I was in a list-making mood and decided to tally up all my favorite books.
There aren't really that many of them. This is because I'm a serial monogamist. What I do is find a favorite and then conduct a passionate romance with it, reading it over and over, opening it at random to surprise myself, wringing it dry. This can take months. Then I need a few weeks to let it settle, before I can move on. Let the echoes fade.
All of these books had deep echoes.
YA BOOKS:
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Bridge to Terabithia, ditto
Jacob Have I Loved, ditto
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin
A Wizard of Earthsea, ditto
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
A Wind in the Door, ditto
A Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
The Black Stallion's Filly by Walter Farley
Zanboomer by R. R. Knudsen
Fox Running, ditto
The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
A novel whose title I have forgotten and never been able to rediscover, about a girl named Lenore Pickel
A similarly forgotten book about a runaway named Christa
EN FRANCAIS:
L'Assommoir by Emile Zola
Les Bonnes by Jean Genet
La Lecon by Eugene Ionesco
La Nausee by Sartre
Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Yeah, I know, I know. Call it twee, call it sentimental. You're just "gonfle d'orgueil comme un champignon.")
Decouverte du Poeme, ed. Micheline Dufau and Ellen D'Alelio (a collection with some truly beautiful poetry)
AUF DEUTSCH:
This one is harder. Yikes...I have to admit I never really warmed up to any of the German plays or novels I read, or mostly, if I'm being honest, skimmed. But I did enjoy:
Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Max Frisch
And this book, I hated it so much that it burned my heart. I still think about it. I still see the author photo swimming before me:
Wunschloses Ungluck by Peter Handke
CLASSICS:
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Fuente Ovejuna (in translation) by Lope de Vega
The Hooker translation of Cyrano de Bergerac ("Paris dreams, nebulous, nocturnal..." "I have loved but one man in my life, and I have lost him twice." "My white plume." My dad played a small part in the Long Wharf Theatre production of Cyrano with Anthony Zerbe when I was a kid, so I saw the production something like fifteen times and GAVE MY SOUL to Zerbe's performance. DEAR GOD. Christians are told to "store up treasures in heaven." One of my brightest jewels would be to see that Long Wharf production of "Cyrano" again, as I saw it then, through my childhood eyes.)
GENERAL
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
This World, Then the Fireworks by Jim Thompson
Delta of Venus/Little Birds by Anais Nin
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault
The Persian Boy, ditto
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Armed With Madness by Mary Butts
I'm about to start reading Vladimir Sorokin's "The Queue" and hopefully it will become a favorite too...
So is there a theme here? I don't know. I really don't. Maybe the theme is that there is no theme. I'm just following a spark, a candle, wherever it seems to flicker next. Whatever seems alive, for any reason.
