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This will quite possibly be the easiest blog post I ever write. This book is dope. It is essential. It benefits from re-examination throughout your life, and it only gets better with age.
No one is a bigger pusher of the wider Bronte canon than me (also here and here) but this one is widely considered to be the best, and it is by far the most popular, and for a reason.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I came to Adrienne Rich via Cheryl Strayed and Wild and while that is not necessarily something to brag about, I do think it would make Cheryl Strayed incredibly happy. Wild was about literature and grief as much as it was about hiking and recovery and her inclusion of the books that were meaningful to her at that point in her life seemed incredibly deliberate. Especially because she left her favorite quotes as her signature in all of the trail books, suggesting a desire to share her favorite authors with the world.
Anyway, I read The Dream of a Common Language because she made it sound so entrancing, and it was a rich and rewarding experience that I've already indulged in a few more times. Like Strayed, I feel a strong desire to take it with me. This is a book that will probably go on some camping trips this summer. It is deeply personal but somehow manages to be very political, a feat it pulls off so gracefully. If you haven't spent much time with contemporary or feminist poetry, this is the essential text (in my humble opinion) to get you started.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
People who took four years of high school Spanish will tell you that you can't really appreciate Gabriel Garcia Marquez in English translation. These people probably heard this from their Spanish teacher and now whip it out at parties as a kind of intellectual gauntlet-throw-slash-conversation-ender. Gently remind these assholes that Gabriel Garcia Marquez read many of his favorite authors via translation, including those whose influence is most strongly felt in his work, like Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. And to say this about Gabo and not every other author who doesn't write in English is truly insulting.
Read One Hundred Years of Solitude, please, in whatever language you prefer. Besides being one of the greatest family epics ever written, it is also the quintessential magical-realism novel. It is beautiful and it is very affecting and despite what the wannabe Spanish snobs might tell you, it is a worthwhile endeavor even in English.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I couldn't settle on one P.G.Wodehouse book to recommend for the Bookhive List, because I have loved every one I've read equally, and I don't think any of them would be considered THE essential Wodehouse. The Jeeves stories are quite popular for obvious reasons (film and TV adaptations, the woefully mis-guided concept of "Ask Jeeves," etc. etc.), but all are excellent and if this is your cup of tea, you'll want to read the lot.
I came to Wodehouse via Evelyn Waugh, an absolute favorite writer of mine, who does much the same thing, that is, write fictional accounts of the British aristocracy between the wars, in the vein of Downton Abbey and the like, although Waugh gives his fiction a much bleaker and more macabre polish than Wodehouse, whose stories are pure fun and whimsy. Practically every line is a clever witticism and everything always works out for the heroes in the end, and yet that never protects them from getting into another scrape in the next novel (Wodehouse often recycles and repeatedly torments the same characters in novels and short stories). It is very light, fluffy reading material, but it never stoops to the kind of trashiness or sensationalism of a lot of popular fiction today -- there is never any violence (other than one bloke punching another bloke and them both falling into a fountain or something), and there is never any sex, and the plots are largely predictable, and yet they prove to be endlessly entertaining. I particularly recommend them on a relaxing vacation -- they make excellent poolside reading material.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
James Joyces is an incredibly intimidating author, and for good reason. His novels are large, extraordinarily difficult, and considered to be among the greatest fiction ever written, so if you don't "get it," then you must be intellectually inferior. I will readily admit that I have not started the long, slow slog through his novels, although I fully intend to one day. I did, however, make time to read his short story collection Dubliners and I'm incredibly glad I did because it remains one of my absolute favorite books to this day, and I would highly recommend it as an introduction to his writing.
Probably the most important thing to note about Dubliners is that it lacks Joyce's later characteristic prose style, thus making it infinitely easier to read and understand. The narratives are relatively linear and each story feels so stripped down and bare, making its emotional impact that much stronger. It makes for a relatively quick, easy read, but a profoundly beautiful and compelling one.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I made several failed attempts at reading William Faulkner before I ended up with As I Lay Dying, which I inhaled in one sitting, and I've since read most of his novels and never looked back. The prose is not easy to understand and it takes some adjustments, which is why As I Lay Dying is the Faulkner novel I will always recommend to anyone new to his writing. And it remains my favorite, even after having read quite a few of his other novels.
