My heart is propped up by a Scotch. I just finished one of those books. The ones that pull your insides out through your eyeballs, wash them in enlightened intelligentsia and marinate them in emotion before shoving them back in word by word, page by page, chapter by chapter. “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.” So before I collapse in exhaustion from this literary experience, I am passing on a list of those books. Add your own through comments as you see fit to share.
• Elie Wiesel’s Night
• Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Julia Alvarez Time of the Butterflies
• Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle
• Graham Greene’s End of the Affair and Monsignor Quixote and, why stop there, Quiet American
• Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
• Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection
• Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist
• Frederic Buechner’s Godric and ABC’s of Grace
• Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body
4 responses so far ↓
1 Marissa // Jun 1, 2008 at 9:34 am
Interesting list. I feel the need to add two books that have greatly affected my life (for the better and worse depending on how I’m feeling about the phrase, “Ignorance is bliss,” at any given moment).
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita
and
Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
2 Aart Hilal // Jun 2, 2008 at 4:06 am
Hello!
I’m a big fan of Paulo Coelho! You will love this! He’s the first best-selling
author to be distributing for free his works on his blog:
www.paulocoelhoblog.com
Have a nice day!
Aart
3 Sarah Moffett // Jun 2, 2008 at 8:28 am
Marissa~I’ve never had the pleasure of Master & Margarita, but I’ll have to follow it up. Atlast Shrugged changed my mental life. I wonder how Rand would feel if she knew it changes hearts too?
Coehlo fans in general~do ya’ll get paid for your adamant advertising?
4 Linda // Jun 8, 2008 at 5:54 am
Sarah, nice list. Goddess, mine would too long, but at least one that had that effect on me was I was in my late teens, then again as an almost-30ish person, was Lessing’s THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK. A recently published story that left me sobbing for it’s sheer beauty of writing and the beautiful rendering of characters was Katherine Noel’s HALFWAY HOUSE.
You had comments off on your prior post, but I’ll comment here… 1/ I’m thrilled your in the throes of #2 - ’bout time; 2/ sorry the throes are wupping you - but it’s part of the biz; and 3/ nervous ’cause very soon I commence the prewriting of novels 2 and 3. I’ll be pulling from the Drambuie and lifting my glass to you.
Persevere, baby, persevere… peace, Linda
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