Thirty favorite books |
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Lookit There
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 20 Feb 2014 Location: Portland, OR Status: Offline Points: 3920 |
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Hooray for Harriet the Spy! This made my list, too. It's my favorite children's book, one I read so often when I was young (and have read a few times as an adult, too). Great characters, psychological insight, and just plain fun. |
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FFC1 12 Gay-ngry Men
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Holdo
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 27 Jan 2019 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 216 |
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Roughed out a list and quickly realised a few things: 1) It's nigh on impossible. The very idea of wanting fewer books in your life and/or home is colossally wrongheaded, especially if you are a writer. 2) Marie Kondo is a fraud and a philistine. 3) I need to read more women. The quick and dirty list has a male:female ratio of like 15:1, and includes several known or suspected misogynists. 4) I am a bad person. Here it is anyway, for what it's worth.
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Angara
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 29 Jan 2019 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 40 |
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I have such a love/hate relationship with Coetzee's works but I had to put Disgrace on my list at the very least. And even then I was going back and forth on it...but I'm glad to see it on someone else's list. For me, it's a difficult, devastating read. Definitely affecting. That's why it's on mine. I managed to clear out my bookshelves down to about several dozen last summer. I can deal with Marie Kondo's 30-book philosophy....so long as the rest can go in my e-reader Edited by Angara - 09 Apr 2019 at 9:10am |
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alpaca_shearer
NYC Midnight Regular Joined: 24 Jan 2019 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 503 |
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Glad to see someone else on the Cormac McCarthy love train! Something about all the pretty horses just speaks to me on a personal level. As a young man, the MC was the bad-ass steely eyed cowboy I wished I was. And the Road + no country for old men are just so incredibly well written... 1.) I think the point is to rid yourself of books that you no longer have any need or desire for. I purged my book collection of random crap I had acquired or been gifted that I didn't enjoy or no longer wanted, and it feels good to look at my book shelves now and all I see are books I love! 3.) I felt the EXACT same way. I looked at my pretty much all white male canon and thought to myself "Jesus, I need to read more inspiring female authors". Atwood was on my list, as was Hilary Mantel (historical fiction writer), but they just didn't quite make the cut for thirty. Either way i've been combing through the lists of others that appear to have similar tastes as mine (such as your list) to find some female authors to read.
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2FF R3:
">Where the Lilies Bloom |
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alpaca_shearer
NYC Midnight Regular Joined: 24 Jan 2019 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 503 |
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I was also surprised by how little certain authors have cropped up. Vonnegut being one of them (although not a personal favorite of mine he certainly is for many people) and also Thomas Hardy. Henry Miller I'm not surprised at. I agree with your sentiments but he doesn't get nearly the same amount of oxygen as some others (Twain, London, Steinbeck, Hemingway all get way more press than Miller IMO).
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2FF R3:
">Where the Lilies Bloom |
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nemmo
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 07 Feb 2018 Location: Eastham Status: Offline Points: 711 |
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I'm very much cheating here by counting series as one entry on my list.
1. The Stand - Stephen King 2. The Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling 3. The Adrian Mole series - Sue Townsend 4. The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber 5. The Protector of the Small series - Tamora Pierce 6. IT - Stephen King 7. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters 8. Life Mask - Emma Donoghue 9. Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters 10. Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue 11. The Queen and I - Sue Townsend 12. Atonement - Ian McEwan 13. Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller 14. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 15. The Seventh Gate - Richard Zimler 16. The Deaths - Mark Lawson 17. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 18. The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch 19. Emma - Jane Austen 20. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon 21. The Diary of a Provincial Lady - E.M. Delafield 22. Company of Liars - Karen Maitland 23. Dissolution - C.J. Sansom 24. Regeneration - Pat Barker 25. The Versions of Us - Laura Barnett 26. The Power - Naomi Alderman 27. The Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Catherine Webb 28. The Fifth Child - Doris Lessing 29. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 30. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
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SSC24 R1 G57: Into the Woods
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GallifreyGirl
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 30 Jan 2016 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 1653 |
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I feel like a lot of you are cheating by putting whole series down as a single entry. SOME OF US STRUGGLED AND WEPT AND THEN ONLY PICKED ONE.
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FFC20 R1 Born of the Sea
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jennifer.quail
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 07 Feb 2018 Status: Offline Points: 7931 |
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I couldn't reduce my collection of COOKBOOKS to thirty. Or just art books. Forget all books. In my house I've probably got around 500 (I've never counted.) My mother DOES count and I'm pretty sure her catalog numbers are in the high 9000s and I'm not sure if the children's books are in the same database.
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GallifreyGirl
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 30 Jan 2016 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 1653 |
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This is not a letting-you-off-the-hook post. This is a men-need-to-do-better-but-here's-some-things-you-need-to-know-to-help-combat-your-subconscious-biases post. There have been multiple studies that show that both men and women have trouble accepting women's voices and women's input in a conversation. I can't remember the exact statistics off the top of my head, but the studies yielded results something like this: when women contribute 15-20% of the time, participants view this as equal contribution between men and women. When women contribute 40-50% of the time, men and women both perceive this as overwhelmingly women-centered. And men especially start to get un-f**king-comfortable with the level of women's participation. So basically: if you're uncomfortable with the number of women's voices included, you've probably hit the minimum number for getting started. (I don't mean this to be harsh. As a woman in academia, I've had to present this information to my male department chair and male colleagues, and even some of my women colleagues, on multiple occasions, when defending my choices of texts to teach. Last semester I even had to explain my choices to a white male student who was uncomfortable that, out of the 40 or 50 shorts & poems we read in my Intro to CW class, only 2 were by white men [I did not, as I so desperately wanted to, play him the world's tiniest violin]. I teach in a PWI, in a PW state, so I feel it is EXTRA necessary to expose my students to writers outside the white cishet canon).
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FFC20 R1 Born of the Sea
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nod1v1ng
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 26 Jul 2016 Location: ChillybytheSea Status: Offline Points: 12497 |
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today, you are my favorite human.
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