I have a request, in an attempt to get to know you all better, I would like to know what your all time favorite book is. I have plans to compile your answers, add them to the "books I plan to read list," and then someday, hopefully sooner rather than later I will have the time and opportunity to read it. At which point we can discuss, and since it's your favorite book, I'm sure it will be a mutual discussion.
And in case you all want to do the same, my favorite book, if you haven't already read it, is Crime and Punishment, though I must confess its been about three years since I read it last.
Love you.
39 comments:
i'll start. my favorite book(s) are...Moby Dick. Catcher in the Rye. this is hard. i've had this window open for 10 minutes trying to think of my favorite book. but i can't. Bleak House is up there, and Pride & Prejudice. this is hard.
I don't want to put a favorite down. Especially given the audience that reads this blog, there is just too much pressure to put the "right" favorite book. Also, I don't typically have A favorite anything. So I'll have to meticulously choose a few. :)
bull. there is no pressure.
we are not in college anymore.
Quicker Read:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Longer Read:
Gravity's Rainbow
More Accessible Read:
Little, Big by John Crowley
Couldn't just put one book on there, could I?
Maybe I should revamp the question? I either get a list or nothing at all? What's the deal? I suppose if you give me a list I will just reserve the right to choose one from the list, and if you give me nothing at all because you fear the blogosphere then you should email me. amber.zumski@gmail.com
alright, alright, I'll leave behind the college bullshit pressure. The book that drew me into the story and its characters more than any other was, "The Sparrow," by Mary Doria Russell. The sequel was very good as well (Children of God).
Ok, since we've already read most of each other's favorites, I'm pretty sure you haven't read The Crow Road, by Iain Banks. Which I love.
cheers, finkes; is chicago as bitterly cold as michigan is right now?
here's a couple of my favorites:
the mayor of casterbridge by thomas hardy.
or
miss lonelihearts or the day of the locust, by nathanael west.
coleridge's biographia literia
pescal's pensees
and madamn bovery.
I hanvt read these books but if i did i know that they would be awesome
FR, thats not how it works!! Im not going to read books you THINK would be awesome. I want to know your favorit book that you HAVE read.
Since we're choosing favorite books and this is impossible to narrow down to one choice. And since you are going to use this to add a book to your list and someone already chose Moby Dick and therefore it would already be on your list if not already read...
Let's just put Moby Dick here and then automatically skip it.
In this order add my favorite books to your queue:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy
oh and every book that Cormac McCarthy has written.
I'm kidding.
Kind of.
But if you don't read All the Pretty Horses and The Road (which can be read in a day), then consider this friendship terminated.
Actually WHB, I did read the first chapter of "All the Pretty Horses" this summer and found myself drowning in the testosterone, not to say I won't make another attempt (because I still want to be friends, and I have had it on my list for years) but dear god, if that book isn't an example of a man writing for men (i.e. not concerned with a broader audience)then, nothing is. Personally I find disregard for women something to be concerned with. Of course, it's not an argument to NOT read certain books. An author can not be concerned with women in their fiction and still write a good story (most book's in history follow this rule) but ethically speaking I find it hard to take books to heart that disregard half of the human world: women.
Disclaimer: Being that I haven't read the whole book, "All the Pretty Horses" could be excluded from this converstion but my educated guess is that it's highly unlikely.
With that said, please keep giving me your choices people. I promise not to jump on everyone, just whb.
My list so far:
Moby Dick
Little, Big
The Sparrow
The Crow Road
miss lonelihearts or the day of the locust
Invisible Man
Love in the Ruins
All the Pretty Horses
Not bad, but I was hoping for some more, come on people!
Actually you might try reading Moby Dick becuase thats my favorite book too. Except that and here's the weird part, he doesnt write about women either except to mention the occasional whores in booble alley or the estranged wives. In which case don't read it and cross out all three recommendations.
But still best book ever. Even dillard thinks so and she's no feminist slouch. To call it a Man's book may be a stretch, to call it a book about nominal men is more accurate because at times it is kind of gay. but forget all that and call it, if i may be so bold and cheesy, a book about the starry world.