James Franco went through an almost embarrassingly public introduction to Faulkner and made two terrible movies as a result. Below is the trailer for his adaptation for As I Lay Dying, which looks terrible and seems to miss any of the novel's ambiguities or subtleties. It also seems to ignore the novel's formal elements, including the highly disjointed and experimental prose, non-linear narrative and any/all moments of surrealism. It makes it seem like a drama whose climax involves a bridge giving out, which is missing the point, entirely. Nevertheless, it is funny to watch, especially if you've already read the novel. I will readily admit, however, that I occasionally develop crushes on fictional characters, and his casting choices really validated my love for Jewel. If you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and skip this undoubtedly terrible adaptation and read it instead.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I read East of Eden in the midst of a very tough semester of college. I was neck-deep in art history, which meant endlessly memorizing and regurgitating artwork identifications for slide exams, and although it was hardly the most responsible use of my free time, I decided to start reading for pure pleasure, and East of Eden was the perfect escape because it had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was studying.
Everyone reads The Grapes of Wrath at some point, and East of Eden shares plenty in common with Steinbeck's other big novel, but I found it to be a much more enjoyable reading experience. It certainly benefits from not being foisted on anyone in high school, but also it seemed to me to be the more mature of the two novels. Both novels play around with morality but East of Eden has truly sympathetic characters. The Grapes of Wrath presents morally ambiguous characters that are difficult to love or admire, and that is the whole point; East of Eden, however, deals more in archetypes, in this case Biblical archetypes, and the results are clearly-drawn divisions between "good" characters and "bad" characters. But this never veers in an oversimplification of human morality, and the results are emotionally compelling and endlessly readable. I definitely had a reading phase of enjoying epic familial/generational novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Middlesex, and East of Eden fits very comfortably in that group. If you haven't yet, do yourself the favor of checking out Steinbeck's lesser-read novels.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
There is absolutely nothing about this book I didn't like -- a gang of very whimsical and somewhat feral children from a British colony in Jamaica find themselves aboard a Dutch pirate ship. What further description is necessary?
There is no Victorian era romanticism of childhood and in many ways A High Wind in Jamaica is a precursor for The Lord of the Flies, although it delves into its subject matter with much more humor. Children being kidnapped should not be fun, and yet it is, even as they endure incredible trauma. Although the children give as much as they take, so there are many moments of sympathy for the unfortunate pirates. As grisly as it is, it remains one of my absolute favorite novels of British colonialism, something of a favorite sub-genre, which will only become more obvious as I roll out for Bookhive List posts, week by week.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman is often classified as YA, but I didn't read it until adulthood, and I remember thinking that any teenager who read it would certainly grow up to be an incredibly emotionally mature adult. Fantasy is not everyone's cup of tea, myself included, but in the case of His Dark Materials, the fictional universe is very elaborately built up to provide a scaffolding upon which Pullman then dismantles the world in which we live -- and he pulls it off so gracefully. There are two points in the trilogy that stick out to me in particular as being the absolute most I have ever cried while reading a book, and this was more than just a few tears -- I finished the series in sobs; it is also one of my favorite love stories.
The series is often compared to The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and there are many obvious similarities, including the use of fantasy elements as a kind of stand-in for Christianity. If you found the morality of Narnia to be too simplistic and prefer your religious allegories with heaping doses of cynicism and darkness, then His Dark Materials is more the series for you. The Catholic Church is deeply critical of the series, in part because the characters set out to destroy God; the fact that the human soul exists outside the body in the form of a small animal companion does not help. It is very difficult to read the novels and then accept that you will never have a little "daemon" otter or goldfinch following you wherever you go, and I felt incredibly melancholy after finishing the series because I was so sad to leave this world behind.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I had to read Teaching a Stone to Talk in high school, and I hated the experience. I guess "hate" is an oversimplification; the book challenged me in a way I hadn't been challenged in school, and I resented Dillard and my teacher for forcing me to struggle through it. As an adult though, reflecting back on the high school reading experience, I really appreciate that my teacher forced us to delve into this version of nature writing, and not the usual suspects.
Now I re-read it regularly, in part because it's rich and complex and difficult and I always take away something new from it, and because it's a very slim book. What I love most about her writing is the way I find myself recalling her imagery in the oddest moments without really being aware of it; I have one distinct image that comes to mind when I think about hotel art, and it's strictly hers (read her first essay on eclipses and you'll know what I'm talking about). Her ability to fuse thoughts on such abstract, lofty concepts as religion and nature with very human, personal details is remarkable and I think it's what separates her writing from so many other essayists.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
There have been many posts on The Bookhive List, and there will be many more, but if I had to narrow it down to a top-five type situation, Middlesex would sit comfortably on that list. It is the essential novel in my life. The prose is lyrical and beautiful, the structure is complex and rewarding, and the characters are so alive.
