@zazial tagged me in a meme, so what the heck. Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag [ten] friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them. 1. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susannah Clarke 2. Ahab's Wife - Sena Jeter Naslund 3. Wise Child - Monica Furlong 4. Rose Daughter - Robin McKinley 5. Anathem - Neal Stephenson 6. Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich 7. The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo 8. The Right to Write - Julia Cameron 9. Silas Marner - George Eliot 10. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard This doesn't include all my favorites, and some of them I haven't lived with long enough to call them favorites yet, but they're all books that I carry with me in some way. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes big ones. I often find myself on the verge of quoting "The world is dark, and light is precious" from Despereaux. Julia Cameron is better known for The Artist's Way, but I haven't read that; The Right to Write is the one that defined what I guess I'd call my ethic of art creation. The Clarke, the Naslund, and the Stephenson are doorstop novels that created worlds that will never be gone from me. The Erdrich takes up less physical space but an enormous amount of mental territory; it's tremendous, hard, compassionate, magical, historical, kaleidescopic--better in my opinion than The Round House, which finally won her the National Book Award. Wise Child and Silas Marner I read at different times in the process of growing up, but they're both enormously wise. And Annie Dillard is simply a goddess. No one else crafts essays with her particular urgency and beauty and terror and spiritual authority. I'm trying to get more cultural/national/racial diversity into my reading patterns nowadays than is reflected in this list. Tagging anyone who wants to do it; I'm not fond of telling my friends what to post on their blogs, and anyway the tagging-users function on Tumblr never seems to work for me, as see above.
