I've heard so much about the Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I have to get it!
Oh, some nice choices - did you like
Momo?
Yes, I loved it. I wanted to include it too, but then went for the Neverending Story.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles got me into Haruki Murakami. What a wild ride that has been so far!
Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world is a very close second.
Have you read
L'Ecume des jours? Someone told me Murakami was influenced by that book.
No, I haven't. But you have just added another book to my wishlist...
I just ordered a big pile of books yesterday so I'm going to include it in my next order. In a week or so ;-)
Have you read
L'Ecume des jours in French? My French is getting worse every year because I barely ever use it and if it's too complicated I'd rather get a translation.
Ah, yes,
art books. I didn't think of that.
I would add any
Eugène Atget book to my list, were I to expand it.
citygirl: Thanks! And I forgot Rebecca, too.
Out looks really interesting. I think this thread might get very expensive very quickly, I've already been set back $50.
Hmm, I didn't list Rebecca because I though it didn't "qualify" for this list. Like Lolita, The Odyssey and The Hobbit. I picked books that aren't really considered classics or great literature. Okay, P&P would be one of those... Well, I'm going in circles. I think I should log off and finally go to bed ;-)
(Schlaf gut, träum schön!)
No, I'm all confused now. I should have made it twenty books. Possibly.
#13, citygirl:
Well, it's difficult to explain, but I guess the short answer is that it was so real. The women, their personalities, their lives and the way each was imprisioned within them was shockingly realistic. I was astonished by Kirino's vivid insight into so many very different personalities and her deft depiction of the way their personalities conflicted with their enforced roles in society. The plot device she used was extreme, but it was brilliant as an external symbol of their internal lives and their desperation to escape. I first encountered the story when I was watching a Japanese tv drama they made out of it, and despite the total poverty of my Japanese I was rivited. It was only later on that I ran across the book and realized it was the same thing. It just blew me away.
Opps. My computer said it didn't go through. Very sorry. :)
Message edited by its author, Sep 7, 2007, 7:43pm.
Danke schön und gleichfalls!
Maybe I'll go over to the Green Dragon for a while and complain about not being able to fall asleep first... I do have to get up again in 6 hours though.
I'll stick with my list though. There are tons more I'd love to include, but I'm pretty happy with the way it is now.
Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
The Voyage of the Dawntreader by C.S. Lewis
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Round the Year Storybook
Gnomes by Wil Huygen
Message edited by its author, Sep 7, 2007, 9:30pm.
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>23, lilisin - wow,
Blindness...I'm about 3/4 of the way through it and while it is definitely a smart, well-written book, I cannot say I am 'enjoying' it. It is traumatic and exhausting. I find that I feel isolated from the normal world after reading it. (sigh...I want to finish it tonight, but I don't know if I'm up to it...)
Oh, yes, the emphasis was meant to be on aren't necessarily considered great literature! I could have been clearer.
my Bible,
Little Grey Men by B.B.,
The Black Fawn by Kjelgaard,
The Hobbit by Tolkien,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Smith,
The Old Man & the Sea by Hemenway,
The Little Princess by Burnett,
Dr Zhivago by Pasternak,
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Verne
and Evangeline by Longfellow
Oh, tiffin and vpfluke, do you have an OED?!?! I'd love to have one. I priced them and they're a little out of my budget presently. But to come home everyday and see it.... I'm envious.
tiffin, I also love Lucia. It's been years since I read any of the books, but I have very fond memories. I considered Gormenghast for my list, but I could only choose ten....
And for the record, I do consider several books on my list "great literature," but as other LT threads show, the definition of that term varies widely and probably changes to an individual over the years. But I have noticed that Danielle Steel and James Patterson haven't made it onto anyone's lists.
Oh, yes, of course -
The Wind in the Willows!
It's probably necessary making a separate list for books you loved when you were a child/YA, but I read Grahame's book shockingly late.
Sophie's Choice by, William Styron
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
A Short History of a Small Place by, T.R. Pearson
Rebbeca by Daphne Du Muir
Risk Pool by, Richard Russo
Reflected Glory by, Sally Bedell Smith
The River Why by, David James Duncan
The Brothers K by, David James Duncan
Andersonville by, MacKinlay Kantor
Tao Te Ching by, Lao-Tzu
fannypriceYes,
Blindness is quite mentally exhausting and challenging but it tackles on dystopian literature like I've never seen before and it was just too eye-opening not to include it! As the original post says, it has become of great personal value to me. I always reference it, always recommend it and always go back to it as a way to remind myself what the world is like. But yes, one does enjoy going back to their little bubble of happiness and love after that. :)
I had to leave
The Mists of Avalon off, too, but I just can't imagine living without The Joy of Cooking or something like it.
Oh goodness,
The Education of Little Tree! I've tried very hard to erase that book from my memory. That is the only book I have every stopped reading!
I do agree that
Mists of Avalon was excellent, however. The rare fantasy I've ever read.
message # 48
lilisin,
Really ?? You didn't like
The Education of Little Tree? Gosh I read it at least three times. We did read it for one of my face2face groups and it was one of those few books that everyone liked.
