This is the first of several (six?) posts that springs from an article, essentially listing "the most [x] book I've read." Fair warning, I'm approaching it as Free Association, because analyzing everything I've ever read to find the absolute most... whatever... is going to spin me into indecision.
The most memorable book I read: The Brothers K by David James Duncan. (Doubleday Press, 1992.) It's my most-cited favorite, I chose it solely because I liked the cover, I've reread it at least a dozen times, and I've hand-sold (or gifted) it to probably a hundred people since it first came out.This book reached inside me, grabbed hold of my heart, and never let go.
"This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger,
regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose
dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident. A
mother who clings obsessively to religion as a ward against the darkest
hour of her past. Four brothers who come of age during the seismic
upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with
what the world has become. By turns uproariously funny and deeply
moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years."
I find something different, some new truth, each time I read it. It still makes me laugh out loud, and also to cry. And I always read more slowly as it goes on, to make the magic last a little longer.
The loneliest book I read: The Gravedigger by Rob Magnuson Smith. (Uno Press, 2010.) I found it at the library where I worked for many years. It is a beautifully-written, terribly sad novel. I have read it maybe five times, each time more slowly than the last. "The
gravedigger Henry Bale lives with his ailing dog in the village of
Chalk, England. Painfully shy, he is resigned to growing old alone. Then
Caroline Ford, an impulsive schoolteacher from Brighton, arrives in
Chalk. Caroline awakens Henry to life, and to a fear of death. Their
relationship becomes a startling investigation of love, faith, and the
search for meaning."
It is lonely, but also redemptive. Watching Henry learn how to really live is inspiring, funny, and wrenching. If you are open to reading a book that will not tease your emotions but pull them to the surface, whole and raw, then The Gravedigger is a book for you.
The most enchanting book I read: The Bachelor's Cat by L.F. Hoffman. (HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.) I bought my copy from a discount-books catalog in the late '90s—Daedalus? Edward R. Hamilton? there were so many—when I had loads of disposable income and a developing thirst to learn and experience everything.
"The bachelor was an
honest man, caught between the demands of a personal life and a career,
the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of meaning. His relationship
with a sexy and manipulative girlfriend was halfhearted, his career as
an artist led him to create art nobody wanted to buy, and he began to
grow cynical. The kitten that entered his life appeared on his doorstep
one cold morning. Not an overly sentimental type, the bachelor decided
to take in the kitten until her rightful owner could be found. Even a
stray, after all, deserved a chance to come in from the cold. Then the
bachelor met a woman. She was not his usual type - not half as pretty or
a tenth as mean - but she made him laugh. His time with the girlfriend
had been hotter, but time spent with this woman was sweeter. As the
kitten grew and the bachelor brightened, he found himself increasingly
torn between the appeal of these two very different women. Struggling to
make a choice between them, he discovered that his cat knew a lot more
about love than he did."
It's about cats, and the difference between solitude and loneliness, and vulnerability. It's beautiful, and it can break a heart.
The most important book I read: wow, how can anyone answer this? Ought it to be The Bible, or some "Great American Novel"? The top of everybody's 100-best lists?
The only person I can answer for, on any of these prompts, is myself. The most important book in my world was Neither Friend Nor Foe: The European Neutrals in World War II by Jerrald M. Packard. (Scribner's Books, 1992.) One of those books that came along at just the right time to be read, it shook me up and blew my mind and challenged me to learn as much as I possibly could about neutrality—all of which led, directly or not, to my M.A. thesis topic, and also to the decision to apply to law school, and therefore to everything I've done since.
"Packard's assiduously researched study examines how the governments of
Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Ireland reacted to pressures
from the Axis to declare themselves either allies or enemies during WW
II, and how events forced these nations to accommodate first the Axis
powers and then the Allied ones. Packard brings their plight into sharp
focus: their neutrality depended more on Hitler's whims than on their
own brave declarations. He credits Portugal's premier Antonio Salazar
with materially influencing Francisco Franco to keep Spain out of the
war. He shows how Sweden avoided German incursion by threatening to
destroy the high-grade ore desperately needed to keep the Nazi war
machine rolling, and how Switzerland vowed to block the tunnels linking
Germany to Italy. Finally, Packard emphasizes that Eire (the 26 southern
counties of Ireland) was the only one of the five neutrals to have
risked invasion by both the British and the Germans. A professor of
history at the University of Portland in Oregon, Packard (Sons of
Heaven) writes elegantly and informatively of an important but
long-ignored aspect of WW II."
This book, along with a grad class that I was taking while reading it, launched my curiosity toward neutrality. That eventually led to my choice of thesis topics, and what has become a fascination (and complex relationship) with neutrality and law. Important, indeed.
The most daunting book I read: Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2001) This book, translated from the Danish, caught my eye in a review journal at the library. It was ordered, and I checked it out immediately after cataloging. I probably had it at home for 3 months (thanks to staff no-overdues privileges), pecking away at 2 or 3 pages a day until it finally started to flow. It's a very spare novel, short on dialog and heavy on internal ruminations.
"After eighteen years of marriage, an art historian wakes up one
morning to find his wife standing in the bedroom doorway with her bags
packed, leaving him with no explanation. Alone in his Copenhagen
apartment, he tries to make sense of his enigmatic marriage and life.
Memories of driving a cab, quiet walks in the snow, and intense sojourns
in Paris and New York pass through his mind in fleeting images. The
more he thinks of his wife, however, the more mysterious she becomes to
him. Slowly he realizes that two people can live together for years
without ever really knowing each other, and that the most important
encounters in one's life are dictated by chance, not design. Exploring with great subtlety the secret, unpredictable connections between men and women, Silence in October is a psychological novel of immense acuity and masterful storytelling."
Having read it now, three times over, I'm still not certain that I understood it in the manner that the author intended. I did "like it," though, and got something out of it—despite being daunted.
The most resonant book I read: The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1937) This was assigned in my first graduate-level class, History of Modern England, which I took as a sophomore or junior. It was a seminar course, open to only a dozen or so students, and held once weekly for 4 hours. Most weeks, the assignment was to read one whole book, often also writing a paper related to it. It was difficult, required a great deal of focus and dedication, and ultimately humbling. I never forgot this book, too, which informed my view on the working poor for my entire adult life.
"The first half of this work documents his sociological
investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire
and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The
second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development
of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism.
Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism, but feels it
necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from
socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong
opponents."
[based on this post; the title quotation is by George Orwell, from 1984]
