Because I like to play along. First spotted at Uncle Crappy.
Here’s a list of ten books that have stuck with me, off the top of my head. If allowed to think about it, I wouldn’t be able to pick just 10.
1. Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood — It’s not only amazingly written, I often want to hand this out to people who don’t think “women’s issues” matter. And tell them to imagine their wife, sister, mother, or daughter had written it.
2. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery — I cry every time I read this book. Every. Damn. Time. Whether it’s the passage on taming, or the part about the roses, or the end: waterworks. It made reading this book to my daughters a little tricky.
3. Burger’s Daughter, Natalie Gordimer — I’ve been thinking of picking this one up again in the wake of Nelson Mandala’s death.
4. The Fionavar Tapestry (technically 3 books), Guy Gavriel Kay
5. Female Perversions, Louise Kaplan — Don’t get too excited. It’s non-fiction, not erotica.
6. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
7. This Sex Which Is Not One, Luce Irigaray — From my Women’s Studies days. *sighs fondly*
8. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
9. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut — I mean, duh.
10. Dien Cai Dau, Yusef Komunyakaa — I don’t know a more devastating book of poetry.
Honorable mention goes to The World According to Garp, John Irving. I would actually like to forget parts of this book.
Play along! Leave books in the comments, or do your own post and link back here so I can read them!
I could have filled out most of my Top 10 with John Irving books, Garp among them. Same for Vonnegut. And Steinbeck.
Crap, I think I need to do another list. 😉
I burned out on Irving fairly quickly for some reason. Vonnegut, though. I could read Vonnegut over and over — all of his stuff. Steinbeck is powerful, but his stuff didn’t pop to mind immediately for me.
1. A Prayer for Owen Meany is the John Irving novel that changed me. It is haunting and lovely.
2. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant; an epic novel of the lives of women in biblical times.
A did read both of these as well. I liked Owen Meany — there was another Irving novel (can’t remember which one) that ended it for me.
Another honorable mention for me, although it should be on my top 10 — so let’s call it top 12: The Chicago Manual of Style.
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Cavedweller, Dorothy Allison
The Stand, Stephen King
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaleed Housseini
The Hunger Games series
The DaVinci Code
The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo series
Midwives by Chris Bojalian
Angela’s Ashes
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
I loved I Know This Much is True. I have a request for Lamb’s newest book in at the library. I am reading Housseini’s latest, And the Mountains Echoed. Such good fiction out there!