In the idea of what are you reading, lets start a list of books that, no matter the time, type, have stuck with you. Books are timeless so it matters not how old they are, what wack a doodle subject..They had something that spoke to you...and they come to mind often or you recommend them.

My very first was "The Camerons" by Robert Crichton. My Mom and I would visit the library weekly. She had read the book and recommended it to me...I don't think I was in HS yet but all I can remember is the sex scene and the fact that my Mom thought I would like the book!!!!

Mom is now 92 and we still swap books as we did all those years ago, though I do filter some things I don't think she would like. I did buy her a copy of "Braiding Sweetgrass" as it was too beautiful not to share.

This is my first off the top of my head list...

Dickens' "Great Expectations"
Charlotte Brontë "Jane Eyre"
Robin Wall Kimmerer "Braiding Sweetgrass"
Padma Viswanathan "The Toss of a Lemon"
Jhumpa Lahiri "Interpreter of Maladies"
Nathaniel Philbrick "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex"
Amy Butler Greenfield "A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire"

Brendan O'Carroll "The Mammy"(and the rest of the Agnes O'Brien series)

Jane Kenyon "Let Evening Come"

What are yours?

孙子兵法，Sun Tzu’s Art of War

道德经，https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching

笑傲江湖，https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiling,_Proud_Wanderer

EDIT to add: the Old Master Q series of comic strips, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Master_Q

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

The Old Man and the Sea

The Tao of Pooh

It's funny. Bits of books that I read many years ago have stuck with me, even though I might not enjoy the book itself if I were to reread it again. Sometimes books and ideas have a time and place.

I read a lot of science fiction in my teens and twenties, and the ideas stick with me. Asimov's ideas in the Foundation series about patterns in history still cross my mind frequently, as do his Laws of Robotics as our artificial intelligence technology continues to outpace our achievements in ethics and wisdom.

Reflections on mortality in his other books and in Larry Niven's Ringworld--specifically, that a vastly extended lifespan might simply become boring--still intrigue me.

As for more recent books that I admire simply for their story and the quality of their writing, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Louis Bayard's The Pale Blue Eye come to mind right off the top of my head. I believe that the Bayard book is going to be a movie soon, but I think it will lose a lot in translation.

It occurs to me that as somebody editing a 170,000-word doorstop/book about Agatha Christie, I should mention one of hers. I think that And Then There Were None is a stunning achievement in tone, point of view, and information control. I don't know that I understand why it is the bestselling novel of all time, but it is.

A friend of mine who is a scholar of race, gender, and the media has written a whole chapter for the Christie book about the deeply problematic original title, and there's more yet to say. I wrote about the book, too, in my chapter on ideas of justice and revenge in her work. It's really something to write a book that's still being talked about eighty years later.

I am not much of a fiction reader, which I regret because literature gets to me the same way music does. (Painting and sculpture don't excite me that way.)

Years ago I picked up a library book, "Ohio Town" by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Just a remembrance of the town where she grew up (Xenia?). What I remember is that there were two or three consecutive pages in the middle of the book that were just transportive, such a sensitive and masterful bit of writing by someone I didn't think of as a major author. All these years later, it has stuck with me.

quote:

Originally posted by RealPlayer:
I am not much of a fiction reader, which I regret because literature gets to me the same way music does. (Painting and sculpture don't excite me that way.)

Years ago I picked up a library book, "Ohio Town" by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Just a remembrance of the town where she grew up (Xenia?). What I remember is that there were two or three consecutive pages in the middle of the book that were just transportive, such a sensitive and masterful bit of writing by someone I didn't think of as a major author. All these years later, it has stuck with me.

Wow. I’m surprised anyone else has read that book. I picked it up in a thrift store a while back and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Nothing very exciting happened in Xenia but the author did a great job of describing the things that did.

Maybe the book was more popular than I thought.

You weren't in Xenia in 1974. It got pretty exciting.

https://youtu.be/H2ZfHUSm7Cs

It came through Lebanon where I was living before it got to Xenia. We all left the pool hall and went out on the street to see it.

Lebanon wasn't hit all that hard, but Xenia was devastated.

I went through a period where I read only books about people who lived where it’s very cold. This was before I had any idea we would be moving.

Helen Hoover write several, and her description of how the ice forming on the lake would make sounds like gunshots has stayed with me.

Another was “Grass Beyond the Mountains”, a story of two guys who left Wyoming for British Columbia to build ranch from scratch. That story turned in to a whole series of books about Pan Phillips and the home ranch.

I’ve been trying to find a third book again, a story about a guy who was the only Mountie in the Yukon Territory in the 30’s. I wish I could remember the name of it.

Just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns - very decent book. I had to move books from my night stand to a little Ikea shelf next to the bed, was afraid the nightstand might collapse.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:


I’ve been trying to find a third book again, a story about a guy who was the only Mountie in the Yukon Territory in the 30’s. I wish I could remember the name of it.

Any chance it’s Mrs Mike?

No, but it sounds similar.

quote:

Originally posted by kluurs:
Just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns - very decent book. I had to move books from my night stand to a little Ikea shelf next to the bed, was afraid the nightstand might collapse.

I just finished “Kite Runner” by the same author. “Splendid Suns” is in my queue.

Cat’s Cradle

The Idiot

The Velveteen Rabbit

A Clockwork Orange

quote:

I’ve been trying to find a third book again, a story about a guy who was the only Mountie in the Yukon Territory in the 30’s. I wish I could remember the name of it.

I'd like to read that.