Book talk meme

[magnetic_pole]

Following perverse_idyll and notearchiver, a book meme, with a quick twist of my own.

1. Spend no more than ten minutes writing down the names of books that have been especially significant to you in some way. (Entries other than literary fiction welcome! You might think of your own criteria: books you'd bring to a desert island? Books that you associate with turning points or periods in your life? The most worn items on your bookshelf? Anything between two covers counts.)

Don't think, just brainstorm! Ten minutes only.

2. Type up this list with numbers. At this point, you can reorder the list (if you want), add authors' names, edit, etc.

3. Readers are invited ask about a particular number.



1. Busy Day, Busy People, Tibor Gergely
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. The Betsy-Tacy books, Maud Hart Lovelace
5. The Nancy Drew books, Carolyn Keene
6. The Island of the Blue Dolphin, Scott O'Dell
7. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
8. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. The Great Cat Massacre, Robert Darnton
10. The Painting of Modern Life, TJ Clark
11. Annie on my Mind, Nancy Garden
12. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
13. The Waves, Virginia Woolf
14. Holy Land, DJ Waldie
15. Metahistory, Hayden White
16. Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott
17. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
18. Haussmann, or the Distinction, Paul LaFarge
19. The City and the City, China Mieville
20. NW, Zadie Smith
21. The Harry Potter books, JK Rowling
22. At Swim Two Boys, Jamie O'Neill
23. The Railway Journey, Wolfgang Schivelbusch
24. Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson
25. The Urban Villagers, Herbert Gans
26. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
27. Women, Art, and Power (for the essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"), Linda Nochlin



This meme is brought to you courtesy of a nasty cold that's kept me in bed today for the second time in two weeks. Silver linings....

Comments

[such_heights]

The Island of the Blue Dolphin, Scott O'Dell

Wow, I had entirely forgotten about that book for years! I loved it when I was younger.

[magnetic_pole]

Ah, I'd wondered how much of a regional thing it was! Interesting to hear it made its way out of CA.

The better half and I have warring opinions about that one and Julie of the Wolves. Did you read that one, too? M.

[delphi]

Butting in, but Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves were both required reading in my Ontario school district. I think they won the Newbery, so popular for curricula.

[magnetic_pole]

I looked O'Dell up after you mentioned the Newbery Award (and also looked up "Newbery," what an odd spelling), and I had no idea how prolific or popular he was! Funny the complete lack of context you have for things when you're young. M.

[delphi]

I admit it: I had to double-check my spelling of Newbery before commenting because I know it's spelled oddly but am never confident of how it should go. I never did read anything else by O'Dell (wasn't crazy about the book, but then, I universally disliked anything I was made to read at school), but I often read scores of things by the same author as a kid without realizing it. I really didn't have any firm concept of authors existing as people until I was eleven or so.

[semielliptical]

Why is #7 (Bleak House) on the list?

I loved most of the Little House and Betsy-Tacy books when I was young, but while I enjoyed the Little House series even as Laura got older, I remember losing interest in Betsy, Tacy, and Tib when the characters got older. I wonder if that was due to the setting, or the writing?

[semielliptical]

And - sorry that you are sick! Here's a virtual cup of tea for you...

[magnetic_pole]

Thanks! M.

[magnetic_pole]

Ah, Bleak House! As I was just explaining to donnaimmaculata over at LJ, in many ways I find the context in which I read a book to be as significant as the content--or, at least, the two aren't as easily separated as you'd think. I read Bleak House on a spring break trip to the Canary Islands (the only spring break trip I ever took, while on a semester abroad in London), and I was so happy and relaxed and relieved to have a bit of a break from London's gloom.

For me, Bleak House has always been the best of Dickens' books at world-building, and I love the sense you get of a complete society behind the individual stories and legal cases of the novel.

You know, I had just the opposite experience of the Little House and Betsy-Tacy books--I found the Little House books less compelling as Laura aged, while Betsy and her friends only got more interesting. Why did we have such different experiences? I resisted both courtship and marriage plot lines (particularly for Betsy, whom I shipped with Tacy, hard), but I more affection for Joe than I did for Almonzo, which might have made me more open to the later books.

Love the icon, by the way.

Want to try this one yourself? M.