Peter Sattler tagged me in this facebook meme asking me to list 10 books that really stuck with me, from all times of my life. I usually avoid these social media gauntlets, but I did this one, because I don’t know why. I tried not to think about it too hard and probably failed. I’ve linked to essays I’ve written about the writers/books (unless I haven’t written about them.)
1. Carol Clover, “Men, Women, and Chainsaws”
2. James Baldwin, “The Price of the Ticket”
3. Richard Wright, “Black Boy”
4. Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons, “Watchmen”
5. Jack L. Chalker, Soul Rider series
6. Marston/Peter, Wonder Woman
7. Sharon Marcus, “Between Women”
8. Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice”
9. H.P. Lovecraft, “Shadow Over Innsmouth”
10. Ariel Schrag, “Likewise”
11. Wallace Stevens, “Palm At the End of the Mind”
12. Ian McEwan, “Atonement”
13. George Eliot, “Middlemarch
14. C.S. Lewis, “Til We Have Faces”
15. Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Series
16. Foucault, “History of Sexuality”
17. Philip K. Dick, “The Man in the High Castle”
18. Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea Series
19. Cecilia Grant, “A Gentleman Undone”
20. Julia Serano, “Whipping Girl”
21. Gerard Manley Hopkins, collected poems
22. Octavia Butler, “Xenogenesis”
23. Julia Cameron, “The Artist’s Way”
24. Ai Yazawa, “Nana”
25. James Loewen, “Lies Across America”
26. Samuel Delany, “Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand”
27. Grace Llewellyn, “The Teenage Liberation Handbook”
28. George Bernard Shaw, “A Book of Prefaces”
29. Eve Sedgwick, “Between Men”
30. Tabico, “Adaptation”
Obviously, not thinking about it too hard meant in part not being able to count. I think the earliest one of these I read was probably Black Boy, which I believe is from fifth grade or thereabouts. The Earthsea books might be from around then too, and the Jack L. Chalker was early on — probably middle school. Oh, and the H.P. Lovecraft would have been from around then too. I don’t think there’s anything on here that I was actually assigned in college, which is a little weird, but I read “The Man in the High Castle” at that time. (I thought about including Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, but I can’t say it’s the book that’s stuck with me as much as a couple of the ideas; thought about Elshtain’s Women and War, too.) The most recent things here are the Cecelia Grant and the Ian McEwan. Most are books I love…and probably not coincidentally many are books that made me cry (Yazawa, Grant, Loewen, McEwan, Lewis). There are a couple that I don’t think are very good though; that would be Chalker, Meyer…and Cameron’s on the list because that’s the worst book I’ve ever read. The Delany was on my headboard in high school for years and years without me reading it; I dragged it all the way out to Chicago with me, I think, and finally got through it…and didn’t exactly like it. I still think about it, though, in a way I don’t with lots of books I’ve enjoyed more. I should reread it someday. (I haven’t managed to find any other Delany I like at all. I thought the essays might work, but I started a volume of those recently and was bored and irritated.)
Though I’ve only read Delany once, I’ve read many of these numerous times; probably read Baldwin and Austen most, and maybe Loewen and Shaw and Cameron (the last of whom I read multiple times for work reasons.)
The list definitely tilts towards the cis het white guys, but it could be worse in that regard, I guess. 17 guys, 13 women; only 5 non-white folks. 9 LGBT writers (Baldwin, Marcus, Schrag, Hopkins, Foucault, Delany, Serano, Tabico and Butler…who I hadn’t been sure was lesbian, but the web seems to agree she was. Sedgwick might fit too…her identification was complicated.) So that’d be 10 cis het white guys altogether (if you count Moore/Gibbons and Marston/Peter as one each). Only about a third, but the single most represented group, it looks like. I’m all about my demographic. (Though I think Schrag is the only Jew on there? Oh, and Eve Sedgwick. Might be another one or two; we assimilate and are hard to find.)
