my favorite books
I don’t know how to answer when someone asks me what my favorite book is.
It’s much harder than saying my favorite tv show (Avatar: The Last Airbender) or my favorite movie (Castle in the Sky, or Sense and Sensibility).
I know why this is the case, why it’s easier for me to choose.
Books have been my preferred entertainment ever since I was a kid. I’ve read so many books and countless of these have grabbed a hold of my soul and shaken me around in ways that a tv show or movie has never been able to achieve.
The reason for this, I believe, is my runaway imagination. I’ve always been imaginative, constantly creating and innovating, investigating possibilities and embracing the unexpected. And with books, one is able to indulge in imagination in a different way than watching or listening to something. I can generate what these characters look like, what they sound like, what places they inhabit all on my own, and that’s so diverting for me. I’m able to fully immerse myself in these worlds with ease, and because of that, their impact is much greater on my psyche.
I also find myself thinking more deeply about what actually constitutes a favorite when talking about books. Do I pick the one that amused me the most, or do I pick the one that felt like it was scraping my insides with how much I saw myself in each page as I was reading? Do I pick the one where I felt the most connected to the main character, or the one that threw me into a realm of pure escapism?
For this reason, I typically name the book that I’ve read the most recently that I feel represents one of these categories. It was East of Eden by John Steinbeck for a while, as I reread it late last year for maybe the fifth time, and could not get over how much I saw myself within the pages of the book. But now it might be Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, because it is such an entertaining, dramatic, and romantic little book, and I reread it just last month.
It will change again soon enough. I’m always discovering new ways to look at stories and new stories to look at. So I decided to make a list, filled with what I currently considered to be favorites. The list is split into two: tried and true (I’ve read this book multiple times and have loved it each time), and loved, yet untested (I’ve read this book once and loved it, but have not yet read it again)
Tried and True: East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer, Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer, Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin, Augustus by John Williams, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, The Iliad by Homer, The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, The Poetry of Sappho.
Loved, Yet Untested: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Babel by R. F. Kuang, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Musicking by Christopher G. Small, Quiet by Susan Cain, The Aeneid by Vergil, The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
It's funny to see the different themes that emerge from this list. I obviously like historical romance and classical literature, but there's also a theme of investigating humanity, what does it mean to be human, what does it look like, but I guess one could argue all stories draw on that theme in some way or another.
~dys