A follow up post to the one from last Saturday before I resume normal service, to include all the ones I didn't have time to do last week! I haven't nearly finished - which means there WILL be a Part 3!
So here are some more :
My Traitor's Heart by Rian Malan
Reading Cry, The Beloved engendered in me a deep fascination with Africa, particularly South Africa, a country/continent I still long to visit.
Rian Malan's autobiographical piece reflects upon the difficulties faced by the white man living in the Apartheid system and the guilt within. Rian's guilt is amplified on this issue because one of his ancestors was Daniel Malan - one of the original architects of the Apartheid system. In this book Malan confronts both history and his own conscience - the struggle to break free of the racist thoughts that have been bred into him from childhood. Very, very, moving.
Tess Of The D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
I studied Thomas Hardy's poetry at A Level and this filled me with contempt for him - as a consequence, I had deliberately read none of his novels, convinced I would hate them. In a way, I only read Tess because "I had to" as I used to attend literature masterclasses for fun and this book happened to be chosen. Tess had a very profound effect on me in many ways, leaving me a total wreck at its conclusion. Aside from its plot, its general descriptive prose is utterly beautiful. It's heartbreaking though, devastating, in fact.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
I remember, in my final year of university, shutting myself away in the evenings for a week just to read Middlemarch.
A great many better people than I have called Middlemarch the greatest novel ever written in the English Language, although it is not, ultimately, my favourite novel - they are not wrong, it is.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Gregory David Roberts broke free of a maximum security prison in Australia and went on the run, spending a considerable amount of time in India. He writes how when he ultimately was recaptured, prison guards repeatedly destroyed his manuscript. The persistent redrafting of this tale honed it into an absolute gem of a novel, a beauty. I say novel and not autobiography as Roberts freely admitted taking a level of literary and dramatic licence. Unputdownable.
Fall On Your Knees by Anne Marie Macdonald
When Materia is 13 yrs old, she elopes with James Piper and is promptly disowned by her family. Following the birth of their first daughter Kathleen, James becomes an obsessed with her, an obsession which grows dark. Kathleen is followed by Mercedes, Frances and Lily and the story is of the four sisters, the damage inflicted upon them and the damage they inflict on each other. A relentlessly tragic, intense, novel, but one that is well worth the read.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield is, of those I've read, my favourite Dickens, though I have still by no means read them all. Another 'bildungsroman' about a young boy growing into young man and the characters he encounters along the way; I cannot understand why Great Expectations, which I think is pretty over-rated, actually, often supercedes this in the general pecking order of Dickens novels in the nation's affections. I have a friend who was unable to take to Dickens at all, because she hated the two she had read, one being Great Expectations. I insistently pressed David Copperfield on her, and she loved it!
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
I've owned a signed copy of Birdsong which was a personal gift to me from Sebastian Faulks since I was 16. The definitive Great War novel, there's also an amazingly smutty bit right at the start as our hero Stephen has an affair with his bosses wife Isabel before being conscripted into the military. I just couldn't watch the recent TV adaptation - I couldn't bear to see another person's imagining of it, because I loved the version in my head, as with Fall On Your Knees, I really need to reread this soon, it's been a long time.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
I remember struggling to get into this : The first few opening chapters are quite random, including a chapter on Mussolini and on the daughter of a politician, neither of which are in any way relevant to the novel as a whole. When it gets going however it's a different story and so many of the different plots are wonderful and say so many important things about love not just the love between the two romantic leads, Antonio & Pelagia but also the love shown by Carlo Piero Guercio to others over the course of the novel. Like Birdsong, Cry The Beloved Country, The Poisonwood Bible and Fall On Your Knees, I read this novel as a teenager, and I'm wondering whether the novels you read at a highly impressionable age are ultimately the ones which leave the most lasting impression.
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair, Thackeray's scathing attack on 19th Century high society as seen through the eyes of manipulative social climber Becky Sharpe whilst it has much social comment to make is also a thumping good read with fascinating characters.
Light A Penny Candle And The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy
OK, soooo my literary guilty secret is Maeve Binchy, one of the reasons I was so incensed when Amanda Craig had the temerity to be scathing of her when she died. I read them as a teenage girl, and no, they aren't all good but these two, particularly, are:
In Light A Penny Candle, loner Violet sends her only child Elizabeth to Ireland as an evacuee in World War 2 to her only friend Eileen O'Connor. Eileen's daughter Aisling is the same age and the two bond for life. Growing up in Ireland changes Elizabeth's life as Irish culture and Catholic customs seep into her during her most formative years. I do love this book, but then, I love Ireland!
