1. First book to leave a lasting impression?
Charlotte’s Web
Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
Here I am, many many years later, feeling that same mix of hurt and joy at those words.
2. Which author would you most like to be?
I’m thinking maybe Madeleine L’Engle. She seemed like she has had a really nice life with a good balance between art and love and duty and pleasure. She also made a shitload of money. But most writers don’t have it so good, and most of them have miserable poverty-struck lives. So let me not play it safe and let me then say: In terms of what she actually WROTE? I’d like to be Charlotte Bronte. Because, seriously. I would love to be inside her head for just an hour or so, see what was going on in there.
3. Name the book that has most made you want to visit a place?
Hmmm. Many thoughts are in my mind right now.
I have to say Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe made me ACHE to go Mr. and Mrs. Beaver’s “house”. Seriously. I wanted to be there so bad.
Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
A House Like a Lotus
The Shipping News
I love this question – I’ll have to think more upon it.
4. Which contemporary author will still be read in 100 years?
Oh boy. This is always a fun question – like: “what movies today will be considered classics in the future”?? (cough Groundhog Day cough)
I would say:
Madeleine L’Engle
John Irving
Probably AS Byatt
Stephen King
Edna O’Brien
Michael Chabon
Hmm. Just guessing. These people seem to have something timeless about their work.
5. Which book would you recommend to a teenager reluctant to try ‘literature’?
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. Name your best recent literary discovery.
Hmmm. Probably Jincy Willett. Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather
7. Which author’s fictional world would you most like to live in?
The Beavers house in Narnia. I know I’ve said it twice, but it certainly bears repeating.
8. Name your favorite poet?
Auden and Yeats. I refuse to choose. Thanks!
9. What’s the best non-fiction title you’ve read this year?
I can’t remember every book I’ve read this year – but the first book that comes to mind was Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives
10. Which author do you think is much better than his/her reputation?
Awesome question.
The first thing that comes to mind is Elinor Lipman. She’s got to be one of the most under-rated writers out there. I mean, she’s successful, whatever – but she’s so damn good. She doesn’t get the props at ALL for how good she is. That’s the damn shame with this chick lit bullshit. Really good authors get lumped in with mediocre authors because … the genre fits?? But it doesn’t really. Lipman is a real novelist – she’s not a gimmick – she’s been doing her thing for years, and I LOVE her. (I loved coming across her name in this post – and reading Fay Weldon’s essay about Lipman. Couldn’t agree more.)
Oh – and Stephen King. Yes, he over-writes. Yes, he needs an editor. Yes, sometimes he chooses an image that is just flat-out wrong. But this dude can write. And it makes me mad when people blow him off because he mainly writes in a genre.
And here is the second meme. And I’m sorry – but I truly cannot remember where I found each of these. I saved them a while back to “get to later” and now … oh well.
One book that changed your life.
Harriet the Spy
One book that you have read more than once.
Mating: A Novel
Hopeful Monsters (British Literature Series)
Emily of New Moon (The Emily Books, Book 1)
It
All of Anne Lindbergh’s journals
I read books “more than once” all the time, apparently. There are a ton more – but these are the first that leap to my mind
One book that you would want on a desert island.
War and Peace
One book that made you laugh.
I Was A teen-age Dwarf
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
Winner of the National Book Award – by Jincy Willett
Lives of the Saints
I’m not talking about chuckling – or smiling – or thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s funny.” I’m talking about guffawing and snorting and wiping away tears – making an embarrassing scene if you are in public (kind of like when I saw THIS yesterday)
Actually, At Swim-Two-Birds
One book that made you cry.
Atonement: A Novel
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
One book you wish had been written.
Ulysses
One book you wish had never been written.
I’m not really digging this question. There are plenty of books I have hated – but do I wish they had never been written? No, cause someone else might love it.
One book you are currently reading.
Re-reading The White Album
Reading Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood
Also reading the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton
One book you have been meaning to read.
The Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton. Also Saturday by Ian McEwan. And the new John Irving.
Charlotte’s Web is the first book I remember reading from cover to cover without stopping. I don’t know how old I was, but I remember sitting in my bed, starting that book…and I could not put it down. I just sat there and read it…until I was done. Just sitting on my bed, my cheeks wet with tears, done, done, done. SUCH a great book.
These are awesome memes. Have you read Peter Pan? I just read Peter Pan recently and J.M. Barrie’s writing is so wonderful. He captures the meaning of “imagination” in a palpable way. I was trying to think of which fictional place I would like to live in, and the first thing I thought was Neverland, but I feel like Barrie’s response to that would be that when you’re reading his book, if you let yourself really go there, then you HAVE lived there for a bit. Maybe that’s cheesy. But anyway: there are some passages in that are just stunning and if you haven’t read it, you must.
Oh, and hear hear re: Stephen King. I actually stopped reading him after reading Gerald’s Game because that book made me sick to my stomach–oh man–in such a palpable way that I literally haven’t picked up a Stephen King book since, but I should give him another chance. Pet Semetary, Misery, The Shining, It, Different Seasons, Deloris Claiborne…the worlds he created in all of those books, so so good. Even Cujo and Salem’s Lot, which I guess are more pulpy, but they had me on edge the whole time I was reading them.
IT is the only King book I’ve read twice. (The first time I read it was in junior high school and I remember there were some sex scenes in it and as I was reading the book I felt SO ADULT.) (Which is so dorky.)
IT is a great American novel, as far as I’m concerned. That was another one where I closed the book – feeling so much better for having read it – but feeling really sad as well. The book is really about friendship, and letting go of youth, but … an acknowledgement of the importance of those childhood friends … He just so GETS that on such a deep level. Sure, there’s a monster in it (and excuse me but evil clowns and huge “s”es? Is there anything more terrifying??????) – but it’s about something much deeper.
The only book that made me me cry and I mean CRY was Elizabeth Berg’s “Talk Before Sleep”. It is the story of a woman who is dying of cancer, and all her great friends basically come and help her die the death she wants to die. It just reminds me so much of you, and me and Betsy and Mere and Michele and our nights on the deck, and out at the pool and on the beach and in your apartment. When I read the book for the first time and the main character died, I cried so hard that it woke up Tom from two rooms away. He thought that something had happened in real life- I scared the crap out of him. I love that book- Berg really clinches the relationships women have with their friends.
I remember you telling me about that, Beth. I think you told me about it at that little second-hand bookstore we went to in Nutley? For some reason I remember talking about Elizabeth Berg there – do you remember that?? Actually, it wasn’t a LITTLE second-hand bookstore – it was actually kinda huge!!!
First book that really made an impression on me was Black Beauty. I remember crying at the end of Charlotte’s Web–also Flowers for Algernon. I get a little choked up just thinking about that one, though it’s thirty years since I read it.
Centennial and Chesapeake made me really want to go to the West and the Chesapeake Bay, respectively. Still do.
And after I got to about the fourth question in the list that I reflexively answered, “Lord of the Rings,” I decided I probably ought to get out more.
Look who’s catching all the chatter! Stephen King! He’s our lifetime’s version of Charles Dickenson. He even aped Chuck with the release of The Green Mile, which I learned (from reading his website) that Dickie’s books were many times released in serial format.
I love King. Anne Rice paints a prettier picture, but Stephen gets in my head.
And yes…I read IT twice.