Revealing
SFP at "Pages Turned," wisely observed, "There is nothing less revealing than reading someone's top ten books list when the list contains nothing but classics." Her remark followed this quote from Alan Warner's essay, "The curse of the classics":
I can (and have) named some of my favorite companions, but a top ten books list? I'm not sure I could confine my sprawling list of recommendations to so small a number. And I won't.
But a list of ten books that reveals something about you... that's a challenge.
Ten books above all others that have shaped or even defined you.
Can you do it?
I tried.
The annotated list
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1. Children's Guide to Knowledge
I've written about this treasure before. It is, as I have said, "the one book largely responsible for preventing my young mind from atrophying in my parents’ blue-collar, “we-have-the-largest-newest-clearest-color-television-in-the-neighborhood” home."
2. Blubber (Judy Blume)
My closest friend in fifth grade, Mary Ann, pressed this book on me. "It is just like this class," she said. "It's true."
Mary Ann and I formed a two-student workshop led by our newly minted teacher, Miss T. Miss T. had identified us as "advanced" readers and writers. ("Well, no kidding," Mary Ann muttered.) But we suspected from the beginning that the "workshop" was about isolating us from the other students when she was teaching. She didn't do well under our scrutiny. "But Miss T.," coming from Mary Ann or me was capable of reducing her to tears.
(An aside: My preoccupation with exposing mediocrity began around this time.)
Mary Ann was also adept with numbers... and one-liners. I admired her often venomous wit and was fortunate to have grown reasonably thick skin by the time she attempted to inject me with it seven years later, when we were seniors in high school.
She and I read difficult books like The Red Badge of Courage and collections of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe stories (most of which I reread in adulthood and realized, "Man, I never appreciated these until now"). And we (over)wrote and illustrated wildly creative stories about our secret lives as witches.
We didn't spend much time trying to play well with the other girls in our class.
And our fifth-grade teacher watched us carefully.
Anyway, the ease and truthfulness with which Blubber unfolded resonated with me in a way that the Little House books or even A Wrinkle in Time hadn't. I knew I was a writer by the time I was in third grade. With Blubber, I became fascinated with writing "the truth."
Mary Ann and I didn't write many more stories about witches after that.
3. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fithugh)
I popped the lenses from my sunglasses, donned an old hooded sweatshirt, and took to carrying a composition notebook wherever I went. My classmates never read the notebooks. My mother did. Let's leave it at "That wasn't the best day of my childhood."
4. Ronnie and Rosey (Judy Angell)
By any standard, this book is, if not ridiculous, then overwrought, as many "problem novels" are. But when I first read it, what, nearly thirty years ago, its truth electrified me.
I reread it a couple of years ago, anxious to see if my early-teen recollections would bear the harsher light of adult scrutiny. "Would I recommend this to my daughters?" was the question I was trying to answer. As it turns out, I would, although more for its sentimental value than for its (dubious) literary merits.
Simply put, Ronnie and Rosey was the first book I had read that made me realize, "Someday, perhaps someday soon, I will feel strong enough as a person to act and think without worrying about what Mom will say and do."
Yes, I credit this sometimes silly book with helping me grow up.
Which means, of course, that at the time, it wasn't silly to me. At. All.
5. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
E.B. White died when I was an undergraduate. To mark his passing, I reread Charlotte's Web.
And cried.
Again.
I have, since that time, read it no fewer than two dozen times.
And cried each time.
And, yes, I've read every collection of his essays.
At least twice.
Rereading Charlotte's Web as a young person hovering between childhood and adulthood, reawakened in me the desire to arrive at essential truths through clear, measured writing.
6. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
I am no longer able to discern if this is a good book, but through it, I met Arthur, which set me on a quest that has filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.
And so it is important to me.
A belated thank-you to Ines, who recommended the book to me as I headed home for the summer between sophomore and junior years.
7. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
I read this during my final semester as an undergraduate. Mr. R. insisted. It is heresy, I know, to mention these two books in the same entry, let alone the same sentence, but, like The Mists of Avalon, Slaughterhouse Five sent me on a journey of discovery that, again, filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.
