15 Books

There’s a new book meme on facebook: “Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you.” I thought I would share my picks, with some personal reflections and annotations:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The story of one man’s tragic desire for a women he loved and lost. Also a tale of crime, wealth, romance, ambition, and mythic self-creation. In short, a mash note and Dear John Letter to the American Dream. I first read this senior year of high school for a teacher who was a meticulous close reader, and who helped me learn that short novels can still be long on big ideas and grand themes.

2. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides:

A lyrical ode to five mysterious young sisters, narrated through the haze of time by men once enthralled by their unattainable beauty. Eugenides’ prose is so lush that you can almost feet the heat of hormones and summer nights that saturate the novel.

3. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot:

A tale of loneliness and fateful resignation as told to T.S. Eliot by his alter-ego, an anonymous clerk-like persona named J. Alfred Prufrock. First lines: “Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table…” Opens with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, in the original Italian. Read the whole poem.

4. The poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson:

Tennyson’s lush evocations of English history and Arthurian myth stir a longing for a British Empire that never existed, as well as presage doom for his nation’s future, even as he wrote at the peak of England’s economic power and cultural influence. Read the Lady of Shalott.

5. The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The sage observer of America’s ascent to Tennyson’s oracular vision of his nation’s impending decline, Emerson’s essays tell you everything you need to know about America’s sense of self-reliance, openness to experience, and “manifest destiny.” Also, Emerson’s transcendentalist love of nature helped open my eyes to the beauty of our own environment.

6. A Separate Peace by John Knowles:

The story of two British school chums who must learn to overcome grief in the face of tragedy. Simply a beautiful and affecting story.

7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh:

Also a tale of male friendship at a top-flight English Boarding School. Waugh savages “modern culture” but also infuses his humor with a sense of moral indignation and deep-felt emotion. The book teaches the value of friendship and loyalty, as well as reveals the ways in which an unaccepting society can ruin its most promising “bright young things,” merely by refusing to accept them as they are. Gay rights advocates should tout this book as a relatively sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality in time before such truths could be discussed openly. It also holds a special place in my heart as the story I brought on my first trip to Europe, including England.

8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy:

Another tale about how unfair and illogical social mores can crush youthful promise and beauty. Also ravishingly well written, with lush evocations of Hardy’s beloved Dorsetshire County. Nor is it as didactic or artificial as his follow-up work, Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s last novel before his decision to devote the rest of his life to poetry.

9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Beautifully and eerily written by one of America’s greatest novelists. This book tackles the puritanical roots of our nation’s past through the tale of a woman “more sinned against than sinning.” I first read this in 10th grade and return to it every couple of years. Although it’s not short, the story’s rich language and characterization make each page fly by surprisingly fast every time.

10. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville:

An enigmatic short story about a timid bank clerk who “would prefer not to.” A puzzle of tale, in which it’s teller undergoes a more profound change than its seemingly eponymous protagonist.

11. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

Another narrative puzzle, about a young governess terrorized by unseen forces. Either a tale of psychological horror or a ghost story, depending on who’s reading it. James’ ability to sustain an almost unbearable level of suspense throughout a story in which almost nothing happens, at least in a literal sense, earns him the tile of “The Master.” Despite the sometimes airless prose, I tore though the story cover to cover upon my first encounter with the novella.

12. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton:

Simply a devastating short tale. I defy anyone who’s ever read it not to be haunted by the tragically bleak conclusion.

13. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:

The strangely beautiful and disturbing story about a debauched, disdainful and deceptively handsome European man’s sexual (and emotional) obsession with a prepubescent American girl. Nabokov hit for the fences in this book, counting on his lyrical prose and subversive humor to overcome his reader’s discomfort with the subject matter, and he succeeds. The narrator and ultimate anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, charms his readers against their will in a story that bounces erratically around the American landscape, and ultimately reveals the equally unsettled nature of two tortured souls. Also a book I return to year after year, each time coming away with some new insight or interpretation of the story.

14. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett/ The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame/ The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:

This triumvirate of children’s books is one of the earliest sources of my abiding love for British literature. The first is a beautiful literalization of the secret worlds children create for themselves; the second a lush and whimsical depiction of friendship, loyalty and the ultimate need to venture forth into the wider world; and the third a gorgeous paean to childhood and the inevitable sacrifices required of growing up.

15. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien:

I was first read The Hobbit as a child and continue to count it among my favorite books to this day. A work written by an Oxford Don during stolen moments of creative invention and private reflection, it reminds us that literature always offers us a means to escape and enhance our daily lives, no matter what our age, and that even the most stayed adults, or tiniest creatures, can make a big difference by putting pen to paper… or a small hairy foot to the road.

(Photo from sublime)