The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends (or, if you're lazy like me, whichever number seems appropriate), including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. Do yours before you read anyone else's....
OK, here we go...
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
Horton Hatches the Egg, Dr. Seuss
Emma, Jane Austen
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Big Red, Jim Kjelgaard
Introduction to Population Genetics Theory, C.C. Li
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
I probably spent more than 15 minutes, but not a lot more. I'm kind of surprised at some of the things that bubbled up from my subconscious to wind up on the list. Some are books I haven't thought about in... decades. Big Red? Where did that come from? They're not all books I loved. For example, I had a love/hate relationship with Intro to Population Genetics Theory. And I definitely did not love Moby Dick. It was assigned in one of the few English classes I ever had to take. This was back at the dawn of time, you realize, but it really stuck with me. It really stuck with me. The book and the class about did me in. Tuffy, English major that she is, loved it.
I found it got easier to come up with books as I went along. By the time I got to the end, I was having to choose between books with equally valid claim to a place on the list. For some authors, it was hard to pick one book that stuck with me more than others. Sherman Alexie? Terry Pratchett? Stephen Jay Gould? Toni Morrison? If they wrote it, and I read it, it stuck with me.
Well, that was fun. Comparing my list to Tuffy's, I look like a troglodyte. I haven't even read most of the stuff on her list, and wouldn't be inclined to try. It looks like work.
Maybe that's why I wasn't an English major.
Posts
Neat challenge! As I noted before, I was an English major (BA & MA) and I jotted down many of the classical English canon works right away. But I also love mysteries, anthologies of short stories, plays, and poetry. So, just listing 15 books took me a few minutes. I also then wrote down current authors, including all their works. I also read young adult lit, since I taught that age group and I liked to be involved in what they read. This was a fun assignment!!
ReplyDeletePeace,
Muff
Will the Circle be Unbroken? - Studs Terkel
ReplyDeleteBrave New World - Aldous Huxley
Kvinner i Kriggen - ?
The Dhammapadda
Jonathon Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
Siddartha - Herman Hesse
Final Gifts - Maggie Callanan & Patricia Kelley
On Death and Dying - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
In My Father's House - Dorothy Allred Solomon
The Religion's of Man - Huston Smith
The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
And, lots of biographies, and, well Clive Cussler in younger years (ugh) and...and...
Is that fifteen yet?
I have to admit that I have not read one book on your list. I just did my list, but it won't be posted until later, after I add to it. This was fun, and I did finish in 15 minutes, even with the occasional Google for an author's name/spelling.
ReplyDeleteWell I still have yet to come up with a list of 15 in 15 LOL.
ReplyDeleteI never really was a pleasure reader. My mom would get frustrated with me - "don't you ever read something just for the fun of it?".
The past few years I have started doing just that - reading just for fun.
I do sneak in a few techno weenie books as my friends call them. Lets see - I have the Elements of Style somewhere in storage. I have read Catch-22 and Moby Dick.
Fun post -