# What books are a permanent part of you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 20, 2008, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620 "2008-08-20T00:48:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alistair\_McCello](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@Alistair\_McCello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alistair_McCello)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/41 "2008-08-21T00:58:16Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > I’d like to be able to say, why, The Brothers Karamazov, but let’s not fool ourselves… This was actually the first book that I thought of upon seeing the question. **The Brothers Karamazov** was the first… I don’t know what to call it, classic or perhaps intellectual book that I read when I was in high school and it got me out of the habit of reading nothing but sci-fi books. I still consider it to be among my favorite novels. **The Demon Haunted World** is also a major one for me. Not sure that they fall under the strict category of books but I have read both Neil Gaiman’s **Sandman** and **The Essays of Percy Bysshe Shelly** enough times that I can quote fairly accurately from both. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/42 "2008-08-21T01:25:42Z")
I have a lot. I was one of those precocious children who knows far too much about the world from reading and not nearly enough from actually experiencing things. Rudyard Kipling’s _Just So Stories_ Russel Hoban’s _The Mouse and His Child_ _Little Women_ - Gawd, I was Jo, weren’t we all? Austen - all of them, but I had a special love for Elinor Dashwood, and always related to her quiet longing Dumas - My grandfather’s editions, which I still have. I read the entirety of the Three Muskeeters series of novels, and then _La Reine Margot_, repeatedly in high school and college. For sheer force of emotion there is NOTHING like reading the original novel and then working your way through to the pain and loss and disaster in _Twenty Years After_ and _The Man in the Iron Mask_. When I was done reading them at sixteen, I felt like I was sixty and had seen all the hopes of youth crushed. _Lolita_ - I would read it before class to try to scandalize my high school English teacher, which was kind of dumb, and then I kept reading it because… wow. I have a battered copy that I bought to replace the battered copy I had to give back to Mum. A non-battered copy just doesn’t seem right. _Catch-22_ - Heller blew my tiny teenage mind. It’s just so fucking heartbreaking, and yet I couldn’t stop laughing. There are other bits and pieces that haunt me. Guy De Maupassant’s story _The Necklace_ still makes me want to build a freaking time machine and go kick his ass for writing it. Oooh. I hate that story with a passion, and I don’t appear to be able to _let it go_, so I guess it’s part of the furniture now. William Gibson gets me not specifically for any one book, but for colouring my sense of style and desire with all the luscious cyberpunk worldbuilding. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/43 "2008-08-21T02:13:57Z")
[QUOTE=winterhawk11] Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s _The Egypt Game_ [/QUOTE] Chills, you give me chills. Although\* Black and Blue Magic\* has to be my favorite Keatley-Snyder, but _The Egypt Game_ . . . wow, alltime masterpiece. Anyway, mine, inevitably leaving some out: Russell Hoban: _Riddley Walker_ Halldór Laxness: _Independent People_ Knut Hamsun: _Hunger_ Sigrid Undset: _Kristin Lavransdatter_ Pär Lagerkvist: _The Dwarf_ Charles Dickens: _David Copperfield_ Ursula K. LeGuin: _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ . . . that’s trying to limit myself to one book per author, although all of these authors appear on my unedited lifelist many, many times. ---
**Author:** ![Lucky\_13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucky_13/32/13209_2.png) [@Lucky\_13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucky_13)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/44 "2008-08-21T02:40:04Z")
These are the ones I can think of, just off the top of my head: The Harry Potter books, all 7 _Pride and Prejudice_ by Jane Austen The _Oathbound_ trilogy by Mercedes Lackey (wish I was Tarma, but turned out more like Kethry, only without her powers) 🙂 _Parable of the Sower_ by Octavia Butler _Women who Run with the Wolves_ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Her prose gets a bit precious at times, but the underlying message is what counts, to me. _Kitchen_ by Banana Yoshimoto. I wonder if they’ve made a manga version of it yet? **Idlewild,** let me know once that time machine is up and running; I’ll be happy to hold Guy de Maupassant down while you kick his ass, and then I’ll stomp on whatever’s left of him when you’re done. I’m still mad at him for “The Necklace” and “A Piece of String.” :mad: ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/45 "2008-08-21T02:55:45Z")
Dang. How could I forget– Haruki Murakami: _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_ ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/46 "2008-08-21T03:49:48Z")
The Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/47 "2008-08-21T04:07:51Z")
Dune - Frank Herbert Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes 1984, Animal Farm and Keep The Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell Stranger In a Strange Land - Heinlein Ecclesiastes **Marcus** Mote in God’s Eye was brilliant. Had a copy once but it got stolen and haven’t read it since but the Moties still linger. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/48 "2008-08-21T04:16:56Z")
[QUOTE=eleanorigby] I’d like to be able to say, why, The Brothers Karamazov, but let’s not fool ourselves… 🙂 [/QUOTE] What? This, for me, is the first book I thought of. I love it. It’s perfect and I associate myself with it. ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/49 "2008-08-21T04:29:21Z")
