July 18, 2001

Books

First, here's the picture I promised. If you know me, you'll know it's appropriate
to put it on my books page. You can't see the new haircut too clearly in this, but
at least you can get the gist:


Someone over on href="http://www.thenetstar.org/librisEXmachina/index.php3">Libris Ex Machina
says everyone should have a books page. On reflection, I decided she's right. And
after all, as Phelps used to say, this site is about "rowing, books, rowing,
books...." and I already have a rowing page. So here is a list comprising The Best
Books I Know Of. Some of these have changed my life; some are just the ones I keep
going back to. If you love the same books, you'll already know why they're The
Best; if you don't like them, our tastes are probably too different for me to
explain to you. If you like some of them, try the rest.

size="+1">Books some Foolish Marketer Thought Were for Children

I
find the idea that I should have stopped reading these when I grew up just plain
silly; after all, people were still writing them. And there are also all the ones
I hadn't found yet -- should I be deprived of those by my age? No, I say, a
thousand times no.

  • The Dark is Rising series, by Susan
    Cooper: There just isn't anything out there better than these, especially books 2,
    4, and 5.
  • the Harry Potter books, by J.K. Rowling: Amazingly
    enough, for once millions of people are right. Still getting better,
    too.
  • the Narnia books, by C.S. Lewis: I like The Lion,
    the Witch, and the Wardrobe
    and The Last Battle best, but they're all
    good.
  • The House of Arden and Harding's Luck and the
    Bastables books (The Treasure-Seekers, The Wouldbegoods and The
    New Treasure-Seekers
    ) by E. Nesbit: these are my favorites, but I like all of
    her magic books, as well as The Railway Children
  • Rilla of
    Ingleside
    , The Blue Castle and Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M.
    Montgomery: Though again, I like most of her books.
  • Little
    Women
    and An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott: I rarely read
    these or her others anymore, because they're printed on my brain.
  • Madeleine L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time and its successors, the Austin books, the
    Poly O'Keefe books. Actually, I like everything she's written (except her poetry)
    and love a lot of it. Though her belief systems is different than mine, I still
    learn from her every time I reread her.
  • All the Pooh books,
    including the poetry ones, by A.A. Milne: A Writer of Very Great Brain. Only the
    real Milne books, though: not the Disney versions, not all the new stupid ones
    people keep putting out for kids (I keep waiting for Winnie the Pooh Says No to
    Drugs), not the Tao of Pooh, not Piglet Becomes a Corporate Raider or whatever the
    latest attempt to capitalize on the franchise is.
  • I also still reread Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family books, some of
    Gene Stratton Porter, John Bellairs, Kipling (Stalky and the two Puck
    books) and Frances Hodgeson Burnett. And though I don't reread them any more, I
    should credit Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry, Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang (the
    kiddie Disney version) and The Poky Little Puppy for getting me started on
    a reading binge that shows no sign of
    abating.



General
Fiction

  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: to my
    mind, the best of hers, though I like Persuasion and others a lot
    too.
  • Freedom and Necessity by Emma Bull and Steven Brust:
    Often shelved with the SF, but shouldn't be, though it may possibly be a slightly
    alternate reality. The best description of a couple I'd want to be half of since
    Dorothy Sayers.
  • Miss Read's Thrush Green and Fairacre books. Often compared with
    the Mitford books, but shouldn't be. Miss Read's stories may be cozy, but they're
    closer to literature than treacle.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

  • Number of the
    Beast
    , Starship Trooper, Time Enough for Love, and Friday
    by Robert A. Heinlein: RAH shaped quite a lot of my worldview. (Louisa May Alcott
    probably did the rest.)
  • War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull:
    Stylish and folkloric both. I also like Orient and her and Will
    Shetterley's books set in the Borderlands
  • Moonheart and
    Yarrow, by Charles de Lint: I love the way he mixes mythologies. I like
    most of the rest of his, also, the latest ones are a little
    repetitive.
  • Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. It's probably enough to say that three
    major authors more of less forced their publisher to bring this back in print.
    Wait, no it's not: I should also mention that spotting all the references in here
    is about the most fun a bibliophile can have.
  • All of Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer stories and novels. I
    also like John Thunstone and Judge Keith Pursuivant. Currently, his stories from
    Weird Tales and other pulps are being reissued in a nice hardback
    series.
  • I also like Terri Windling, Patricia Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Gael
    Baudino, some of Mercedes Lackey, some of Anne McCaffrey. I wish the first two of
    these would write a bit more -- and the last two would write a bit
    less.

Mystery

  • Gaudy Night and Busman's
    Honeymoon
  • by Dorothy L. Sayers. For the exquisitely built, delicately
    balanced marriage Harriet and Peter build together.

  • Aunt
    Dimity's Death
    , and its successors by Nancy Atherton: Not great literature or
    great mysteries, but a comforting fairy tale.
  • A Free Man of
    Color
    and its sequels, by Barbara Hambly. I like these even better than her
    SF. The characters and the setting in New Orleans, circa the 1820s when it was
    changing rapidly, are incredible.
  • Dame Agatha Christie. I grew up on Poirot, but these days I prefer Marple, and
    I wish she'd written more Tommy and Tuppence.
  • Lately I've been working my way through Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who
    stories. Again, not great lit, but amusing, and they're reasonably well written.
    Too many bestselling mystery series are so badly done in one way or another that
    if I gave in to my baser impulses my walls would look like Swiss cheese, with
    mystery-book-sized holes.

Nonfiction

  • Le Ton Beau de Marot by
    Douglas Hofstadter: One of these days I'll go back for a degree in Cognitive
    Science or Linguistics because of this book.
  • A New Lifetime
    Reading Plan
    by Clifton Fadiman and John S. Majors: incredibly erudite but
    opinionated enough to be interesting.
  • Ex Libris: Confessions of
    a Common Reader
    , by Anne Fadiman: I loved these when they were columns in
    Civilization, and I love them now when they're collected into a
    book.

I'll add more to this list as I develop more
favorites.

Posted by dichroic at July 18, 2001 04:59 PM
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