Tell me which books you love. Which ones, whether or not they’re great books, affected you in some way, changed your life or the way you think.
On the way to work I drove behind a truck load of Christmas trees. At this time of year, at that time of morning, I usually am not immediately sure if I am following a truck load of Christmas trees or a military transport truck full of soldiers staring out at me sleepily. In the dark, in the rain, the green trees are military green, and the white stumps could be the white faces.
Likewise, when I follow a real truck load of soldiers, I am reminded of the more common trucks loaded with swine on their way to slaughter – those faces staring at me are just as sleepy, bored and resigned to their fate.
There was some literary tie-in here but I forgot what the hell it was, forgive me. My father’s cousin wrecked a truck load of swine once. He was in a body cast for months, since he broke his back in the accident. The pigs didn’t do too well either. Even though they were on their way to be slaughtered, people felt sorry for the pigs. The pigs probably thought it was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to them.
Still no literary tie-in, I give up.
I was reading some Anne Rice novel. “Blood and Gold” or something. Her style was starting to irritate me when one of the characters said, “anger is weakness” and I couldn’t stop thinking about that. Sometimes when you read a book, even if it’s not a great book, some image or detail or idea sticks with you like that, sometimes they accompany you for the rest of your life. Just one little thing they wrote.
What has stuck with you, is my question. Like, I read “The Dice Man” by Luke Reinhart or Rhinehart. It struck me as a cheesy paperback, but the premise was interesting – giving different parts of one’s personality precedence at random, based on the roll of the dice. It reminds me a lot of blogging, where we reveal or live out different aspects of our personalities. I think it is not necessarily an unhealthy thing.
Or “Crowds and Power” by Elias Canetti. It is not a potboiler. I found it slow going, this text about the relationship between different sorts of crowds, and power. There is a chapter on the crowd of the dead, where he mentions a living man walking through a cemetary, older and knowing more than all the dead there. We are all like that, so fortunate to be alive now, with knowledge of all that has gone before. We are the oldest people in the world.
Anyway, what has stuck with you?
For some reason, the concept of time in ‘Slaughterhouse 5′, by Vonnegut. The last time that I read the book was in the 70’s, but I still think about it, now and then.
The last page of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Joyces’ The Dead (Dubliners). I have always been awed by their rhythms, the ability of the cadence of the words to transmit feeling.
I have really enjoyed the Damnation Game by Clive Barker, mostly because the way it written, so visually, kinda gross..and Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice.
Is this one you are reading part of her vampire series?
The one I’m reading is “Blood and Gold,” I think.
I recently read For the Sins of my Father by Albert Demao. It was about a mobster on Long Island. It really hit home for me since it was all true and took place about 5 miles from my hometown. Seeing as how I love all things mob, this opened my eyes to what happened behind closed doors. It was told through the eyes of the son.
You already knew I’d weigh in with Fight Club, didn’t you? After reading that I didn’t feel the need to hoarde as much stuff as I possibly could anymore.
Phil K Dick’s Man In The High Castle also, for an appreciation of why life isn’t better or worse depending on how events go, it just is.
“Early from the Dance” by David Payne. It’s beautifully written – intelligent, funny, and at times gut-wrenching. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
off the top of my head, The Catcher in the Rye. i can’t help but think about Holden Caulfield as i go places, thinking what he might think or do. i sometimes go off on an (inward) running commentary in Holden-speak and all. it’s pretty ok.
[so easy to slip into it...]
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath really did it for me, although I find her poetry even more interesting.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme. Devastating, beautiful. She is part Maori, and writes beautiful prose about a woman artist living an independent life. But then, it’s not about that at all.
The Brothers Karamazov…I always come back to it.
I like the underlying message in Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon about the values of maturity (aka age). She crafts an excellent story on a variety of levels.
-song of solomon, toni morrison
-ceremony, leslie marmon silko
and the most important,
-shardik by richard adams.
I know this doesn’t earn many literary cred points but “The Hobbit” was a real imagination expander when I was 10.
I just finished The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber. It was engaging, after you got past the narrative style, and really got you wrapped up in the story, so much so that when it ended, without resolving anything at all yet leaving so many threads trailing off into uncertain futures, I was pissed. I think I’d recommend it; it’s some mighty fine storytelling, good character development. I just hated the ending.
Books I will read over and over and over: the Gormenghast trilogy. The first two books (by Mervyn Peake) were made into a really pretty miniseries by the BBC (?), starring Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Ian Richardson, Fiona Shaw, Richard Griffiths, and the delectable Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. The books are even better, tho the third one if phucked up in a way the first two don’t prepare you for. So good. Think I’ll start them again.
God of Small Things. Absolutely amazing, magically written book. I have never seen a book combine whimsy (conversation of characters), local-color comedy (India), tragedy/horror, and political commentary all in the same book. Dickens comes closest but it’s a lot tighter, less sentimental, and less contrived than Dickens.
Zizka, if you liked GoST, then you should really read Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children-it will blow you away. Despite his ego and his current string of bad books, Rushdie’s amazing. John Irving’s another (except for Son of the Circus).
iain, why wouldn’t The Hobbit win you creds? it’s a literary classic.
i second the shout out for God of Small Things. (Arundhati Roy) an excellent novel…sticky sweet heat rising from the banks of a dirty river…yeah, i’d say that’s an image that stayed with me. ;)
One of my favorites is “Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the west” by Gregory Maguire. On one hand, it is a really entertaining twist on the Wizard of Oz, and on the other hand, it makes some interesting comments on society, prejudices, and religion. It will probably never be a classic, but it is a fun read, none the less.
I read a lot of Vonnegut in the 70s, and it influenced me as well. Slaughterhouse 5, some of the short stories, Breakfast of Champions, etc. What I like is the way a detail or a character or a line from a book, independently of the overall quality of the work will stick in your consciousness long after you’ve forgotten everything else about the book. Like the concept of time in Slaughterhouse 5. Or some image from Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” or the post-nuclear apocalypse automated suburban house in the Bradbury story going in with its programmed functions after its inhabitants had been reduced to shadows on its siding. Or the mobster in DeLillo’s “Underworld” going “I’m gonna decapitate your fucking head off”. Actually, a lot more stands out in “Underworld” than that one line. That’s the best novel I’ve read in a long time. I just finished “Fight Club” and liked it too.
Oh, and Bradbury’s story about the last dino, or whatever, that thing that fell for the foghorn….
Lots of Bradbury sticks with you. Or me.
Rubyfruit Jungle really made me realise it was okay to be gay. Definitely high on my list of influential books. I haven’t read it since I was 14 or 15. I have my suspicions that it’s a piece of trash.
The Diary of Anne Frank is probably the saddest book I’ve ever read. I wept and wept when I read it when I was about 11. It made me realise how evil and wonderful the world is. I haven’t been able to read it since then, either.
Blindness by Jose Saramago.
Huge life-changing potential.
“The Discovery of Slowness” by Sten Nadolny.
For some reason two very different books occurred to me: “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole, and “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman. The first because it’s raucously funny and entertaining and touching all at the same time, a true masterpiece; the second because it’s one of the most mind-expanding books I’ve ever read.