In The Glass Lake, Eleven year old Kit becomes aware that her parents marriage is not normal and her mother suffers from depression. When one night her mother vanishes it is believed she has committed suicide in the Lake. But Kit's mother had a secret, and it's not the end of her story quite yet... Another great coming of age family saga from Binchy- and perhaps a suggestion for those of my readership who arent always "up for" heavier tomes.
PART 3 COMING SOON!
Showing posts with label Favourites!. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Favourites!. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 July 2013
Saturday, 20 July 2013
On My All Time Favourite Books (Part 1)
I've been running this blog since 2011 now and the books I review are all the books I read that month. I've never done a blogpost about my favourite novels. So, I thought I'd do one now! Though some of the books I've read over the course of the blog have earned a special place with me, like Genus, A Song Of Ice And Fire, The Crane Wife and Fingersmith, this post is just for the ones that have been with me some time.
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
This novel has been my favourite novel since I was 14 years old. Written in 1948, during Apartheid in South Africa, I have read it easily more than 10 times. In this novel humble Stephen Kumalo is a pastor in a declining village which has struggled to cope with the coming of modern more Westernised society and the erosion of tribal culture. His sister, his brother and his son have all left the village for Johannesburg in hopes of a better life. Their contact with Stephen initially frequent, became sporadic and then vanished entirely. One day another priest from the city writes to Stephen and tells him his sister is ill and he must come to Johannesburg, and so begins a beautiful tale of forgiveness and redemption, beautiful not only in what it says but how it says it. In 18 yrs, I have not read a book that I deem better than it.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I wrote my university dissertation on these two novels, which was rather apt as I was living in Yorkshire at the time. Though Emily never married and rarely left her home, she managed to write a tale of incredible, though often dark, passion, between foster siblings Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff that both Charlotte and Anne were said to be horrified by. It is Anne's reaction that makes it all the more interesting. Anne and Emily were very close and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall can be seen as both a companion and a response to Wuthering Heights as evidenced by 'The Key Of H' used in both novels. Anne's reaction was to write a novel removing all romance from the nature of a man like Heathcliff and accurately portray what a marriage to a man like that would be like in real life via the marriage of Helen Graham to Arthur Huntingdon. The lasting impression given by The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is sheer astonishment that something as realistic as this was written in 1848. It caused a scandal at the time with writer Charles Kingsley saying "Every man should read this and every man should prevent his wife from reading this"- if Charlotte felt deep unease at Wuthering Heights she hated The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, sought to suppress it both before and after Anne's death, and admitted if she had her way it would be destroyed. The contemporary distaste for it has led to a situation whereby Tenant is almost a "forgotten classic" - whilst Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights often get celebratory editions, Tenant gets ignored. And it's the best of the three, a truly feminist novel, a long, long time before the concept of feminism even existed.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
In the world today, many people worship a god, be it the Christian deity, Allah or the many gods Hinduism offers. Once upon a time people worshipped the Greek Gods, the Egyptian Gods, the Norse Gods and other mythical beings. The question Neil Gaiman poses is : What happened to the gods that people stopped worshipping? And what a brilliant answer he offers, as protagonist Shadow leaves prison and goes on a journey of mythical discovery.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
In 1959, Nathan Price travels to the Congo with a single minded determination to convert as many people to Christianity as he can, but he is a petty, cruel, zealot ill suited to the nature of his mission. He drags his wife and their four daughters along in his wake and the novel is their story. There's Rachel : shallow, vain and spoilt; Leah, wise, honest and eager, her disabled twin Adah, deeply cynical and deeply intelligent, and sunny child Ruth May, the baby of the family. This novel follows the fates of the four girls through to adulthood and is engrossing and heartbreaking and wonderful.
Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson
I was introduced to Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson in 2009. Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and is a novel in which dying preacher John Ames writes a letter about his life to his 7 year old son, often theological in tone, those who are not religious should not be put off, as it has so much to say about the human condition in general. What elevates Gilead to greatness is the inclusion of Home which followed, a novel set at exactly the same time, from the perspective of Glory Boughton the daughter of John Ames best friend. Home is the story of her childhood and reflects upon prodigal son of the family Jack who has recently returned. Home made me cry at least 3 times, Gilead needs to be read first as once you have that in your head, the ending of Home packs a devastating punch.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Marukami
"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" - Toru Watanabe is on a plane when he hears the famous Beatles song and is taken straight back to his youth, a time when he loved Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. A modern day classic, Norwegian Wood is a story of teenage angst and depression set in Japan.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Richard is from California and comes from a very ordinary background, when he goes to a college in New England he finds himself an alien in an privileged world. He manages to force his way into an elitist group within an elitist place, becoming one of six students of Greek Language tutor Julian, and is drawn into a dark cerebral world. It is hard to explain to those who haven't read it the sheer greatness of this novel, perhaps the best novel published during the 90s, the best novel about the transition between childhood to adulthood provided by university and the best novel about the struggles of intellectualism versus social opportunity. It remains a travesty that her second novel 'The Little Friend' was such a damn let down. Her third novel is due this year, I do wish she'd stop writing one novel per decade!
