September 9, 2014

In Which I Meme: Ten Books….

I don’t meme much. I don’t like memes. I like the internet best when everybody is doing her own thing, but I got tagged twice on Facebook, and I’ve been thinking for awhile about how I don’t know how to answer the question of what are my favourite books. For me, the books all blend together, their connections to each other and to the facts of my life all cumulating to pave the path of my progress. It’s not about the book but about the reading. I love books more than I love any one book. But I also love rereading, and so my list of books that have stayed with me (whatever that means—I think any book that’s any good would do such a thing) or a list of my favourites would be a list of books I’ve read more than once, and will continue to revisit to find out how they change as I do. They’re the books I’ll never get over being over.

• Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple : Partly circumstantial—I read this in the hospital after Iris was born, and had a very visceral connection to everything was reading then, but I just loved it so completely. It was so funny, smart, and fresh, and I’ve been longing for a book to love this completely ever since. Will definitely reread.

 

• Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion: I’ve read this book about six or seven times, and return to it to fall under the spell of the rhythm of Didion’s prose, and to admire the precision with which she arranges details in order of giving her stories the illusion of telling themselves.

 

• Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala: I was so afraid of this book, my worst nightmare, the story of a woman who loses her entire family in the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. I finally obtained a library copy and was bowled over by the brilliance of the book, and so I had to buy my own copy. I haven’t reread it yet but I will. It’s a a heartbreaking tragedy, a litany of sorrows, but also beautiful, magical celebration of love and life.

 

• The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble: This was my first Margaret Drabble novel, which I bought at a used bookshop in Kobe. Had no idea what to expect, but fell in love with its writer, and the book too, for its vividness and how it reflected and engaged with the world.

 

 

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: The one book I’ve read more times than Slouching… and it just gets more and more profound and lovely. I read it most recently in July, having replaced my battered and stupidly marginalia’d university copy. It’s the thinking woman’s beach read.

 

• The Crack in the Teacup by Joan Bodger: I’ve read this one twice, and think about it all the time. It’s about being a woman in the 20th century, about loving books, about heartache, about this city. And about the life of an extraordinary woman who was of her time and also never quite, always in a way that was fascinating.

 

• Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood: (And also The Robber Bride). Of all the books on my list, I was youngest and stupidest when I first read these, but also so young that they became foundational in my understanding of the lives of girls and women.

 

 

• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver: This was one of those books I was never going to read, because I found all the hype at the time annoying, but I came to it somehow, and have read it five times since. I discover a whole new layer of complexity every time, and have determined that it’s just about marriage and womanhood as it is about motherhood. Also worth noting: still a gripping excellent reading when fully aware of its great twist, which is quite a literary feat.

 

• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson: I will never forget the moment of Ruby Lennox’s conception, which was also my introduction to the inimitable Kate Atkinson, whose boundless enthusiasm for pushing the limits of what a novel can do makes her one of my favourite authors. Have read this a few times. It contains the seeds of every single wonderful thing she’s written since.

 

• Unless by Carol Shields: I’m a bit of a zealot when it comes to this book, which I’ve read so many times that its pages are covered in scribbles, and whose subtle tricky complexity continues to amaze me.

*And don’t get me started on the children’s books, Anne of Green Gables, Tom’s Midnight Garden, Charlotte Sometimes, A Handful of Time, Booky, etc. Plus Flowers in the Attic. And so many more…