The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Leah and Rachael by Orson Scott Card
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomas
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
What Should I Do With My Life?* by Po Bronson
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouc
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer
Atticus by Ron Hansen
I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson
Simple Prayers by Michael Golding
Shopgirl by Steve Martin
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland
Left Behind by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter* by Carson McCullers
Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
In Flanders Fields* by Leon Wolff
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie
Tribulation Force* by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Goddess for Hire by Sonia Singh
Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian
H. M. S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian
The Mauritius Command by Patrick O’Brian
Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian
The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian
The Surgeon’s Mate by Patrick O’Brian
The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brian
Treason’s Harbour by Patrick O’Brian
I was very much underemployed in my early and mid 20s, which left ample time for reading!
The Years of Rice and Salt was another recommendation from my friend. I liked it much better than Quicksilver but still just wasn’t into that genre at the time or something. He raved about it. I felt neutral about it. Now, I can’t remember a single plot point from it, which I think is telling.
I had heard that The Rule of Four was like a “thinking man’s Da Vinci Code” so I picked it up. It was good, and certainly a page-turner. I remember enjoying the setting of Ivy League schools as I was very into the idea of self worth being based on education credentials at that time.
I’m almost positive that I read Bridget Jones’ Diary in reaction to having seen and liked the movie. It’s still one of my favorite movies. I re-watch it all the time. I haven’t re-read the book.
I read The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac because I felt like everyone should read Kerouac. I don’t think I feel that way now, but at the time I was influenced by a lot of Beat poets, mainly Ginsberg, and he had a major hard on for Kerouac. The story was vivid and I remember it well, but not with any fondness that made me want to read more of Kerouac’s work.
When I visited The Louvre in Paris in 2011, I remember virtually running through a specific wing, trying to find the tapestry The Lady and the Unicorn was based on. My reading habits have definitely influenced my travel destinations over the years. I find myself at museums far more often than beaches, but I know I wouldn’t love art like I do now if it weren’t for literature about art lighting that fire within me.
The thing I liked best about The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer was the description of the archives and processes of conservation of ancient documents. This is a major theme of my current work in progress.
Shopgirl by Steve Martin had a huge impact on me. I remember reading the novella basically in one sitting during a road trip with some girlfriends. I’m sure they thought I was being rude as hell not talking to them, but I couldn’t put the work down. Steve Martin is an astonishingly good author. The sensitivity with which he portrays mental illness is masterful, and his writing of his female protagonist is unusually deft for a male author. Too often we see men writing women who are mere caricatures of femininity, but Martin avoids this trap by populating his novel with a small cast of fully realized people. This is one case where I read the work before seeing the movie.
“This novella helped me gain such a better understanding about mental illnesses and how they can affect relationships and careers. It paints such a vivid sketch of the interior life of a creative person who is convinced that she is coping with her depression perfectly well, but the reader can see the truths that she is blinded to. It held up a mirror to my own struggles with mental illness and how being in denial about how much depression and anxiety were impacting my life was holding me back from personal and professional successes. ”
Chocolat was a book club read. I did enjoy the movie quite a bit. I remember it being very faithful to the book. I really like French literature, but I don’t believe I’d really delved into it much at this point in my life other than struggling through Le Fantôme de l'Opéra in the original French in high school. This was an easy window into French society without it being a translation.
The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland is another in the list of art-meets-historical fiction that I expected to like more than I actually did.
I picked up a battered paperback of Interview with a Vampire and thought I’d like it since I generally do like novels that I’ve read after having seen the movie. It surprised me by being a much quicker read than I’d thought it would be. I haven’t read much Anne Rice, and doubt I will anytime soon, but she’s good at what she does.
In Flanders Fields and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are marked with an asterisk in my list because I never finished them. They were both attempts to read a classic that never resulted in a completion. I suppose I found them to be too slow and didn’t make myself apply my mind to finishing them. They are still on my shelf, waiting for me.
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds was a book club read. Having grown up in a religion that was severely restrictive towards women, a lot of the story hit too close to home. The misogyny in religion is one of the main things that repel me. I remember this book being vivid, but the climax was somewhat contrived.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was also a book club read, and I’m glad that I read it because it offered such a radically different perspective than my Western-focused book diet up until that time. I really enjoyed the description in this book, even if I did have a hard time connecting with the characters.
J.M. Barry’s novelization of his play Peter Pan was written after the play’s major success. Y’all, it is WILD. I had to look up if the book was a badly written “knock off” novelization. It’s not. It’s just THAT weird. The podcast Fuckbois of Literature nailed their commentary about Peter Pan, so I will direct you there instead of writing more on this subject.
I was finally in sync with the Harry Potter fandom in 2005. As a 24-year-old, I went to the midnight release party to buy my copy of The Halfblood Prince. I remember staying up all night reading and having to go on a bridesmaid dress shopping trip with my friend’s very religious mother the next day. She asked me how I’d been and I mentioned I was super tired because I’d been up all night reading Harry Potter, and she literally forbade me from talking about it in her presence. I wasn’t even allowed to say the words “Harry Potter”. People were so ludicrously afraid of magic in children’s literature when those books were first being released! Coming off of just having read Peter Pan probably gave me an interesting perspective on this phenomenon. How are the classic Disney films considered acceptable entertainment for children, featuring magic and dragons and fairies and kidnapping ghost boys like Peter, but a boy at a school for magic is heresy?
Like all good evangelicals, I made the attempt to read the Left Behind books. They were bad. I never finished the second one.
Goddess for Hire by Sonia Singh was a book club book. I think we liked the idea of broadening our horizons by taking on authors from different backgrounds, so we dove into this magical realism with a Hinduism twist book. I remember people being quite put out by the premise and how the book presented Hinduism. I just found it bit predictable and dull.
There are some things I read during this time that did not stay with me at all. I have very little memory of reading any of the following: Atticus by Ron Hansen, Simple Prayers by Michael Golding, The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie
It would be hard to overstate how hard I loved the Master and Commander books by Patric O’Brien. Of course, I came to read them after seeing the movie. I’ll elaborate in our next installment.