TO BE CONTINUED
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
This novel has been my favourite novel since I was 14 years old. Written in 1948, during Apartheid in South Africa, I have read it easily more than 10 times. In this novel humble Stephen Kumalo is a pastor in a declining village which has struggled to cope with the coming of modern more Westernised society and the erosion of tribal culture. His sister, his brother and his son have all left the village for Johannesburg in hopes of a better life. Their contact with Stephen initially frequent, became sporadic and then vanished entirely. One day another priest from the city writes to Stephen and tells him his sister is ill and he must come to Johannesburg, and so begins a beautiful tale of forgiveness and redemption, beautiful not only in what it says but how it says it. In 18 yrs, I have not read a book that I deem better than it.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I wrote my university dissertation on these two novels, which was rather apt as I was living in Yorkshire at the time. Though Emily never married and rarely left her home, she managed to write a tale of incredible, though often dark, passion, between foster siblings Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff that both Charlotte and Anne were said to be horrified by. It is Anne's reaction that makes it all the more interesting. Anne and Emily were very close and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall can be seen as both a companion and a response to Wuthering Heights as evidenced by 'The Key Of H' used in both novels. Anne's reaction was to write a novel removing all romance from the nature of a man like Heathcliff and accurately portray what a marriage to a man like that would be like in real life via the marriage of Helen Graham to Arthur Huntingdon. The lasting impression given by The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is sheer astonishment that something as realistic as this was written in 1848. It caused a scandal at the time with writer Charles Kingsley saying "Every man should read this and every man should prevent his wife from reading this"- if Charlotte felt deep unease at Wuthering Heights she hated The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, sought to suppress it both before and after Anne's death, and admitted if she had her way it would be destroyed. The contemporary distaste for it has led to a situation whereby Tenant is almost a "forgotten classic" - whilst Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights often get celebratory editions, Tenant gets ignored. And it's the best of the three, a truly feminist novel, a long, long time before the concept of feminism even existed.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
In the world today, many people worship a god, be it the Christian deity, Allah or the many gods Hinduism offers. Once upon a time people worshipped the Greek Gods, the Egyptian Gods, the Norse Gods and other mythical beings. The question Neil Gaiman poses is : What happened to the gods that people stopped worshipping? And what a brilliant answer he offers, as protagonist Shadow leaves prison and goes on a journey of mythical discovery.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
In 1959, Nathan Price travels to the Congo with a single minded determination to convert as many people to Christianity as he can, but he is a petty, cruel, zealot ill suited to the nature of his mission. He drags his wife and their four daughters along in his wake and the novel is their story. There's Rachel : shallow, vain and spoilt; Leah, wise, honest and eager, her disabled twin Adah, deeply cynical and deeply intelligent, and sunny child Ruth May, the baby of the family. This novel follows the fates of the four girls through to adulthood and is engrossing and heartbreaking and wonderful.
Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson
I was introduced to Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson in 2009. Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and is a novel in which dying preacher John Ames writes a letter about his life to his 7 year old son, often theological in tone, those who are not religious should not be put off, as it has so much to say about the human condition in general. What elevates Gilead to greatness is the inclusion of Home which followed, a novel set at exactly the same time, from the perspective of Glory Boughton the daughter of John Ames best friend. Home is the story of her childhood and reflects upon prodigal son of the family Jack who has recently returned. Home made me cry at least 3 times, Gilead needs to be read first as once you have that in your head, the ending of Home packs a devastating punch.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Marukami
"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" - Toru Watanabe is on a plane when he hears the famous Beatles song and is taken straight back to his youth, a time when he loved Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. A modern day classic, Norwegian Wood is a story of teenage angst and depression set in Japan.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Richard is from California and comes from a very ordinary background, when he goes to a college in New England he finds himself an alien in an privileged world. He manages to force his way into an elitist group within an elitist place, becoming one of six students of Greek Language tutor Julian, and is drawn into a dark cerebral world. It is hard to explain to those who haven't read it the sheer greatness of this novel, perhaps the best novel published during the 90s, the best novel about the transition between childhood to adulthood provided by university and the best novel about the struggles of intellectualism versus social opportunity. It remains a travesty that her second novel 'The Little Friend' was such a damn let down. Her third novel is due this year, I do wish she'd stop writing one novel per decade!
TO BE CONTINUED
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