12 nonfiction, 2 books of poetry, 16 fiction, 3 comics. Sci-fi is I think the most represented genre with 4 titles (Delany, Butler, Chalker, Tabico — Dick might count too as alternate history, depending on how you look at it, and I guess Lovecraft might too depending on if you think evil creatures from outside of time are sf or fantasy). Romance is in there and personal essay and academic books and horror and superheroes and lit fic and some classics and YA and porn and autobio and even self-help (Cameron and Llewellyn), but no mysteries (unless you count Watchmen, I suppose). That’s about right; mystery isn’t a genre that I’ve ever had much of a relationship with. I thought about including Agatha Christie’s “Murder of Roger Ackroyd”, which I read when I was a kid; not sure I can honestly say I care about it too much any more, though. Also no plays; I thought about Pygmalion but picked Shaw’s essays instead. I’m sure I could pick some Shakespeare too…
All right, that’s enough babbling. If you want to put a list in comments, please do (you can copy and paste if you already did it on facebook). I’m curious to see what other folks would pick (whether 10 or more.)
William Golding, “Lord of the Flies”
Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”
Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”
Gary Larson, “The Prehistory of the Far Side”
Joseph Heller, “Catch 22”
Terry Pratchett, “Thud!”
James Talmage, “Jesus the Christ”
Robert Heinlein, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
John Nichols, “The Milagro Beanfield War”
White males all. So sue me.
Demography can be tough.
I thought about Anna Karenina. Nice to see Terry Pratchett there, though I don’t think I read that one…is it a discworld book? I did stop reading him at some point, and know he’s written about a million books now….
I stuck to novels, and stopped at 11. These are all books that I’ve obsessed over during my life, in roughly chronological order of my first reading them.
Judith Guest, Ordinary People
Scott Spencer, Endless Love
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Charlotte Brontë, Villette
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (The first half only; the second half is pretty repulsive.)
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Six males: 4 white, 1 African-American, 1 Latin-American.
Five females, all white.
I too have resisted doing this on Facebook despite being tagged by many. Even tried to switch it up and get other people to list books FOR me – books they’d heard me talk about or knew I wrote about since I do it all the fucking time – but people had no interest. I thought it’d be cool to get another perspective, but I guess social media is just about thinking about ourselves.
Anyway, I DID make a quick list, I just never posted it on FB. Here is mine:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
The Fortress of Solitude – Jonathan Lethem
George Washington Gomez – Americo Paredes
Watchmen – Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons
Black Boy/American Hunger – Richard Wright
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Brown Girl, Brownstones – Paule Marshall
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko
I almost went with Faulkner too…I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Marshall; that looks interesting.
I thought about Woolfe and Villette too; Villette is so wonderful.
Yes, Thud! is a discworld book, of the Sam Vines variety. His early stuff was, to me, anyway, a bit too much slapstick and silliness; I think he hit his peak around 2002 or so. Two other books he wrote around then are also among my favorites; Night Watch and A Hat Full of Sky.
Inferno, Dante Aligheri (my gateway from adolescent trash to proper “literature”)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville (my favourite book as a teenager)
Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West (my favourite book in my twenties, up to the point that I re-read it)
Time Regained, Marcel Proust (a pretentious, but honest, choice)
Seven Soldiers of Victory: Mister Miracle #4, Grant Morrison et al. (the obligatory low-brow choice; this book saved my life)
The Cage, Martin Vaughan-James (mind-blowing, and the most unsettling horror story I’ve encountered)
From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson (because I disagreed with it so vehemently as an undergrad, and still do)
Rewriting the Soul, Ian Hacking (despite the title, not even remotely New Age)
Science as a Process, David Hull (this and the last were my models for how to do philosophy)
Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Adrian Desmond and James Moore (my all-time hero)
Acme Novelty Library, Chris Ware (mostly the older stuff)
From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (monumental; Moore’s best work)
Maybe not the books that have meant the most to me at different periods, but the books that have most stuck with me all the way up to today. First twelve that came to mind; I’d find this much easier for film.
Every short list is tough, this one because I was trying to isolate different moments of influence (age) within different venues (teen, college, grad student, etc.), which led to different genres (comics, novels, criticism). I also tried to pick books that really *started* and propelled my interest in an area or author. (CONTINGENCY is not my favorite Rorty, and WALDEN is not my favorite Cavell, but they are books that started something.)
