Tag Archives: desert island book picks

BLOWING A NEW PATHWAY IN MY BRAIN:

The first story that blew a new pathway in my brain didn’t happen to come from a book.  I was seven and my mother would occasionally tell one of us a bedtime fantasy agreeably centered on our very own adventures.  On that occasion her story had a bit of Grimm’s Fairy Tales darkness (likely her way of suggesting to me some behavior modification), involving me crossing into a fabulous land where all that was available to eat were the sweet treats of one’s heart’s desire.  Homey pies and fairy confections, Cool-Aid powder that you licked out of the palm of your hand, cream puffs and hot chocolate and whipped cream.  Eventually, however, I wanted real food and there was nothing to be had:  no juicy red tomatoes or corn-on-the-cob dripping with butter, no hearty casseroles, no hamburgers, not even any fruit….and no way to get back home to them.  Trapped in pastry Paradise!  I began to feel a bit panicked.  The startling thought had begun to creep in that one’s desires, held too tightly, could take one into an unexpected gilded hell of no return.  Oh my!

I read like a fiend in high school.  Devoured everything in sight: Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Tolstoy, the haiku of Basho, the romantic poems of Robinson Jeffers, J.D. Salinger, and finally when everything in our little rural school library was exhausted I even read the few bodice-rippers hidden in the back shelves (my version of reading cereal boxes as a last resort). Savor, illumination, delight, but not knocked sideways by any.  More that literature simply became part of my oxygen. 

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THE BOOKS THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY ME TO A DESERTED ISLAND, WHERE I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CUT OFF FROM PEOPLE AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS NORMALLY NOT FOUND ON DESERTED ISLANDS:

Yeesh…

                                                   The practical aborigine in me would demand The Ashley Book of Knots,  maybe Gregory J. Davenport’s Wilderness Survival.  For sure Laurie Shimizu Ide’s Hawaiian Shell Lei Making and Marie McDonald’s Ka Lei: The Leis of Hawaii (how-to) and Na Lei Makamae: The Treasured Lei (pure inspiration), plus Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa by Hans Silvester. 

Then from body to spirit:  The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche,  Wearing the Body of Visions by Ngakpa Chogyam, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages by Paul Foster Case.  For pure entertainment: Anthony Trollope’s The Warden and Barchester Towers because his “complete appreciation of the usual” (as Henry James called it) and his lapidary eye for humor in human foible I find endlessly repeatably delightful.

 

 

-Jane

THE FIRST BOOK THAT SHATTERED PREVIOUSLY-HELD NOTIONS AND OPENED MY EYES:

When Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown came out in 1971, during the Vietnam War, I read it right away because my children (in school in Mill Valley, California) were being urged by their teachers to read it.  It had a profound effect on me and my family.  Up to that point I had read my share of American history, but somehow nothing that included such a heart-stopping jolt of reality. It certainly opened my eyes and changed forever the way I perceive American history and the manner in which it is delivered to most of our elementary and high school students.  I don’t think that I was exactly naive prior to reading Bury My Heart but I certainly had not given much thought or attention to exactly what went on with the “settling of the west”.
Having been raised in Texas in the 40’s and 50’s my perception of the American Indian was drawn largely from historical novels and cowboy films in which the Indians were portrayed as mostly bad, who attacked the circled wagons of the mostly good white pioneers. My grandparents had souvenirs and old photos taken during visits to Indian reservations in the 1920’s and my feeling when looking at these as a child was that it would be great to see a reservation someday (a form of entertainment). No one talked to me about the life of the Indian as a real and horrific journey after the white man came to stay. Perhaps even after visiting reservations my grandparents were not aware of the profoundly sad history of the American Indian.

The fact that I read this book during the Vietnam War years doubled the effect on my life by enforcing a permanent sense of cynicism and doubt of government, politicians, written history and the media.