Years later, while in grad school, I spent the day with Vonnegut. I was a grad assistant in a small liberal arts school where he offered two workshops for the English department and a ninety-minute address followed by a book-signing for the general college population. By then, I had read everything of his that was in print. My assignment that day was to help usher him from here to there. Trust me, faculty members vied for his attention, and my services proved non-critical.
But I sat beside him for both workshops. "And this is enough," I thought. "To know that he is a real person who grows impatient and smells old and loses his train of thought sometimes. This writer is real."
Perhaps that is the essence of my reading and writing life: discerning what is real and true for me and recommitting to it periodically.
8. (Wo)Man Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (Joyce Carol Oates)
I can and have written volumes about Joyce Carol Oates. She is partially responsible for my success in graduate school: One of two scholarly essays of mine to capture honors in my second year of study there concerned JCO, and part of my oral defense concerned Oates and the Burkean pentad. It went swimmingly, thanks. I was, after all, an energetic and earnest student.
Plus... shhh.
I brought snacks to my appointment.
Yes, the professors who awarded me "Highest Honors" had a hint of chocolate-covered strawberries in the corners of their mouths when they left my final presentation.
Heh, heh, heh.
More on Oates' place in my reading, writing, learning life some other time.
9. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 10. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom), and 11. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.
(Yes, I'm aware that this actually makes eleven titles.)
I've amassed a collection of thousands of volumes, but if it were all lost tomorrow, the only books I would need to replace immediately are these three.
Nothing has reworked the geography of my imagination like my (re)discovery of Shakespeare.
(Except maybe parenting, but that's an altogether different subject, no?)
Shakespeare. Talk about a recommitment to what is real and true.
_________________________
And there you go. A list of books that (I think, anyway) actually says something about the reader.
Are you up to the challenge?
Today, someone's taste for the "classics" can cover up no discernible individual or original taste of their own. Classic trumpeting can be a refuge for philistinism or nationalistic indolence. Unlike the word masterpiece, the classic category only pretends to be an aesthetic valuation.
I can (and have) named some of my favorite companions, but a top ten books list? I'm not sure I could confine my sprawling list of recommendations to so small a number. And I won't.
But a list of ten books that reveals something about you... that's a challenge.
Ten books above all others that have shaped or even defined you.
Can you do it?
I tried.
The annotated list
1. Children's Guide to KnowledgeI've written about this treasure before. It is, as I have said, "the one book largely responsible for preventing my young mind from atrophying in my parents’ blue-collar, “we-have-the-largest-newest-clearest-color-television-in-the-neighborhood” home."
The subtitle of the book is Wonders of Nature, Marvels of Science and Man, and it was published by Parents’ Magazine Press. An aunt gave it to me when I finished third grade. Her inscription notes that the book would help me complete fourth-grade reports. Thirty-two years after its publication, Children’s Guide to Knowledge continues to deliver a compelling world of animals, plants, history, geography, and scientific achievement (through early space exploration, anyway). The spine is crumbling, and the book has a damp, forgotten smell, but it still seduces.
2. Blubber (Judy Blume)
My closest friend in fifth grade, Mary Ann, pressed this book on me. "It is just like this class," she said. "It's true."
Mary Ann and I formed a two-student workshop led by our newly minted teacher, Miss T. Miss T. had identified us as "advanced" readers and writers. ("Well, no kidding," Mary Ann muttered.) But we suspected from the beginning that the "workshop" was about isolating us from the other students when she was teaching. She didn't do well under our scrutiny. "But Miss T.," coming from Mary Ann or me was capable of reducing her to tears.
(An aside: My preoccupation with exposing mediocrity began around this time.)
Mary Ann was also adept with numbers... and one-liners. I admired her often venomous wit and was fortunate to have grown reasonably thick skin by the time she attempted to inject me with it seven years later, when we were seniors in high school.
She and I read difficult books like The Red Badge of Courage and collections of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe stories (most of which I reread in adulthood and realized, "Man, I never appreciated these until now"). And we (over)wrote and illustrated wildly creative stories about our secret lives as witches.
