Tumgik
#shit if forgot about Calvino!!! baron in the trees and invisible cities are definitely top 10
bookish-bee · 1 year
Text
Thank you @figuringthengsout for tagging me <3333
rules: 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
Soo tired it’s very late so I’ll be brief. In order I read them, not in order of importance to me
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - every mother and her daughter should read. My first profound read.
Crime and Punishment - the triumph of my fourteenth year. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.1 (it’s Nicolas Slater’s version. You’re welcome)
Ordinary People - found a similar person in Conrad. And cried. A lot.
The Plague - hahaha covid. Incredible. Began my love of Camus and then I got into philosophy and then died a little bit
All Quiet on the Western Front - the most influential a book has been on my life. Started the WWI interest and got me into the trench poets and started my research paper and so much more
The metamorphosis - learned so much about disability and what my family is. Read it so many times.
Inferno - got me through a rough spot. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.2 (I SWEAR BY Dorothy L Sayers. She’s incredible)
Patrick Modiano Missing Person - I can’t even talk about this one except to say that it changed me and that I want to write like him
Eichmann in Jerusalem - began my love of nonfiction and journalism and my obsession with the guardian and the Atlantic and the New Yorker, etc and now I spend so much money on newspapers and magazines I blame Arendt and her terrific reporting.
I didn’t include any poetry plays or short fiction because that would be cheating. Would require a whole other list for those.
And, note, these are the books that impacted me profoundly. Not exactly pleasureful books I got into, how it works for me in fandom. That would, again, be another list. (Aftg, sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie)
3 notes · View notes