Oh well........different strokes for different folks.(does that date me or what ?)
faceinbook: Just reading about the author puts me off the read entirely:
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/car... Hehe, that idiom always sounded dirty to me; I didn't dare use it in English class, because the teacher was really strict. Too bad - she could have set me straight.
51: I followed the url. Ugh! I don't remember the book, so maybe I've never heard of it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one finally.
Maybe someday I'll try again but for now I buried the book somewhere so that I wouldn't see it again. Not in the ground but in a section of my mother's bookcase that has all the books she read to learn English and that I don't particularly care for.
But this is not about what we don't like.
So, off this topic and let's get back to the ten books people are really close to! (Sorry to steal the thread like that.)
I honestly don't see the point of a thread where people only contribute by talking about themselves for ten lines, and then leaving, never to be heard from again. If you feel like discussing something - by all means, please do so! I have quite a few comments to add myself, but I'm too swamped right now; maybe this weekend.
also, glad to see
Time Traveler's Wife on several lists; any idea if there's a movie in the works? Yes, I know the book is always better, but still....
TeacherDad: Hehe, come on, bring on the nine lines!
I think the movie's actually in production already, here's the link to IMDb:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0452694/#56 - I first heard about the book through a friend who's really into movies, and she first heard about it because Jennifer Aniston's production company was interested in the rights. I don't know if she actually bought them or not, though.
inkdrinker, may I ask why New York Trilogy? I'm interested in your experience with it. It was an odd reading experience for me. I felt like I ought to have liked it more than I did. I appreciated it aesthetically, but emotionally it left me cold.
CITYGIRL
This is the first book I read by
Auster and it absolutely blew me away. I picked it up after seeing the movie SMOKE. In SMOKE one character tells a story about taking a picture in the same place at the same time everyday for years on end and that concept of art and time just really got under my skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. There was also a story that went along with that in which the character tells about how he got the camera. That story also really caught me off guard and left me ruminating on it for a long time. After that I really wanted more of that same feeling. The first story in this book delivered. The other two were good, but
City of Glass was one of my all time favorite books. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the twists
Auster played on the concept of identity. However, there was one scene in the book which made this an unforgettable read. When the Auster character sits on the bench with the old man and he talks about the tower of babble and how our language isn’t good enough. He tells Auster that if we could discover a perfect language it would be basically divine, it stirred something up inside me. I’m not even sure I can make it clear why it hit me so hard, but I couldn’t stop picking at the idea for a very long time. Even now when I write about it, I can feel the excitement. All that stuff about how we use the same word for an object when it’s whole as we do when it’s broken and how it’s no longer the same thing anymore. WOW! The fact that the narrator at that point is no longer the same person he was at the beginning of the book and how he has taken a name which isn’t his and how all that ties together….
Well, I could go on and on and on and on. All the layers and intricacies that were packed into what in some way was a very simple novella… it made my heart ache for more. Sadly
Auster has never quite reached that height again. Many of his books are GREAT and at times he has some moments which come very close, but he has never quite hit that note again. (
Music of Chance came very close with the whole building a wall Promethean thing.)
Well, I’ve babbled enough (no pun intended). I hope that makes it a little clearer, but I fear I may have only waxed ecstatic and muddied the waters.
Message edited by its author, Sep 15, 2007, 10:10am.
No, no, inkdrinker, thank you! That is exactly why I asked. Maybe you've seen something in the work that I missed and it's worth knowing. One great thing about LT is that everybody here is passionate about books and that's not always easy to find in the "real world." Maybe I'll take another look at
New York Trilogy.
I just realized that I never said why I picked up an Auster book after seeing SMOKE. Auster wrote the script for SMOKE. Also, I should say that I would highly recommend checking out the movie, If you haven’t already. It’s a great film. (It gets a tiny bit overly sentimental at times but it’s very good.)
#38
I have the
OED in the small print edition with two volumes and a magnifying glass -- the one done about 25 years ago. Even then it was pricey at maybe $75.
I know I am going to change and re-change my list but here it is, including handicapper's notes:
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, Alvaro Mutis (In a class by himself.)
Birdy, William Wharton (Elegy to adolescence)
New York Trilogy, Paul Auster (Auster, my hero)
Music of Chance, Paul Auster (one of his best)
The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil, (Worth the Effort)
The Trees, Conrad Richter (I see someone else listed the trilogy, I am surprised)
Cosmopolitans, Somerset Maugham (Maugham's Short Stories)
Dubins Lives, Bernard Malamud
Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte (The Eastern Front as seen by an Italian Reporter)
Reading Lyrics, Robert Gottlieb & Robert Kimbal (the Great American Songbook, useful when writing love letters)
Hunger, Knut Hamsum (Well, I'm half Norwegian, and think this is the worst of all possible worlds)
Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2007, 8:53pm.
vpfluke
Like I said, there are probably a hundred or more I could have listed here, but I just put down the first 10 which came to mind. I Don't know that I could actually name a top ten or favorite all time book if my life depended on it.
As to transformative... Well, I doubt you and I have lead the exact same lives, seen the same events in our lives as important, or even had the same exact education in style or content. Any one of those (and many other factors) could drastically alter our view of a book.
#67 vpfluke, Maybe I should consider the Compact OED. My plan was to deprive myself until I could afford the multi-volume set. But perhaps I should be reasonable.
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