Michaela tagged me in this and several days later Ive thought of 10 books. List 10 books that have stayed with you. Dont take a lot of time and dont overthink it. They dont have to be great literary works, just books that have stuck with you. 2. Tag me so I can see your list. 3. Tag 9 more people. 1. The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. This is the goal: to write a book of digressions that inadvertently loop into the primary thread of the book, which is human historys inexorable pull toward death and destruction. 2. Stoner by John Williams. This is the other goal: to write a book so straightforward that most of its powers are ambient. 3. Mothers Milk by Edward St. Aubyn. The best in the Patrick Melrose series mostly for how he for once inhabits perspectives more interesting than Patrick Melrose (i.e. his wife, his sons). Perfect sentences in here. 4. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. The only Cather Ive read, though Im in the middle of My Antonía. Could read her patient, evocative descriptions of the American desert, all drifting, ruddy gradients, for basically the rest of my life. 5. Say Uncle by Kay Ryan. The only poet. 6. The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever. Should probably list his short stories collection but for some reason this clawed deeper. It doesnt work as a novel at all; its essentially compiled short stories about one New England family whose inner natures are magnetized toward bad luck. 7. Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion. At times still my favorite book. 8. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I read at least a paragraph of one of these essays before I start writing. 9. Água viva by Clarice Lispector. Read this in the turning center of a nervous breakdown. It worsened it considerably. 10. The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. Never gonna describe minutiae this observantly or intelligently. Reread the footnote about vinyl weekly. Apparently books have only begun to stay with me as of four years ago. The top two and No. 5 were all recommendations from Miles. Dont know who to tag. Maura? Evan? Chad? Feel free to also not do this.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:15:05 +0000
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