This reader believes that though molly bloom's ending monologue may seem at times to be stereotypically feminine in tone, wondering, illogical, emotional, no apperent grammatical bone structure but plenty of curves, it may in fact trade in its believability and evocative-ness for justy plain eyebrow raises and leering scepticism. You joyce? trying to think like a women? impossible! absurd!
he does succeed but not on the grounds of mimisis. rather for forms sake and the funny colored hue of the imaginary archtypical women, a good window through which to look at bloom which is who he is writing about in the first place.
My point is, exclusion, in some capacity is inevitable. If Mccarthy takes joyce as warning, deciding that he doesnt know nor can understand women, then it may be a rather reverent and humble choice, instead of being bigoted and presumptious.
Of course it is possible that just as the anti semite scholars define even jew-philia as racist so we may define the male position of the woman-as-sacred, as in fact sexist.
In which case sexist may in fact be exactly what those bumbkins Melville and Mccarthy are.
But where in fact does this attitude lead us if not straight down to censorship? a crummy place for any reader to be. e.g. I will not watch apocalyto because mel is a drunk and an anti semite, nor will i read any T.S. Eliot. Criticising books based on the moral or immoral position of the author is dangerous.
Forget i said moby dick and instead read The Turn of the Screw. Thats my official recommendation. Becuase creepy creepsters its a real knockout. A nice short read for a bleary december day inside.
the question however is not whether these books are great or worth reading. I know that azf wouldn't question their place in the hearts of our friends.
but it is very simple for me to understand what she says. hemingway, joyce, i haven't read mccarthy but i assume him too, they are not just masculine writers, they write testosterone. melville is not. the lack of women in moby dick is not indicative of his over or under machismo. and i think that one of the reasons that moby dick is so much, and i mean so so much, better than anything i've read by hemmingway or joyce might be because he doesn't glory in masculinity. ahab is that role and that role is an absurdity in the universe of moby dick.
but for ulysses, it doesn't seem to by bloom only, but joyce too.
all that said i am very excited to read the road
But should I disregard George Eliot, because she is primarily concerned with the feminine? (the argument then would be that masculine is the historical majority in literature and the feminine is under-represented... etc. etc. etc.).
You may find McCarthy to be overbearing on his masculinity. I think you're probably right. He out Hemingways Hemingway at times... but the important part about McCarthy is not that he writes about men. He writes about men looking for their manhood. He writes about men longing so badly for security and seeking it in the nostalgia of the West.
Flannery O'Connor said that Southern writers although they may not be religious anymore, are still haunted by the religious. They are more keen to the grotesque than other writers because they have a concept of what it means to be a "whole person."
I think that's important. I don't find McCarthy to be very "religious" per se, but he has a keen sense of something lost in culture and in partiucular for men and he's writing about people feeling that loss and trying to fill the void.
Sorry for preaching. My point was that I understand what you're saying, but All the Pretty Horses is so damned beautiful that you'd be really missing out on something if you didn't give it a chance beyond it's masculine veneer...
Think of it like Forest. Sure, he's a hardened, steely man. But we all know he's a teddy bear. A teddy bear with boots, who likes to stomp and crinkle his forehead in a grimace... but if you didn't give him a chance, just think of the diatribes you'd miss!
and i like dappled things
i think its arrogant to say that amber should read these books. if we all agree that men writing about the search and meaning of manhood and their testosteroney whatever, then clearly these are men's books. great literature or not is not the issue. if they are not written for women (and for god's sake do not try to say that they are) what's the big deal of a literate aware and self-conscious woman doesn't want to read them?
there's a difference, which i will still uphold, between joyce and mccarthy and hemmingway who write for men, and dickens and woolf and others, whose audience does not seem gendered.
alright. i appreciate cz sticking up for me in my absence, but now I'm here.
a few things:
1. What part of my comment said I hated men? Specifically male WRITERS? Did I not post that my favorite author was Dostoevsky? Did I not say that McCarthy has been on "my list for years"?? I don't hate men or male writers and you all know that, do not belittle me with your, "he doesn't write about women...in which case don't read it." or "should I disregard George Eliot because she is primarily concerned with the feminine." As CZ pointed out there is a big difference between male writer's that write in a non-gendered way and male writers who write specifically for men. This is the argument. Being that you all consider yourself to be so well versed in the world of literature it FLOORS me that you can't even decipher such a small thing as who the author intends as an audience. Seems to me to be very 101 English.