As if that weren't enough of a good reason to love and admire it, the bulk of the novel takes place in Detroit and Grosse Pointe, my hometown. I live only a few blocks from Middlesex (the street), I was married in the chapel at the girls' school attended by Cal, and perhaps most importantly and most ephemerally, I understand Eugenides' obsession with the place. To outsiders, it's a wealthy suburb of Detroit (a totally shallow mis-characterization, by the way); to me, and apparently to Eugenides as well, it's an incredibly magical place that is utterly haunted by its own history. It's a place that demands narrative -- I always joke that someday I'll write my "Grosse Pointe novel," if only because there are so many incredible stories and characters in this place.
Eugenides has unfairly been the focus of feminist criticism of the publishing industry -- critics have argued that if his books were written by women, they wouldn't get the same positive/academic attention, and that's possibly true. But even so, I'm not going to begrudge a male author for writing the female perspective so skillfully -- I will take Eugenides over John Updike, Philip Roth, or Jonathon Franzen any day. His ability to play with gender and to write simultaneously gendered and ambiguous perspectives is masterful, and the obvious influence of Jane Austen on his writing is endearing.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I first came across Ovid's Metamorphoses in a college art history class in which the book functioned as our only textbook. We had to read then entire thing before the semester started, and then spent the term examining visual representations of its narratives. It was a really engaging, rewarding class, and it sparked a lasting admiration for the text.
Practically every student reads some kind of mythology in school, especially Robert Graves or Edith Hamilton, and I can't really imagine a worse way of getting young people interested in Greek/Roman mythology. Above all else, Metamorphoses functions as a prose poem, and even reading it in translation is a sublime experience. It's structure is very conducive to re-readings and a good version will have an index, allowing you to read precisely the stories that interest you, which also makes it a handy reference tool. But nothing really compares to the experience of reading it cover-to-cover and engaging with it as a holistic narrative.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
Everyone knows the name Truman Capote, but most people haven't really read him, or if they have, they've read In Cold Blood, his true crime novel. I don't want to take anything away from that book, which besides being a really incredible feat of writing, is also going to appear on The Bookhive List; however, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote's debut novel, is my favorite work by Capote. Although it was eventually eclipsed by the tremendous success of In Cold Blood, it was really critically acclaimed in its own time and made a huge splash in part because of the youth of its author, aided by a very seductive, precocious author photo on the back cover of the novel.
Other Voices, Other Rooms is the semi-autobiographical story of 13-year old Joel Knox who is sent to live in the decaying mansion on his estranged father's plantation in Louisiana following the death of his mother. Thematically, the novel really hinges on Joel's coming-of-age and acceptance of his homosexuality which all plays out in the fruitless search for a connection to his father. It exemplifies everything I love about Southern Gothic writing and there is a really pervasive, almost kitschy sense of magical realism to the whole thing. So many of the characters and images from the novel have stuck with me and pop into my head at the strangest times, and the whole thing really lingers in the most incredible way.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has absolutely exploded in popularity in the past year due to a little ditty by one Beyonce Gisele Knowles Carter called 'Flawless.' If you're unfamiliar with it, I'm not sure what you're doing here...? Anyway, the song features an excerpt from Chimamanda's extraordinarily important and influential TedTalk from a while back (which is how I came to know of her). To hear someone articulate the meaning of feminism so clearly and beautifully was striking, and the fact that the speaker was young and gorgeous and very fashionable resonated with so many young women who had previously felt that Feminism had no room for them.
Meanwhile, as her definition of Feminism became part of a pop cultural anthem, Chimamanda published her third novel to universal praise; most people had never heard of her before 'Flawless' but in the publishing world, Chimamanda was a talented young writer whose first two novels had set high career expectations for her (and 'Half of a Yellow Sun' is truly, truly excellent, but one of the toughest books on war I've ever read. I cried so much while reading it. It is criminally underrated, and I haven't read a better, more insightful narrative of the moral ambiguities of warfare).