List Original:
1. HARRIET THE SPY, by Louise Fitzhugh
2. PEANUTS CLASSICS, by Charles M. Schulz
3. RAW #3-5, edited by Spiegelman and Mouly
4. KRAZY KAT: THE COMIC ART OF GEORGE HERRIMAN, edited by McDonnell and O’Connell
5. MOBY-DICK, by Herman Melville
6. LOLITA, by Vladimir Nabokov
7. GILEAD, by Marilynne Robinson
8. NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, by James Baldwin
9. CONTINGENCY, IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY, by Richard Rorty
10. SENSES OF WALDEN, by Stanley Cavell
11. AGAINST THEORY, the collection around Knapp and Michaels’ essay
12. Joe Williams and Frank Kinahan’s LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE writing textbook (from the University of Chicago).
Some More, from the cutting room floor:
• D’AULAIRES’ BOOK OF GREEK MYTHS
• THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS, by Bill Blackbeard
• JIMBO, by Gary Panter (RAW One-Shot)
• STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND, by Samuel Delany (Honest, Noah! Although Harlan Ellison’s DEATHBIRD STORIES ran a close third from a earlier year my life)
• COLLECTED POEMS, Frank O’Hara
• SPRING AND ALL, by William Carlos Williams
• FINAL HARVEST, by Emily Dickinson
• PERSUASION, by Jane Austen
• ULYSSES, By James Joyce
• JESUS’ SON, by Denis Johnson
• DREAMING BY THE BOOK, by Elaine Scarry
• WHAT PAINTING IS, by James Elkins
• LOVE’S KNOWLEDGE, by Martha Nussbaum
• HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, by Foucault
My list would include four Delanys, right at the top, and if you haven’t read #2 and 3 I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’m holding myself to a list of only ten items, and not concerning myself with choosing the “all-time top 10,” which would be impossible.
1. Dhalgren, Samuel Delany
2. Babel-17, Delany
3. Empire Star, Delany
4. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Delany
5. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, HP Lovecraft
6. The Invisibles, Grant Morrison, et al
7. Lizard Music, Daniel Pinkwater
8. The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Daniel Pinkwater
9. The Baroque Cycle (three books) by Neal Stephenson
10. A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge
God, that Cameron book sounds indescribably wretched. For once Noah has found a work vile beyond even his vast powers of contumely…
I read Babel 17 and really didn’t like it. Haven’t read the other Delanys there though….
Noah, Dhalgren will interest you, perhaps the apogee of American SF … you guys sure read a lot and well. So much for every idiot editor who’s ever pressured me and a thousand other artists to dumb it down or just outright rejected a proposal because they ‘knew’ complexity frightens off readers.
Does anyone remember Cordwainer Smith …
We need your list Mahendra!
I’ve never read Cordwainer Smith; heard a lot about him but never actually picked one up…
After a quick Google I’ll definitely be picking up some Cordwainer. Apart from Delany and Stephenson I would say my favorite SF writers are Iain M Banks, Damon Knight, Terry Bisson, Connie Willis, and now Vernor Vinge–I’m in the middle of A Fire Upon the Deep and it’s probably the best book I’ve read in years, so I added it to my list. Cordwainer seems to fit in that company quite well based on what I’m reading.
Off top of balding head:
Hakluyt’s Voyages
Raspe, Baron Munchhausen
Lewis Carrol’s Alice books and The Snark
Babur’s Memoirs
Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power
The Odyssey, George Chapman’s translation
Michael Moorcock, The Cornelius Books
Stanislas Lem, The Investigation
Marlowe’s 2 Tamburlaines and Dr Faustus
Flaubert’s Salammbo
Conrad, Nostromo
Saltykov, The Golovylov Family
Alberto Savinio, Nivasio Dolcemare
Roussel, Locus Solus, plus the plays
The Ramayana
almost all of them have theller ‘o’ in ’em … must be an unsinful glyph
Delany’s best is HOGG, it really puts the test to all the queer theory sexual freedom folks, dig it
My list is a pretty even mixture of fiction and non-fiction:
1. Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh (the defining book of my childhood)
2. Middlemarch, George Eliot
3. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark
4. A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
5. Black Culture, Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Lawrence Levine
6. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, Lawrence Levine
7. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Alex Ross
8. A Death in the Family, James Agee
9. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
10. The Idea of History, R.G. Collingwood
Huh; I’ve never heard of Lawrence Levine. The Highbrow/Lowbrow book looks really interesting….