2. You boys have pulling out the Annie Dillard card for years. And it is so old. "But, but...I have nothing against women...I've read Annie Dillard!" As if it makes you high and mighty that you have actually read a woman. And not only that but when you did comment on about her you said, "Even dillard thinks so and she's no feminist slouch." What exactly are you implying there Forest? Femnisit's have bad posture? Or the other more likely definition, feminists are "lazy, inept, or inefficient persons" (OED). Do you realize these are the kind of comments you make ALL THE TIME which cause all the women in your life to feel dismissed by you?
3. Men not writing about women is not reverence, it's fear. But that doesn't even matter, because the point is not the quantity of quality of the characters in a novel which are women, its WHO the authors writes to and who the author SPECIFICALLY barricades their book from. In reference to the comment "criticising books based on the on the moral or immoral position of the author is dangerous." I should say that I wasn't aware that chauvinism was a moral position, it must be sort like racism being a moral position, or do I have that wrong?
4. I specifically said in my original comment that these thoughts where "not an argument NOT to read certain books." And to with that you respond, "Where does this attitude lead us to if not straight down to censorship?" WHAT? Once again, I am not talking about these man'-man' books as though I wish we would through them in our next book burning pile. I don't think these books shouldn't be read, I think they hold a very important place in our canon. I think it's how they get read that's the problem. One, with the romantic eye, you boys start dreaming about how life would have been so good out west or whatever and it starts to rub off on your character and the next thing you know Amber hates men because she thought McCarty was full of testosterone. And the other problem is that they don't get read along side books that might give a different point of view. Which is unfortunate. There are lots of great female writers out there besides Dillard.
Here's a question I would love to have an answer to. Lets assume you have read at least two books a months since graduating from college 4 years ago. That's about 100 books that you have picked up on your own, not because a professor made you. Now clearly there are more books out there by men because they had about 1800 years on women. So I don't expect that your reading has been fifty-fifty in terms of gender but maybe 25 percent of the books you have read have been by women, I assume this because you guys obliviously ache for a sense of holistic well being in every other area of your life and literature is so important you must seek the same there. So, Forest, Wes, can you give me a list of 25 female authors you have read since college, books that you choose, not Dr. Taylor or Joey. And you can even count Dillard if you want.
Oh, and Wes when did you get so into George Eliot? I had no idea you had ever read her.
I think what Amber is saying about inclusivity here is paramount. If it’s obvious to me that I (as a representative of the female gender/sex) was not in the author’s mind during writing, I rarely get far in reading their work. We aren’t that hard to remember, we’re half the general population, and more than half of academia these days. I feel little responsibility to listen/read a speaker or author who hasn’t considered what my reaction to their work might be. There are plenty of others to read who do.
I’ve been thinking about similar things recently with helping edit JSP’s papers for school and starting to see more women theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars entering the scene. Amazing how in a field like biblical studies, which has been studied forever, that there are women who are looking at these texts, and using the same exegetical tools are able to find new interpretations. Pretty rewarding reading.
Second part is sort of off topic, and I apologize for that.
And: this whole topic is a fascinating example of social identity theory says my dorky psychological self. By the way. =)
The role of gender on authorship raises for me a larger question which i think needs to be considered in this discussion: What is the role of "great literature?"
Are great works 'great' because they coddle our own views? Becuase they articulate our own view of the world? Perhaps, if "great" is defined as what makes me "feel good." But I would venture that most of the readers of this blog would not agree with such an elementary view of "literature."
In my view, great literature is what is by virtue of its ability to challenge our view of ourselves, and reveal pieces to us about the "other." Now clearly, this talk of the "other" can be potentially harmful. It can fuel the already present chasm between oneself and an(other). But the language of the 'other' can also be understood in terms of individuality and differences. Recognizing someone else as another enables us to admit that we ourselves do not have "the whole picture." "The whole picture" is pieced together only with the help of others.
I think it is for this reason that we all must examine our choice "pieces" that are contributing to our picture.
Ann, I just want to make sure I am understanding you correctly. Are you expounding on my statement that the "testosterone books" (to quote myself-point 4) aren't getting "read along side books that give a different point of view"?