-Donna

THE BOOKS THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY ME TO A DESERTED ISLAND, WHERE I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CUT OFF FROM PEOPLE AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS NORMALLY NOT FOUND ON DESERTED ISLANDS:

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When I was under 30 my list looked something like this:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – because it is long and I thought I was a special individual, above the “masses”.

The Bible – because it is long and mostly inspirational.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte – because I liked the rugged, emotionally tormented Heathcliff… so sexy.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut – because Kurt Vonnegut was my favorite writer.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – because I fancied myself a Texas “Scarlett” looking for her Rhett.

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Under 50 my list was:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton – because I loved the doomed romance of it.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – because I loved the doomed romance of it and the element of Russian history.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – because I loved the doomed Russian history.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – because I loved the doomed Humbert Humbert and the Russian Nabokov.

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Today my list is:

Charles Dickens’ Complete Works – because it’s time to read the ones I missed and re-read the ones I loved.

Tieta by Jorge Amado – because it is long, witty, political and I loved it.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child – because I don’t want to forget about food on the island.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable and Fraud by David Rakoff – because I would need a good laugh with a witty writer.

If I Were Another by Mahmoud Darwish – because the poetry would keep me busy thinking and feeling.

-Donna

THE FIRST BOOK I CAN RECALL THAT SHOOK MY NOTIONS OF… EVERYTHING:

The Tombs of Atuan, the second part in the ‘Earthsea’ fantasy trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin.  I was about nine or ten years old and already addicted to fantasy literature of all kinds, but readers of Le Guin might be aware that her literature is somewhat idiosyncratic.  The world of ‘Earthsea’ is one of the most realistic in fantasy literature, and somewhere in trying to comprehend that often disturbing realism I became extremely curious about real life societies and the history of civilization. The really troubling thing about ‘Tombs’ is the way she subverts heroic fantasy.  In the first book we see the hero, Ged, sail the sea, learn wizardry, and do all those things expected of heroes, but in the second book we initially hear nothing of him.  Instead, we follow the story of Tenar, priestess of an ominous religion who is trapped alone in a pitch black labyrinth for what she expects to be the remainder of her life.  When the hero Ged does make an appearance he is broken and frustrated by the labyrinth, and, quite against the logic of fairy tales, he requires his heroine’s aid to escape.  Going into all the ways ‘Tombs’ and other Le Guin books play against type would require a good deal of space, but rest assured her tipping over of heroic conventions is quite mind-blowing, in its own elegant and spare manner.

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Another book that upset my preexisting notions was The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.  A relatively simple and fable-like novel  (though one filled with Chesterton’s trademark snark,) The Man Who Was Thursday paints the world in such a light that it seems an endless and terrifying battlefield between good and evil.  Then, after a series of double-crosses and climactic showdowns, Chesterton does a quick turnaround and confronts us with the absurdity of such notions.  Chesterton wrote the work after a bout of depression to prove (perhaps to himself,) that the world was good at its heart, and to strengthen that argument he is not afraid to show the terror inherent in facing it.

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THE BOOKS THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY ME TO A DESERTED ISLAND, WHERE I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CUT OFF FROM PEOPLE AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS NORMALLY NOT FOUND ON DESERTED ISLANDS:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

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The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

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The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant

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And probably some comics.

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BOOKS I WISH I’D WRITTEN:

Most of Phillip K. Dick’s corpus of works, preferably without having to live the life he did to do so.

-Kevin

THE BOOKS THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY ME TO A DESERTED ISLAND, WHERE I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CUT OFF FROM PEOPLE AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS NORMALLY NOT FOUND ON DESERTED ISLANDS:

The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara

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Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979

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Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore

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Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore

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The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

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Cathedral, by Raymond Carver

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver

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Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote

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A book I made with photocopies of my favorite poems by various poets (cheating, I know!!)

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BOOKS I WISH I’D WRITTEN:

Reasons To Live, by Amy Hempel

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Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore

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Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore

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Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion

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Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood

-Lucia