Apparently this one has been doing the rounds for a while, but I figure that there can never be enough discussion about the books we love.
The idea is that without thinking about it too much, and within the space of 15 minutes, you name 15 books that will always stay with you. I added a wrinkle – no more than one book per author, so there’s only one book by the divine Jane on my list, and Anna Karenina beat out War and Peace by the merest whisker.
My 15 books, with comments.
1. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Sigh.
2. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
I understand these characters – I get inside their heads, and the ordinary events of my own life, over 100 years later, remind me of them. I especially love Dolly (Darya Alexandrovna).
3. Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell
My granddad gave me his copy of this book, for my 10th birthday. It is the last tangible connection I have with him. There was something about the isolation and sheer beauty of Camusfearna that grabbed me. A piece of Innisfree, perhaps. I read the subsequent books by Maxwell, and found them very sad.
4. A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth
Beautifully complex, and interwoven, and I love the resolution that Lata comes too.
5. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
I think the focus on mother and daughters and sisters is what speaks to me here.
6. Towers in the Mist, by Elizabeth Goudge
I read, and re-read, and re-re-read this as a child and teenager. I don’t really know why, but I would happily read it again.
7. I, Clavdivs, by Robert Graves
Again, one I have read many times. I have found it fascinating to compare Robert Graves’ fictional account of Claudius with what we know from historians.
8. Middlemarch, by George Eliot
The psychological insights in this novel are astounding.
9. Frost in May, by Antonia White
Channeling my Catholic youth, perhaps.
10. The First Man in Rome, by Colleen McCullough
I have a bit of a thing for historical fiction, and in fact, this is how I’ve learned most history, by reading a fictional account, and then trying to work out what really happened. Also (don’t tell my supervisor), this was how I developed my understanding of politics and institutions in republican Rome.
11. The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff
More historical fiction, this one set in Roman Britain. This was my brother’s book, but we all read it.
12. The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin
Meditative. Also, I recommend this one to students when they are trying to work out what an anarchic society might actually look like.
13. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
I think I saw the movie before I read the book. It’s the dialogue between modern and historical that fascinates me here. And the utterly ambiguous ending, ‘though as I have written before, John Fowles was not the first writer to pull this trick.
14. A Friend is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Anglund
My beloved uncle gave me this for my 5th birthday, and I have it still, somewhat tattered, and treasured.
15. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
I so admire Jane’s integrity, and passion, and her determination to be true to herself. I think I first read this when I was about 10, and I’ve re-read it most years since.
10 women writers, 10 books centred around women or with women as lead characters, but 9 books set before the 20th century, and not much contemporary fiction. I think I may be a very conservative reader.