All of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Every one, since our school “library” had little else on its shelves. “A Princess of Mars” was the first scifi I ever read. Marvelous stuff. 😃 Little Women. Anne of Green Gables. A naughty “Kitty”. The Little House books. Jane Eyre. Pride and Prejudice, then the rest. Georgette Heyer, I think “The Grand Sophy” was the first one I read. Dickens: Great Expectations. Thackeray: Vanity Fair. Trollope: The Warden. John O’Hara: The Doctor’s Son and other stories. The Lord of the Rings. I read it first in 1966, when I was 22, and I’ve read it 3 or 4 times a year since then. Alice Munro: The Lives of Girls and Women. Kristin Lavransdattir. And on forever, since I still read 2 or 3 books a week, week in and week out. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/50 "2008-08-21T04:46:32Z")
What? No one has mentioned Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/51 "2008-08-21T10:18:41Z")
_The Egypt Game_ is fabulous. So is almost anything by Elizabeth George Speare, epsecially _Calico Captive_ and _The Witch of Blackbird Pond_. This is a very interesting list. So many different genres, and such different favourites. Oh, I should have included _The Left Hand of Darkness_. And _The Seven Storey Mountain_. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/52 "2008-08-21T11:24:46Z")
[QUOTE=Lucky 13] **Idlewild,** let me know once that time machine is up and running; I’ll be happy to hold Guy de Maupassant down while you kick his ass, and then I’ll stomp on whatever’s left of him when you’re done. I’m still mad at him for “The Necklace” and “A Piece of String.” :mad: [/QUOTE] I’m glad I have company in the Great Guy de Maupassant Ass Kicking Adventure. Somehow avoided reading “A Piece of String”, on googling the synopsis, it seems I should be thrilled by that, but he’s still for it. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/53 "2008-08-21T11:49:34Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Dang. How could I forget– Haruki Murakami: _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_ [/QUOTE] :smack: Two other favorites, although I read these later in life than the ones I mentioned earlier: _Midnight’s Children_ by Salman Rushdie, and _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay_ by Michael Chabon. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/54 "2008-08-21T11:54:41Z")
Can I add a couple more? Samuel R Delany’s _Babel 17_. Another one of those that catch you as a teenager and stay the course. Ann McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. Whatever you can say about the quality and style of the writing, Pern and its dragons are embedded as a permanent part of my memory. **Zeke N. Destroi** , as you say it is the same with the Moties - once met not forgotten! This is fascinating in the range of tastes shown. Has anybody compiled the results? My - totally non-scientific - feeling is that Heinlein has the most individual nominations and that F & SF in general have a slight predominance. Is this right? Anybody care to speculate on whether - if there are more SF books than any other genre - this says something about Dopers or if is something to do with the worlds F & SF writers create? ---
**Author:** ![scareyfaerie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scareyfaerie/32/3135_2.png) [@scareyfaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scareyfaerie)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/55 "2008-08-21T12:03:19Z")
A lot of what I read in my teenage years has already been mentioned, but I’d like to add these: Here be Dragons by Sharon Penman Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books I read a tremendous amount, from a very early age - my mother used to despair of me ever having real friends when I was a kid because I’d spend so much time in my room with a good book or three. It finally reached a point in the long summer holidays when I was banned from going to the library more than three times a week! ---
**Author:** ![Rachael\_Rage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71c47a/32.png) [@Rachael\_Rage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachael_Rage)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/56 "2008-08-21T14:39:12Z")
**Watchmen**. Second place is well behind that. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/57 "2008-08-21T14:39:58Z")
[QUOTE=Lissla Lissar] I have Shevek’s thoughts about intimacy (from _The Dispossessed_)) pretty much memorised. [/QUOTE] If you mean the passage where Shevek describes trying to comfort the dying man who was burned so badly he couldn’t be touched, then we agree on one of the most important. Some of the others -[ul][li]The Bible, especially the Gospel of Matthew[_]Pretty much everything C.S. Lewis ever wrote, especially The Chronicles of Narnia[_]_Beat to Quarters_, by C.S. Forrester[\*]A novel called [The Sun Destroyers](http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/ross-rocklynne/sun-destroyers.htm), which was my first conscious experience of philosophical science fiction[/ul][/li] Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/58 "2008-08-21T15:08:14Z")
Nope. Although that quote’s good, too. I mean: > [@](#): > > \*Fulfilment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and a return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell. > > Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads amd cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings. > > It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.\* ---
**Author:** ![Frustrated\_Wonderer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a4c791/32.png) [@Frustrated\_Wonderer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frustrated_Wonderer)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/59 "2008-08-21T15:35:16Z")
“1984” by George Orwell “The Science of Good and Evil” by Michael Shermer “The Brain that Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge “In a Sun Burned Country \*and \* I´m a Stranger Here Myself” by Bill Bryson ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620/60 "2008-08-21T15:56:58Z")
So many good ones here, I have a reading list to last me until 2009! For me, Stephen Donaldson - Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, both sets. I love the flawed and scared hero, just hits with me. LoTR - Not the Hobbit tho, never liked that book War of the Twins - Weis and Hickman. I read these in my teen years, and they have just stuck with me. The Belgariad - Not well written I will grant you, but I was 11 when I read the first book, and it was wonderful. I think when I read them I remember more about my own youth and innocence then anything else. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-are-a-permanent-part-of-you/460620.md?page=4)