of a child.
  6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) – A foundational horror novel about the duality of human nature.
  7. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) – Can you live a life of debauchery without consequences? Another foundational novel for modern horror.
  8. dracula-book-cover-e1368750274302Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) – Legions of vampires would not exist without him.
  9. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells* (1897) – The father of science fiction, the psychological consequences of pursuing unnatural power.
  10. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) – More than just a ghost story, an early psychological thriller and a terrific example of the unreliable narrator.
  11. The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899) – A woman awakens to the desire to live as she feels inside.
  12. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899) – The horror of Western expansion into Africa.
  13. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902) – The first and still greatest detective.
  14. A-Room-With-a-ViewA Room With a View by E.M. Forster* (1908) – A treatise in how to live.
  15. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920) – How society’s rules imprison us.
  16. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) – Skewering the myth of the American dream.
  17. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926) – The queen of mystery’s most famous case.
  18. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (1931) – Travel to a foreign land: pre-Revolution China.
  19. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) – One frightening vision of what humanity can become.
  20. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1936) – More than just a great mystery, also a debate on the role and purpose of women, a debate we are still having today.
  21. OfMiceAndMenOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck* (1937) – Still skewering the myth of the American dream.
  22. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) – A foundational suspense story, often imitated, never surpassed.
  23. 1984 by George Orwell* (1949) – Another frightening vision of what humanity can become.
  24. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949) – An early vision of the end of civilization.
  25. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) – The original story of teen angst.
  26. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952) – What it means to be a man.
  27. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury* (1953) – The reason to keep reading.
  28. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke* (1953) – An altogether different vision of what humanity may become.
  29. lotf11-320x484Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) – How quickly we revert to barbarism.
  30. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (1955) – What is meant by Southern gothic and an unflinching picture of the twentieth-century South.
  31. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) – To further grasp our shameful American history, as seen through the eyes of a child.
  32. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1960) – Can we overcome our impulse to destroy ourselves?
  33. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) – War is not only hell, it’s stupid.
  34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962) – How the systems we create imprison us.
  35. 61R2KWP2TZL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson* (1962) – No one messes with your head better.
  36. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) – Still-relevant political commentary in the guise of a terrific space opera.
  37. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967) – A study of paranoia that ushered in a new golden age of horror.
  38. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin* (1969) – An alien culture sheds light on our assumptions about gender.
  39. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut* (1969) – A treatise in how to die. So it goes.
  40. The Shining by Stephen King* (1977) – The perfect haunted house novel.
  41. 51648G4EeqL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979) – Humor often leads to truth.
  42. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) – The lives of black women.
  43. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984) – The formative sci-fi novel for the digital age.
  44. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985) – The definitive novel of the American West.
  45. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood* (1985) – A frightening allegory for the never-ending oppression of women.
  46. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (1986) – How can we truly understand the alien other?
  47. Parable-of-the-Sower-e1447884800914The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) – The immigrant’s story, the lives of Asian American women.
  48. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990) – War is not only stupid, it’s hell.
  49. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) – The darkness inside us, what we are capable of.
  50. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992) – The modern South–it hasn’t changed much.
  51. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler* (1993) – A dark vision of a future that could already be happening
  52. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993) – What it means to form a family.
  53. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998) – How the West has decimated Africa.
  54. brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diazThe Hours by Michael Cunningham* (1998) – Women’s lives and how books shape who we are.
  55. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002) – How we determine our identity.
  56. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell* (2004) – Life is only a story after all.
  57. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro* (2005) – Why do we accept without questioning our destinies as they are told to us?
  58. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy* (2005) – How the American West has changed.
  59. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006) – A darker look into women’s lives.
  60. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007) – The curse of family and history.

*These starred authors are exceptionally great. I encourage you to read many more of their works.

Rebecca Solnit, fast becoming my new hero

Rebecca Solnit on books no woman should read:
“The list made me think there should be another, with some of the same books, called 80 Books No Woman Should Read, though of course I believe everyone should read anything they want. I just think some books are instructions on why women are dirt or hardly exist at all except as accessories or are inherently evil and empty. Or they’re instructions in the version of masculinity that means being unkind and unaware, that set of values that expands out into violence at home, in war, and by economic means. Let me prove that I’m not a misandrist by starting with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, because any book Paul Ryan loves that much bears some responsibility for the misery he’s dying to create.”

