My favorite book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. I first read this in high school and re-read it again a few years later. I identified with the monster and his quest to just be accepted, to have companionship. I was an outcast in school. I don’t much care about acceptance now but I still identify with the anger about being rejected with no attempt at understanding. In fact, I still sometimes become almost absolutely livid when my opinions/perceptions/ideas are outright rejected with no attempt to understand me. I don’t have to be right, you don’t have to agree but at least try to understand me.
The Dollmaker by Harriett Arnow. I don’t identify with Gertie Nevels (the main character) but I admire her selflessness and her strength. She sacrifices everything to do what she thinks is right, to keep her family together. It sounds like this book is sentimental but it’s not. Life is harsh, and no matter how hard you try, things don’t always work out like they should.
Also, reading about people who live in conditions that I’d consider primitive makes me appreciate electricity, running water, modern medicine, etc. I think about Gertie going to the creek for water every morning when I get in the shower.
Right now, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. (I have five or six all time favorite books–my favorite favorite is usually the one I reread most recently).
I’ve been rereading it at least annually since I was ten or so, so I don’t really know where it matches my personality and where it shaped my personality. It captures me on many levels–a lot of it is the language, which is rich and textured and precise, and the plotting, which moves between flashbacks and glimpses of the future and the present. Part of it is the way the mythic and the ordinary are melded so that both is true, part of it is the characters, all of whom I identify with in different ways.
Lonesome Dove- it has comedy, adventure, drama and wonderful characters. It is monumental in scope, but immensely readable and familiar. I re-read it at least once a year, and I think about Gus to a point that borders on obsession. Not into westerns, although I was a horse-y kid at one point and know more than one bonafide buckaroo, but I love this book (and the entire series).
1984. The whole Big Brother/thought control thing is both fascinating and terrifyingly plausible. The contrast between the absolute blind, meaningless existence that everyone leads and Winston Smith’s life is inspiring. He’s managed to keep his intelligence and resist all attempts to truly control his thoughts. The love story with Julia is great and really fits in well with the story; one of my favorite lines comes right after they have sex as a way to get back at Big Brother (“It was a political act”). The fact that he’s managed to keep his humanity at all makes him an amazing character.
Then, of course, comes the inevitable reveal: “Big Brother” knew about his freedom of thought the entire time and only waited so long to catch him in order to give him false hope (and then crush it). O’Brien pretty much says that it doesn’t matter how long it takes, but they will break his spirit and destroy what made him human. He refuses to believe it. But they succeed. After everything that happened, none of his hopes or plans to fight mattered in the slightest. It’s both an utterly hopeless and yet amazingly captivating story.
Too hard to pick one, but here’s a few i’d consider: Lanark by Alasdair Gray, Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, V. by Thomas Pynchon, Watt by Samuel Beckett. It’s hard to explain why I like them, the best I can say is that they changed the way I think about writing and life in general.
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. I love Faulkner’s evocative use of language, and I find the character of Darl very compelling. I read it at a time in my life when I really identified with Darl. Faulkner writes in a way that jibes with how I think and experience the world (that’s the best way I can put it), so the book became very personal to me. I felt like Faulkner understood and articulated something about my life and a truth about human nature. I reread it every so often to keep it close.
While I may not say that 1984 is my favoritebook, it’s definitely in my top five, for all of the reasons that Stauderhorse indicated above, plus one more. You remember the scene where Winston is being tortured, and they bring out the rats? And then Winston finally breaks down and cries, “Do it to Julia!” That absolutely. broke. my. soul…I was literally a listless bag of flesh and bones for the rest of the day after I read that. Even thinking about it now is slightly depressing. It was such a powerful scene, and the effect it had/has on me creates some kind of sense of extreme mortality (now that I think about it, seeing someone die would be a powerful indication of mortality is well, but I mean it in a somewhat positive sense here).
Amazing scope, mastery of language by the author, and it features the absolute most horrible villain I have ever read. Judge Holden rides with a gang of men who would rank as some of the most vile and disgusting characters in literature, and they pale in comparison to him.
I read it at least once a year and I always find something I had missed on the last go round.
I’m going with The Lord of the Rings, too. I’ve read it so many times I should be able to recite it by heart. All I can say is, I can pick it up at any time, at any chapter, and I am immediately transported to another world. I can’t really say that about any other book. Yes, I am transported by all good books, but I don’t necessarily go back to read them umpteen times.
And Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor and Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, because I love big, detailed, emotional historical tomes. The time periods have always interested me and the stories just make those times come alive - not just people in odd clothing who didn’t have cars or indoor plumbing, but real human beings.
Some great books in this–Hero and the Crown, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Blood Meridian all have held me in their spell.
I’m not sure what my favorite is, but to add to that great list, Perdido Street Station. Folks love it or hate it. I love it: it was one of the rare books to change how I thought of the power of fantasy lit.
It’s funny, with several laugh-out-loud scenes.
The prose is masterful and unrestrained.
It’s got more plot than ten normal novels, but isn’t over-busy or confusing.
Barth introduces new characters in almost every chapter, and effortlessly sketches in their personalities with fast clean strokes.
The book makes poetry of 16th century street talk.
The book is filthy and crude.
The description of colonial-era America feels deep and convincing.
It comes complete with a philosophical debate between a poet and a pimp, --explaining why the money paid must be a fee for the whore rather than a gift to pimp.
It’s a deeply funny, deeply philosophical, masterfully written tour-de-force. And that’s good enough for me.
But, the revised-by-the-author edition, (generally the only one available) cleans ups some of the crudest and funniest moments.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, for author Betty Smith’s painstakingly detailed depiction of all that is beautiful and ugly in love, poverty, family life, and growing up. What book-loving person, even if she grew up in comfortable, well-dressed, well-fed upper middle class, couldn’t identify with early-1900s-era Francie Nolan?
My heart goes out to every character in young Francie’s family: alcoholic, artistic, tragically flawed Johnny (who’s a loving father despite his utter inadequacy as a provider); seemingly cold-hearted but vulnerable, fiercely determined mom Katie; pragmatic, wise aunt Eva; sex-loving bigamist child-adoring aunt Sissy; fun, reckless, tough yet sensitive kid brother Neeley; saintly, uneducated Grandma Rommelly; and of course, observant, stubborn, dreamy, prejudiced, open-minded, hopeful, cynical, cautious, ambitious, soulful would-be-writer Francie.
It’s a snapshot of the earliest part of the 1900s, a Williamsburg filled with street vendors and horse-drawn carts and cruelty and bigotry of all kinds. Smith’s writing is musical, each line a song lyric even as it tears your heart out. And you can tell she knows every corner of the world her characters inhabit. Just a lovely, lovely book.
If that’s your why shouldn’t something by Joyce or Beckett be your favorite?
As for myself, if forced to answer, I would probably say Lolita by Nabakov. He made a horrible, even evil person, sympathetic and he constantly defied expectations. Just when you think it’s gonna be pedophiliac erotica or maybe a horror story and it turns into a travelogue.
Lolita. It’s as many-layered and tricky as any of Nabokov’s works, but it has real human emotion. It’s like reading five books at once, and it still cuts to the soul each time I read it.