As for what makes great literature, that would take about six threads. And while I never intended it to be the discussion here I can start another thread for that if you all would like.
Yes, I am not saying that the "testosterone books" should not be read at all, but rather they must not be the only books on our "book lists."
My apologies for bringing up such a huge topic (i.e. what make "great literature"). I think it is an issue that must be kept at the forefront of this discussion, as our individual philosophies of literature will greatly influence our view of what books we ought to read.
This post is a little out of place but simply put, it answer's az's original question.
I've thought long and hard about this and here's my answer:
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I read that book when I was about fifteen and fell in love with it. Wharton's writing is sharp and her details are perfect.
She was a tough old broad and I think if I ever met her, I would have (like F. Scott Fitzgerald) gotten plastered and then arrived at her door. Still though, I think A of I is a great read, beautifully rendered, beautifully told through the likeable and arrogant male protagonist. - and on a side note, Scorsese did a really nice film from it.
And of course, I couldn't pick just one. I have to add Middlemarch by Eliot (didn't Woolf say it was an adult novel for adults?) which has incredible scope and full of yummy thoughtful characters.
I also have to add one more: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett is the only author I know that puts violence so succinctly and makes it just crush you. Crush you in a gorgeous way but still crush you. The man's writing is brilliant. That's all I can say for him. He's a fast read and he's a genius of the short, sweet and awful.
Okies. I think that was it. I'm really trying to limit myself here.
I'm going to skip replying to all the gender drama and go straight to my favorite book(s).
the brothers karamazov and the brothers k (back to back)
and i've finally read the name of the rose,
which i completely devoured in affection, licking my fingers (uh?). and now that i have quite tardily found eco, i am reading art and beauty in the middle ages, which he wrote at 26. bastard.
so my real answer to this question is
the brothers karamzov.
Cat,
Thank you for the recommendations, I haven't read any of them. Maybe we can even talk about them in person after I finish them.
And JC,
Both Brothers K and Brothers Karamazov are beautiful brilliant books. But, since I have aleady read them, I'm gonna mark your recommendation down as The Name of the Rose (just between you and me, I've been wanting to read it for a while, so thanks for the push).
Ross is crying ironic tears of laughter after talking to Amber last night. WOW. You rule. Oh, and I read a book of poetry by Nancy Bruff "My Talon in your Heart" and it's really clever. Talk to you soon. Priceless!
though it is not my favorite anymore but it held that position longer than any other book and, if you have not read it, would be the one i want you to read....
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
since you might have read it, i will give another option. again, not my favorite but it holds a place in my heart like few others and evokes a time of total joy and complete sadness, the paradox of feelings one can only have when extended relationships (either with a person or with a place) come to an end.
Isak Dinesen - Out of Africa
Amber! Such vehemence! Such viciousness! And such retribution!
Perhaps I do deserve as much.
However, all women did you say? Dismissed by me? That’s a serious accusation and I dont believe it. The three women you may be thinking of accused not only me of disregarding women, but also Luke, Wes, and Chris too. And only when we are all together is our forcefield operational.
here's that list from off the top of my head
Annie Dillard
Camile Paglia
Jumpa Lahiri
Louise Gluck
Sylvia Plath
Simone Weil
George Eliot
Helen Dewitt
Pauline Kael
Mary Shelley
Susan Sontag
Kathleen Norris
Birgit Baldwin
Virginia Woolf
Toni Morrison
Emily Dickinson
Karen Armstrong
Flannery O’conner
Well done Forest
Seriously, Amber, stop picking on Forest. You heard the boy. He needs at LEAST three other men to help him uphold the admitted forcefield of exclusion so it's not really fair to keep singling him out as if it's something he can do by himself.
anonymity? bwah? after all of this someone is going to post anonymously?
GRRR...how annoying. reveal your self!
this is the first time I feel good about being left out. Thanks FR for not including me with the women excluding assholes.
Yes, JDM I agree you lucked out being left out of this argument. Although if I were you I'd be careful, apparently Forest only excludes women when Wes and Luke and Chris join in, never mind the fact that Luke probably hasn't even seen these comments and Chris was defending me.
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