I read 'Americanah' immediately after it was published, and for me it was very directly linked to a conscious effort on my part to read more contemporary fiction, especially by women. It was a good choice in that sense because it feels so modern (not Modern). I would liken it to something by Zadie Smith, but with less stylized prose, although that's not to say the prose is not stylish because every sentence is perfect and beautiful. It all comes across so effortlessly, and if you're a writer she will make you very jealous. It is also a really genuine, human love story and at no point does it indulge in any kind of sentimentality or emotional shorthand. The two central characters fall in love and grow apart and evolve and meet again and it all feels so organic and real. As if that weren't enough of an accomplishment, it is also a novel that fearlessly and insightfully takes on race and succeeds. It is certainly one of the best novels in the recent past and I feel certain it will become a Classic.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
It is no secret I am a devoted Jane Austen fan. I try to stay above the fray of that nonsensical, romantic-comedy obsessed side of her fandom, but that isn't always possible (Example: I watch all the movie adaptations, good, bad or otherwise). But I do credit myself a bit for having read all of her novels along with much of her other writing (unfinished novels and letters), as well as a healthy portion of Jane Austen biography and criticism.
One of the distinct pleasures of Jane Austen is the subsequent re-readings that most fans indulge in throughout their lives. You cannot read a Jane Austen novel once and consider yourself a fan; instead you must semi-annually dive back into the world of Regency England and plunder the depths of her novels for new discoveries, for which you are always richly rewarded.
Many people can plot their devotion to Jane via their changing preferences for her characters and novels; everyone begins with Pride and Prejudice, and everyone fancies themselves to be a Lizzie Bennet {Side Note: Why are women so obsessed with identifying themselves with specific characters, as if woman characters in novels were all archetypes of female personalities? That said, I am totally a Jo March of Little Women, and in Anne of Green Gables I am obviously a Marilla Cuthbert). Along with everyone else, I adored P and P and identified very strongly with the "coltish" bookworm Lizzie, but as I made the transition into young adulthood I started to love and admire and detest and empathize more and more with Emma. Like so many young adults, Emma is supremely confident in her abilities, and everyone around her constantly reinforces that confidence, although her actions are constantly contradicting everyone's faith in her. She does not do anything half-way and when fails, she fails spectacularly; but because she is a Jane Austen heroine, she inevitably learns her lesson and tries her best to do better, although Austen knows and we know that Emma will probably fail many more times in her life. Of all the Austen novels, I think it's the funniest, and the peripheral characters are really hilarious and awful, but it's easy to laugh at them and then realize that you are no better or different from Emma, who is doing the exact same thing. I have a strong hunch that in a few years I'll make the switch to preferring Persuasion (as all women over 30 must do eventually), so in the meantime, I'm going to savor these last few years with my Austen avatar, Emma.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
I love non-fiction and I spend plenty of time reading it, especially biographies, but it's pretty rare for a work of non-fiction to crack my favorite books list. "Favorites" to me are books I absolutely loved, highly recommend to anyone who will listen, and read over again, and Going Clear has achieved two out of three and is well on its way to repeat readings in the coming years.
Rather notoriously, this book is partially to blame for the Paul Haggis break from the Church of Scientology, as well as a very controversial HBO documentary. It is as much a biography of L. Ron Hubbard as it is an exploration of the Church of Scientology, and Hubbard bios not endorsed by the Church are few and far between, making this a really essential book. It is so thoroughly researched and elegantly written and it will make you marvel at the sheer accomplishment of putting together a book this demanding.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
It seems appropriate that my inaugural post for The Bookhive List is on Brideshead Revisited in the same week that I put together a 'Downton Abbey' inspired reading list. I was very tempted to put Brideshead on that list, but I decided to save it for The Bookhive List because in my life, it is canon.
A part of me hates to recommend it in January, because it is such a late summer book, so if you're feeling inclined put it on the very bottom of your TBR list and wait for August to come around before picking it up. It's a novel to be read while lying in a hammock with a glass of chilled white wine.
The name 'Brideshead' refers to a fictional English manor house, and as the novel begins, the house has been overtaken by the British Army in the midst of World War II. Charles Ryder, the narrator and Army Officer, is revisiting the house for the first time in many years and takes the reader through his tempestuous relationships with Julia and Sebastian Flyte, two siblings whose aristocratic family owned Brideshead. If you enjoy a good homoerotic romp through Oxford culture in the 1930s, then this is the book for you. If you enjoy long, drawn-out descriptions of really over-the-top food and beverages, then this is also the book for you. And if you prefer your hetero relationships to be shallow and affectionless, you have found your book. There's also some intense Catholic stuff in the vein of Graham Greene.
Finally, once you've savored this beautiful novel, set aside ten hours of your life to watch the BBC miniseries adaptation starring a very young Jeremy Irons. There is a more recent film version that is less good, but it does star Emma Thompson.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.