"Favorite Books"

One of the things that people ask when they meet you (or shortly thereafter), if they're at all interested in who you are is "What are your favorite books?" (In fact, see the headings in my Blogspot profile.) There's a certain validity in the question: knowing what books a person reads and enjoys gives you some insight as to what kind of person he is. One thing I tend to do when visiting someone new is to check out his bookshelves (assuming he has bookshelves) and music collection. Eventually. (No, you don't need to know the circumstances of these visits. Honestly.)

It's also one of those simple questions that gets terrifically complicated, at least to me. Do you mean "What are the books that I reread periodically?" Or "What are the books that impressed me terrifically when I read them and left strong memories?" Or "What books influenced me greatly as a child (or adult)?" Or. . . . You get my drift.

There's a whole group of books that have impressed me tremendously that I won't reread soon, if ever. (I am, in point of fact, an inveterate rereader. It's a kind of relaxation, to just pick up a well-loved story and get lost in the familiarity of it for a while. I read so many new things professionally that sometimes I just want to read something I don't have to analyze. But that's the next list.) They are, I tend to think at the time, important, exceptionally well-executed, sometimes dark, always thought-provoking, more often than not what people would characterize as "heavy." You know, real literature. (Although I have to admit that sometimes what I think of as "real literature" strikes others as idiosyncratic, at least. I don't care -- I can support my arguments.) Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys is one of those. Tremendously impressive book, but not something I'm going to reread regularly, although I do have to go through it again -- I've reviewed it once,, but I promised someone a new review of it months ago. It's OK -- it's an open-ended sort of deal. Ernest Hemingway's Under Kilimanjaro, which has just come out in a full-text scholarly edition. The editors, fortunately, had the good sense to leave their comments and emendations to the index and let the text stand on its own.

Jane Lindskold's Child of a Rainless Year is a new book that I found impressive. It's marketed as fantasy, because that's Lindskold's niche; it's much closer to Gabriel Garcia Marquez than J. R. R. Tolkien, or maybe a female Dhalgren (Samuel R. Delaney's an author I want to take another look at soon, but I don't happen to have any of his books in my library right now -- an egregious error), but much less explosive.

Then there are the perennial favorites, the ones I read when I just want to relax and not think particularly about what I'm reading. They tend to be fantasy or science fiction, simply because that's the field I know best and have the most reading experience in. Nor are they all perfect -- in fact, some are far from it -- but they have some catch that makes me come back to them. C. J. Cherryh is always good, particularly the "Fortress" series. Tristen is one of the most lovable protagonists ever. The atevi novels are a good one, too. I love her look at cultural/linguistic interaction in those. And of course, I reread LOTR at least once a year.

I also love good male/male romantic stories. Fiona Patton's The Stone Prince, in spite of its flaws, is on that list, along with Jim Grimsley's Kirith Kirin, an exceptionally good novel. Mary Renault's The Charioteer and The Last of the Wine are both firmly on that list, but I have to be in a particular mood for them -- somewhat melancholy, maybe, since both, and especially the latter, have an elegiac tone. Right now, I'm rereading Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, which I consider a brilliant little gem. The depth of the relationship between Richard and Alec is all subtext, and it's incredibly well-done.

There are actually a suprising number of authors whose books I reread with greater or lesser frequency: Glen Cook, Steven Brust, Charles de Lint, Sean Russell, Storm Constantine. They're all challenging enough to keep my interest, even with repetition.

Childhood books? The only ones I really remember are Fredrick R. Brooks' "Freddy the Pig" books, which I was crazy about in fourth grade My first boyfriend was scandalized to discover that I had never read Winnie the Pooh, so I got a complete boxed set for my twenty-first birthday -- along with a huge teddy bear. That's also one of my favorite rereads.

I wonder why some people think I've never really grown up.