Reading List: Fiction
These are the books that were important enough to me to move. At least, most. Of the fiction. This list doesn’t include any of the non fiction, and I think I’ve left some fiction in the car.
The Fountain
Flight 1
Flight 2
Ghost World
V For Vendetta
Watchmen
Fun Home
La Perdida
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Republic
Selected Poems (E.E Cummings)
Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson
Collected Poems (Edna St Vincent Millay)
Ten Cents a Dance
Loose Sugar
The Complete Novels (Jane Austen)
Collected Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)
Eaters of the Dead
House of Leaves
The Inheritance of Loss
* The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
The Name of the Rose
Jane Eyre
* Lolita
Oliver Twist
Great Expectations
Collected Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Everything is Illuminated
Smoke and Mirrors
Interpreter of Maladies
The Namesake
Unaccustomed Earth
The Hour I First Believed
* I Know This Much Is True
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
Einstein’s Dreams
One Hundred Years of Solitutde
Collected Stores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
On Chesil Beach
* After Dark
Kafka on the Shore
A Wild Sheep Chase
* The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
The Elephant Vanishes
Against the Day
Gravity’s Rainbow
Fathers and Sons
Fancies and Goodnights
The Twentieth Wife
White Noise
Anil’s Ghost
Divisadero
In The Skin of a Lion
My Name is Red
* Anna Karenina
War and Peace
Hearts in Atlantis
The Gunslinger
The War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
Dune
Ender’s Game
Speaker for the Dead
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Les Miserables
A Barrel of Laughs/A Vale of Tears
Wainscott Weasel
A Rat’s Tale
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
The Neverending Story
The Giver
Dragons of a Fallen Sun
Dragons of a Lost Star
Dragons of a Vanished Moon
Bold means it’s there because it was a recommendation/gift
Italics means it is really high on my priority list
Strike Through means I’ve already read it
* means I have every intention of rereading it in the near future.
“Last night…
… I had a dream about [Mexican folktales??]…”
Okay, so it’s not a full quote, only partial, but singing in my blog posts has never lost its appeal with me.
My dream last night was more like watching a movie; it was like watching a very interesting movie, done in three (?) parts.
It was basically like watching artsy-fartsy reinterpretations of Mexican folktales, the ones told to good little Catholic children to keep them too afraid of monsters under their beds to disobey. They included devil men, given away by their red-hued skin, pointy chins and dark, black, wiry hair. Also there were twelve women, pure and good, trying to lead the way to godliness and safety, as well as little children drawn by David B who spoke with heavy Spanish accents, trying to find their way to safety.
I’m blaming it on the fact that I just finished La Perdida, by Jessica Abel. The novel makes me want to re-invent my life, and it doesn’t help that I have a Cuban father who I could pretend I was estranged with, in order to search for my “roots”. That, combined with the fact that I spent the night in my father’s house last night, which is painted and decorated exactly how a Latin American man would want to decorate his house if he lived in the grayest city in all America. We had an entire conversation centered around the color orange [[Bright orange: see his armchair, see a full set of dishes, see his hallway walls, see a blanket, see a vase on his fireplace]], and then bickered good-naturedly about whether he liked bright orange or bright green more. [[Bright green: see downstairs walls, see other full set of dishes]]
My dreams made my mouth burn from spicy food, my eyes water from smoky, polluted air and my hair turn long, black and curly.
One of my favorite authors
I’ll admit–some of my friends I’ve made purely for their recommendations in books. I don’t think I have any friends like that currently (if they started out that way and are still in my life, chances are the friendship has evolved).
But it does happen. For a while, I was friends with this one guy who was a complete jerk. I hated almost everything about him, but oddly enough, when we hung out, we always had a great time. He also recommended the best books. I read a lot while we were friends, and some of his authors are still my favorites. For instance, he introduced me to Blankets, by Craig Thompson, which is one of my absolute favorite graphic novels.
Towards the end, though, it went sour and I, being the obstinate mule I can be, have long refused to read his last recommendation.
He told me I would love Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, and for a long time I went to great stretches to avoid that book. I finally cracked, although only slightly. I read instead his Divisadero, which is now one of my favorite books. Currently I’m reading Anil’s Ghost, and then next on my list is In The Skin of the Lion (that’s right–I’m still obstinately a
voiding The English Patient).
I could tell you about the plots to his novels, but it really wouldn’t matter. His style is non-linear, and you can tell when you read his works that he doesn’t care about the plot as much as he cares about the characters he’s creating. The plots are interesting well-developed, but are also completely irrelevant to appreciating his writing.
I’m reading, as I said, Anil’s Ghost right now and I’m so sucked into the novel. I don’t care about the plot, and I couldn’t care less about the slight mystery he’s creating, but I care about the main character, Anil. I care about her and I’m intrigued by her and I want to know more about her. The way Ondaatje writes is so captivating, as cliche as that may sound.
My new favorite
I love this book. Okay, I’ll admit–I picked it up based on the title and cover alone, but it’s been a worthwhile gamble. I want to share this book with everyone I know. At least, everyone I know who’s interested in worthwhile books.
That’s what I saw. I was willing to buy the book based on the title alone, but when I flipped through the pages, I saw they were filled with illustrations. Wonderfully creative pen and ink descriptions. I was sold. I was beyond sold!
The funny thing, though, is that I bought this book almost a month ago, and I’m just now reading it. *sigh* My problem with books–I will never EVER read as many as I want to, as fast as I want to.
This one is good, though. It makes me feel like I’m a kid. It’s written for pretty much any age, but it doesn’t read like a children’s book. It reads like a really fun, adventure, throw back to children’s fantasy and imaginations-run-wild.
The text is a bit superfluous, like the author spent a little too much time with a thesearous, but it works for the story line. And, surprisingly, it’s not quite as predictable as I thought it would be!
“He would then lecture me for hours about poets on a distant planet who consisted of luminous, animate vapour and employed chemically complex methods of writing extremely volatile gaseous poems.”
I recommend. I highly recommend, if you want something easy, fun, and interesting. It’s perfect for a rainy, Bellingham afternoon when you have nothing to do (or strongly want to avoid doing homework).
It helped to temporarily satiate my desire to live and breathe books. This book was meant for anyone who has ever fantasized about living in a library.
Three posts in one day?
Whatever. I’m the only one that pays attention anyway. 
Maybe this tag will get a little more attention.
I treated myself to a new book recently, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s the perfect book with which to distract myself from finals. The perfect depth to keep my involvement, but not make me work too hard for comprehension.
It’s called “Broken Verses”
The main character sleeps in
a room that used to belong to a kid, and the walls are completely covered with all sorts of sea life. Now for my favorite passage so far:
” ‘I could go out and get some paint, and help you slap on a coat before our flight,’ my father said. ‘Unless the marine life is growing on you.’
‘Now there’s a pleasant image. Barnacles on my skin, seaweed draped around my neck…’ “
I really just like it because of how obsessed I’ve become with the mental image of sea life growing on a person. Jer has me a little hooked on the notion of blue-skinned peole, and it fits in perfectly with this idea of a tall, slender woman transfixed in a cross-legged meditating pose, barnacles crusted on her shoulders and chest and hands, signs of her paralysis.
