Well, friends, it’s National Book Month and I don’t want anyone to be left out of the fun! Being a writer, I have a passion for books. Novels especially. For the price of a book (or not if you’re a member of your local library, which you absolutely should be) you can travel, get lost in a problem that’s not yours, and glean insights to other cultures. Heck, to other ways of thinking in general.
As much as I love chomping into a juicy novel, I still know a few people whose appetites out-read me. And my sister-in-love Mary Ann is one of them!
A Good List!
If there’s anything else Mary Ann loves as much as books, it’s good list. So much so that she was compelled to subdivide the list I asked her for.
I love it!
As you may recall, I subdivided my Historical Fiction list into three categories! To jog your memory, here are the links…
First list: Historical fiction set inside U.S.
Second list: Historical fiction set outside U.S.
Third list: Historical fiction about WWII
But, back to Mary Ann’s lists…
All-time Favorites
(complete with subdivisions)
Traditional Canon Entries
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch by George Elliot
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
More Contemporary Additions
Still Life by A.S. Byatt
A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Why Tess of the d’Urbervilles?
Why is Tess her all-time favorite book, you ask? I’ll let her tell you…
“Similar to creaking open my Grandma Huskey’s rusty steam trunk, opening the pages of my well-worn copy of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles catapults me right back to my highly emotive Cure-listening, exposed-nerve sensitive teenage self, just introduced to the concept of close reading and feminist theory.
As a character, Tess’s fate seems relentlessly woeful, driven to ruin by the very institutions that profess to be bulwarks against destruction: the church and family. Hardy notoriously thumbs his nose at empty religious Victorian mores by adding the secondary title declaring his Tess “A Portrait of A Pure Woman” reinterpreting Tess’s fallen woman stigma into a heroine destroyed methodically by the callous reactions of others in response to her rape by a lascivious wealthy relative, Alec D’urberville; by poverty-stricken but title-grasping parents; by an unforgiving, unctuous spouse, the sanctimonious Angel Clare. Grrrr.”
Grrrr Indeed!
Poverty-stricken, title-grasping, unforgiving, unctuous, and sanctimonious characters make for a totally dysfunctional family, BUT a great piece of literature. This winter when I’m feeling sorry for myself because (cue whiny voice) “it’s too cold,” I might have to pull out Tess so I can get my attitude adjusted. I might get cold, but I don’t have those cranky people to deal with.
Literature does have a way of putting things in perspective.
What book have you read that gave you a new perspective on your life?