No Boys Allowed…

Shannon Hale shares her experiences doing school visits as a woman writer.

Please encourage the young readers in your life to read all kinds of books. Don’t fall into the trap of segregating books by gender.

Links for readers…

Some interesting links I’ve stumbled across lately:

Whittling down Mount TBR…

I’m finding myself getting very picky about what books make it on the To Be Read (TBR) pile. By the TBR, I mean that pile of books that I’m really, truly, gosh-darn-it gonna read in the very near future. Ideally, I want the number of books on the TBR to be fewer than the number of books I read in a typical year, so I have a fighting chance of working my way through it.

Right now, I have several lists going: a list of books I own and want to read soon, a list of books I own and want to read but maybe not right away, a list of books I want to get from the library, a list of books I want to buy from Amazon if the Kindle price ever drops to a reasonable amount, a list of books I’ve heard about and kinda want to read, a list of books related to other books I’ve liked that sound interesting but I don’t know too much about them. There are probably more lists, but I’ve forgotten them.

Too many lists! I spend more time managing the lists than I do reading. So I’ve decided to cull mercilessly,  with one simple test. Am I excited to read this book? If I’m not excited to read it, it goes off the list.

For instance, All the Light We Cannot See is available at the library in electronic format, everyone’s reading it, it’s getting great reviews. So I thought about putting it on hold. But the truth is that I’m just not that excited about it. It may be truly terrific, but I feel burned out on the WWII time period, and I’m also more interested in women writers right now. So I x’ed it off the list.

I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.

StationElevenHCUS2I was going to read something else next, but everyone is reading Station Eleven and saying good things about it, I already own it on Kindle, and it is very much exciting me. I love its cover and its premise! So despite my lists and reading plans, that’s what I started reading last night.

Using this excitement test, I earmarked many, many books from my TBR pile for gradual donation to the Little Free Library or immediate donation to the Big Free Library. Now my physical TBR fits in my bedside table and there are several books on it that I am excited about reading.

I don’t like having a big TBR. It makes me feel like reading is a chore and not a joy. Also, there will always be books available, and they will always be making more books (unless, maybe, the apocalypse). So if I get rid of a book and it turns out I really did want to read it after all, I’m sure I can get another copy when I’m wanting it.

A book does it have its moment, and sometimes that moment passes us by. Books that linger too long on the TBR seem to acquire a patina of sadness. I know I’m anthropomorphizing, but that’s what it feels like to me. Better that those books move on to someone who will read them and love them and fulfill their purpose.

I will likely keep making lists, though. I do love lists.

Here’s a video from Book Riot advocating the opposite point of view–i.e., just keep adding on to the TBR all you want as long as you have money, time and space for them. (And stop anthropomorphizing books, ha ha!) I don’t tend to agree, because the TBR has weight for me, but I do think I should be able to buy and keep any books I want because I am an adult. I even buy books I’ve already and gotten rid of if I find a particularly beautiful edition. We all love books in our own ways.

Tidbits…

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I saw the third installment of The Hobbit over the holiday, and I have to say that this has not been my favorite book-to-film adaptation. More is not always more, a tough lesson to learn. Anyone else tired of unending superhero movies and uninspired sequels as well? The movies just don’t seem fun anymore.

I did see Birdman over the break too, which I really liked. It pokes a lot of jabs at superhero movies and Hollywood sacred cows. Other than The Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman is the only Oscar-nominated movie I’ve seen. I liked them both, so take note: They never give Oscars to movies I like.

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Speaking of overblown movie award shows, I loved this joke by Tina Fey at the Golden Globes: “Steve Carell’s Foxcatcher look took two hours to put on, including his hairstyling and make-up. Just for comparison, it took me three hours today to prepare for my role as human woman.”

I didn’t watch the awards, but I did watch Amy and Tina’s monologue and thought it was great.

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I just purchased and started reading a beautiful little book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I was struck by this sentence in the section on books: “The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it.”

Hmm. This strikes me as true, as I just cleaned out my books and earmarked for the Little Free Library or book sale donation all of those books I’ve owned for over a year that have gone unread. I figured the moment when I felt the energy to read them has passed me by, and if I ever do feel moved to read them, well, books are very easy for me to get.

But it’s making me re-evaluate the whole idea of reading by categories over a year. While I love being organized and planning my reading ahead, it removes the spontaneity. I think there is a balance to be achieved–still musing on what the right balance is, though.