“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” -Fran Lebowitz
If you don't read then what the hell are you doing with your life? Unlike listening to music, where you need a CD player or ipod or other such modern device which I don't own, or watching a film, which requires your attention for hours at a time, reading is so easy to do! Just grab a book and kick back for twenty minutes or so. Of course you can read for a solid few consecutive hours, and blissful hours they will be, but a dozen pages before bed or a chapter or two to pass a spare hour will be more than enough. Even, god forbid, put your phone away on the bus and take out a novel!
You will be a better person for it. Besides the joy of learning to use new words and simply seeing the language used expertly, you learn to have a longer attention span again. Books offer no instant gratification; you must invest yourself into the activity before you gain any reward. And of course, losing oneself into an engrossing novel is an utterly thrilling experience. Unlike watching a film (or at least, the way you should watch a film), you can leave the book through the day, ponder its events and language, work it through your mind, picking up little details and subtleties so that when you return to the book, it is all the richer and more personal.
“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
That really is the peculiar thing about novels, and poetry or any creative literary work. A lover of books feels the words they have read stitching and embellishing the fabric of their soul, becoming a part of them as surely as their memories of their real lives. At the end of 'Fahrenheit 451' (VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT) the protagonist meets a group of exiles, who each preserve their lost culture by memorising a book important to them. I pose the question to you; if you had to ,almost, become a book in this way, what would it be?
I will talk about poetry another day; it is a wonder too wonderful to add as a sidenote here, so I will just add a clip of Christopher Walken reading Poe's masterpiece, 'the Raven'. (albeit with somewhat distracting background noises)
On to my favourite books! This has been perhaps the most difficult list to compile but I've done my best. And once again, these aren't necessarily the best books ever written, but they are my favourites.
A word of warning, there are some very well known novels here, but I'm not going to apologise for being mainstream. To extend a quote of Mark Twain's, the greatest tragedy that can befall a classic is for it to become highly praised and never read.
#10
The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
This is an honest book whose writer sought not to deceive or confound or belittle the reader, but enlighten them. To open their mind's horizons to the suffering and hardship of those who can do little about it. Honesty and anger pulse through the words in this novel, more so than anything else I've read. A definite favourite.
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage"
#9
Lord of the Flies- William Goldman
A truly, deeply disturbing book that, nevertheless, everybody should read. You do largely realise where the the novel is heading fairly early on, but I suppose that is the point. The slide into chaos and madness is all the worse because we, and the characters, realise it is inevitable. Images from scenes in this book- images described disconcertingly realistically, remain with you for a long time.
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
#8
A Scanner Darkly- Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick wrote incredible science fiction novels and short stories, and I have almost all of them. The vast majority of which deal with questions of the nature of reality and identity. 'A Scanner Darkly' feels quite different to the rest of his works, it is less sci-fi than most of his novels and much slower paced. Written from painful personal experience, it documents the blurring worlds and minds of undercover narcotics agent Fred/Bob as he attempts to find the source of a dangerous new drug, Substance D, or as it's better known, Death. The most sad and poignant of all Dick's works.
“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”
#7
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
Sad and fairly depressing by anyone's standards, this is nevertheless a fantastic book and one I enjoy reading (although enjoy may be the wrong word). It is a very relatable situation that Sylvia Plath brings to bear in the novel; a young person whose life is entirely centered on academic success suddenly finds this path closed to her. She struggles against the internal and external pressures closing down around her, smothering her like a bell jar. Her mother doesn't understand ( " I knew you'd decide to be alright again ") and the sympathy you feel for her is tremendous. Beautifully written, of course; Plath is also a wonderful poet and the prose shimmers with life and meaning.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
#6
The Lord of the Rings- J. R. R. Tolkien
The richest, most exciting, most beautiful fantasy world ever created. Incredible, dark forces of evil mass in Middle Earth, vastly outnumbering those who want a free world, armies clash, ancient alliances reform, cities are destroyed and at the heart of it all, a hobbit and his gardener undertake an epic journey. Magnificent is not good enough to describe this. I love the 'Lord of the Rings'.
"The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."
#5
Flowers For Algernon- Daniel Keyes
When I arrived home after buying this book I sat down on the sofa and starting reading. I didn't stop once until I finished it a few hours later. There were tears in my eyes as I put it down. Algernon is a mouse on whom scientists have performed an experimental medical procedure to dramatically increase his intelligence. Charlie Gordon is a man possessed of an IQ level 85, who holds a menial job in a bakery and who attends reading and writing classes at an adult learning centre with Alice Kinnian. He wants to work hard to be smarter, and the scientists would like to perform their procedure on Charlie. It is succesful, but as he reaches ever greater heights of intelligence, he finds he cannot relate to the people around him any better than before the operation. And as Algernon starts to deteriorate and regress, Charlie has to deal with what this means for him. A beautiful book told with compassion and elegance.
"How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence."
#4
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The book from which the title of this blog is taken. It is regarded as a classic for good reason. It is precise, incisive, witty, elegant and very sad. Fitzgerald's prose can often be too flowery and extravagant, but in this novel he hits the perfect balance, such that I enjoy physically reading 'the Great Gatsby' more than any other book. That he could make such a biting critique of the careless rich so delicate shows how great a writer he is. If anybody is thinking of reading any of Fitzgerald's other works (which is well worth doing) then I suggest 'the Beautiful and Damned'.
"I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
#3
1984- George Orwell
A writer's dystopian vision has never been better conveyed than in '1984'. Some people find it dry and tedious for the same reaons that some people (myself included) love it. Orwell describes and describes and describes in minute detail the physical, emotional and idealogical state of affairs in his bleak world, to the degree that the utter futility Winston feels when struggling against the Party tyranny is very deeply felt and understood by the reader. I love quite how bleak it is; Orwell very early on sets the rules for his story, and doesn't break them to give anybody a happy ending. A stark warning that freedom is the most precious of human rights.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
#2
Moby Dick- Herman Melville
When I say I don't know anybody who's read 'Moby Dick', I am being quite literal. It stuns me, but perhaps it is its imposing length. There really isn't any way to describe the experience of reading this book, an epic both in length and scope. Melville writes with a contained intensity that hurls and shrieks itself off the pages at times, at others the chapters slowly wind down to a reasoned philosophical observation. The actual plot is sometimes forgotten as Ishmael begins to talk about other matters entirely, most famously in the 'Cetology' chapter, where he just describes various kinds of whales. It is far more interesting than I have made it sound! Indeed, the overriding memory I have of the book is the dense, dramatic language that swirls and surges and thunders like the ocean itself. Extraordinary.
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
#1
Catch 22- Joseph Heller
A joke and a tragedy and a drama and a character study and a crime novel all in one, sometimes all on the same page. I would love to meet Joseph Heller to find out if this style of writing is at all reflected in his personality! Put simply, this novel is my favourite of all time because it is just so good. It is interesting an enjoyable and then while you're laughing something farcically tragic will occur, bringing the harsh reality of World War II back to bear. It is filled with characters who, as soon as you meet them, introduce another character to you until the scenes are filled with people called Yossarian, Major Major Major Major, Aarfy, Milo Minderbinder, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Orr. This novel truly is a masterpiece, the writing and plotting is so expert thqt, beneath all the craziness and time shifts, you don't even see it there. And a novel in which the hand of the writer cannot be seen is a great novel indeed.
"Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it."
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