We didn't spend much time trying to play well with the other girls in our class.
And our fifth-grade teacher watched us carefully.
Anyway, the ease and truthfulness with which Blubber unfolded resonated with me in a way that the Little House books or even A Wrinkle in Time hadn't. I knew I was a writer by the time I was in third grade. With Blubber, I became fascinated with writing "the truth."
Mary Ann and I didn't write many more stories about witches after that.
3. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fithugh)
I popped the lenses from my sunglasses, donned an old hooded sweatshirt, and took to carrying a composition notebook wherever I went. My classmates never read the notebooks. My mother did. Let's leave it at "That wasn't the best day of my childhood."
4. Ronnie and Rosey (Judy Angell)
By any standard, this book is, if not ridiculous, then overwrought, as many "problem novels" are. But when I first read it, what, nearly thirty years ago, its truth electrified me.
I reread it a couple of years ago, anxious to see if my early-teen recollections would bear the harsher light of adult scrutiny. "Would I recommend this to my daughters?" was the question I was trying to answer. As it turns out, I would, although more for its sentimental value than for its (dubious) literary merits.
Simply put, Ronnie and Rosey was the first book I had read that made me realize, "Someday, perhaps someday soon, I will feel strong enough as a person to act and think without worrying about what Mom will say and do."
Yes, I credit this sometimes silly book with helping me grow up.
Which means, of course, that at the time, it wasn't silly to me. At. All.
5. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
E.B. White died when I was an undergraduate. To mark his passing, I reread Charlotte's Web.
And cried.
Again.
I have, since that time, read it no fewer than two dozen times.
And cried each time.
And, yes, I've read every collection of his essays.
At least twice.
Rereading Charlotte's Web as a young person hovering between childhood and adulthood, reawakened in me the desire to arrive at essential truths through clear, measured writing.
6. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
I am no longer able to discern if this is a good book, but through it, I met Arthur, which set me on a quest that has filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.
And so it is important to me.
A belated thank-you to Ines, who recommended the book to me as I headed home for the summer between sophomore and junior years.
7. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
I read this during my final semester as an undergraduate. Mr. R. insisted. It is heresy, I know, to mention these two books in the same entry, let alone the same sentence, but, like The Mists of Avalon, Slaughterhouse Five sent me on a journey of discovery that, again, filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.
Years later, while in grad school, I spent the day with Vonnegut. I was a grad assistant in a small liberal arts school where he offered two workshops for the English department and a ninety-minute address followed by a book-signing for the general college population. By then, I had read everything of his that was in print. My assignment that day was to help usher him from here to there. Trust me, faculty members vied for his attention, and my services proved non-critical.
But I sat beside him for both workshops. "And this is enough," I thought. "To know that he is a real person who grows impatient and smells old and loses his train of thought sometimes. This writer is real."
Perhaps that is the essence of my reading and writing life: discerning what is real and true for me and recommitting to it periodically.
8. (Wo)Man Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (Joyce Carol Oates)
I can and have written volumes about Joyce Carol Oates. She is partially responsible for my success in graduate school: One of two scholarly essays of mine to capture honors in my second year of study there concerned JCO, and part of my oral defense concerned Oates and the Burkean pentad. It went swimmingly, thanks. I was, after all, an energetic and earnest student.
Plus... shhh.
I brought snacks to my appointment.
Yes, the professors who awarded me "Highest Honors" had a hint of chocolate-covered strawberries in the corners of their mouths when they left my final presentation.
Heh, heh, heh.
More on Oates' place in my reading, writing, learning life some other time.
9. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 10. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom), and 11. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.(Yes, I'm aware that this actually makes eleven titles.)
I've amassed a collection of thousands of volumes, but if it were all lost tomorrow, the only books I would need to replace immediately are these three.
Nothing has reworked the geography of my imagination like my (re)discovery of Shakespeare.
(Except maybe parenting, but that's an altogether different subject, no?)
Shakespeare. Talk about a recommitment to what is real and true.
_________________________
And there you go. A list of books that (I think, anyway) actually says something about the reader.
Are you up to the challenge?
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