A friend is writing a blog post about peoples’ favorite books. I am going to repost her questions and my answers here because I am short on time to write today’s post
If you could please provide your favorite:1. Book you could read over and over and over again.2. Book from your childhood (childhood ends whenever you decide it ends but please specify).3. Book that you would be embarrassed to admit is your favorite book.7. BOOK OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you have one of those.
Answers to question 1, 2, 3, and 7: My favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. It was my favorite when I was 14 and it’s my favorite now. I’ve read it at least a dozen times. I think it is sublime. (And no, I don’t believe in her political philosophy. But then…I don’t believe in Tolstoy’s either…) I wrote about it here.
4. Academic/pretentious favorite book… this category could also be thought of as “book that you maybe wouldn’t read again but really loved being forced to read in school” or “favorite book in the opposite of category #1 type of way.”
Answer to question 4: I really did love In Search Of Lost Time (which I read on my own and was not forced to read in school). But I also probably wouldn’t have stuck it out if it wasn’t as famous as it is. It’s also the book I’ve gotten by far the most mileage out of having read. It’s so expansive and so much stuff is related to it and even most people who love books haven’t read it. I do recommend it to anyone who has a few months to spare, though!
5. Out of genre/ “not my typical steeze” book (ie: “I normally never read Sci-fi/Fantasy, but I really liked [insert book title here]” or “Poems make me want to vomit except that one time when they didn’t because I read {insert poetry book here})
Answer to question 5: I don’t read much poetry, but the collected poems of Philip Larkin was amazing (only 250 pages, at least the version I got [which had all his published poems], though they have a much longer one now, which strikes me as BS. If you have an amazing 250 pages, why pad it out with 100 unpublished poems to make a turgid 450.)
6. Book to put on your shelf and admire… (you can pick a certain edition or cover or send me a pic if that’s important to you. This can also be a coffee table book that you have never read full of pictures of naked women.)
Answer to question 6: I keep my bookshelf in my bedroom, so few people ever see it. And, in any case, I recently got rid of most of my physical books. I guess the most impressive books I still have in physical form is my copy of Democracy In America by Alexis De Tocqueville. I read the first half of it ages ago, and am still planning on reading the 2nd half someday.