Five Books That Have Stayed With Me.

 RHYS BOWEN: Recently on one of the Facebook groups I browse occasionally I saw a posting about five books that have stayed with you.  This got me thinking about which books I would select. I came up with a list pretty quickly and could certainly go beyond five books.

But here are my five:

Passage, by Connie Willis.  It’s about near death and what happens after death. So thought provoking. That book has haunted me since I read it.  If the list was longer I’d also include her Doomsday Book, which I felt was a masterpiece.

The Handmaid’s Tale.  I suspect this might be on everyone’s list.  It seemed like speculative fiction when we first read it, didn’t it? And now….

Possession, by Byatt. That book had so many layers to admire, including the body of work of two fictitious poets. Wow. I wish I could have written it.

The Lord of the Rings:  I had to include this since it was the first book I read as a teenager that completely obsessed me, swallowed me into another world.  I have read it so many time since then that I think I know it by heart, but I still get chills when I read it again.

Prince of Tides, Conroy.  Another book that was so clever as well as so evocative. Talk about sense of place!

I realize this is my five, without including any mystery novel.  So what do they all have? Thought provoking. Sense of place. Certainly not comfortable reading although LOTR does have a sem-satisfying ending. 

If I had to include a mystery novel, it would be Reginald Hill’s On Beulah Height. Or

Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, or… Dreaming of the Bones by our own Debs.  All three way beyond what a reader has come to expect from a mystery novel.

And as I write this I feel a sigh coming on. I suppose as I come closer to the end of my career I’d love to have written that definitive novel like one of these. Would any of my books ever make a list like this? Maybe the closest would be the Venice Sketchbook.

Your turn Reds. What books are on your lists?

LUCY BURDETTE: We’re covering our ears at the phrase “come closer to the end of my career” Rhys! This is a hard question, because it depends on how the books stayed with me and what was going on in my life at the time. I’m leaving out the Reds though I adore and admire every book my friends have written.

During my growing up days, I would have  chosen GONE WITH THE WIND. That’s the book I took to school to hide in my textbooks so I could keep reading about the incredible saga of Scarlet O’Hara..

Julia Child’s MY LIFE IN FRANCE for her astonishing voice and sense of adventure and love for food and France.

Galit Atlas, EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE. This is from a psychoanalyst who explored the ways that people carry forward trauma and secrets from their families with little idea about how it’s affecting them.

Kent Kreuger’s IRON LAKE introduces a complicated and appealing character, a compelling setting, and powerful conflict–I’ve read everything he’s written since.

THE LOST VINTAGE by Ann Mah tells the story of a present day sommelier who returns to her family’s Burgundy vineyard and discovers layers of historical trauma. Tied with THE ART OF INHERITING SECRETS by Barbara O’Neal. The character inherits a crumbling English estate and a title after her mother's death, leading her to uncover family secrets, explore a new life in a charming village, and navigate a new romance.

What stays with me? Compelling setting, complicated but good-hearted characters with messy family backstories, and usually a happy ending:)

HALLIE EPHRON: What stays with me is always characters. Especially ones I can relate to.

So starting off with my earliest, Sara Crewe from Frances Hodgsen Burnett’s THE LITTLE PRINCESS earned a place in my heart as the little orphan girl who ends up marooned at Miss Minchin’s school for little girls. Fortunately I missed the1939 version with Shirley Temple who (imhop) was far too saccharine to play the feisty, clever, moody Sara.

Then ELOISE, star of the illustrated children’s book by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. This precocious six-year-old is every nanny’s nightmare.

Then ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne is a plucky (see a theme, here?)  homely, orphaned redhead who is sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Matthew and Marilla. My own children loved it as well.

Several more grownup novels: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen; STONES FROM THE RIVER by Ursula Hegi. And finally one with an adult female heroine (published barely pre-women’s lib)  with whom I so identified, Carol Shields’ THE STONE DIARIES.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, gosh, I think of this from time to time, the books I hope to write.

My five? Books that have stayed with me.

BLACK BEAUTY. Weird,I know, but this is the first book I read where i realized there was such a thing as theme. I remember it so well, finishing and then thinking..wait, I think this is about more than a horse. I bet I was…ten?

THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Phillip Pullman. I was in college, and absolutely transported. Still am.  I put Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, in this section, too. I had never stretched my imagination like that before. Life-changing, both of them.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, by TH White. I still think about this book all the time: justice, honor, community. Magic. How the boundaries on maps are only on those maps. People created them. And it has been a problem ever since.

WINTER’S TALE, by Mark Helprin. Absolutely magical. A perfect book. An adventure, time travel, love, justice, journalism, possibilities. (NOT the movie, run away, run away.)

SO what’s my fifth? Ah, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? Gillian MacAllister’s WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME (I know, but that book is a total wow.) 

Oh, wait, I know, Edith Wharton’s THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. Still so timely, female empowerment, the mores of society, ambition,  and no one is better at dialogue.

JENN McKINLAY: Like Hallie, Anne of Green Gable was a pivotal read for me. I just loved Anne with an “e” so much.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. My first fantasy and forever my favorite.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich where I learned how to write found family and over the top capers. 

Circe by Madeline Miller which proved to me I could love literary fiction.

Nettle & Bone by T.  Kingfisher. One of the most imaginative fairy tales I’ve read. Loved, loved, loved it! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Gosh, this is hard! Like Jenn, my earliest will be THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Hooked me on fantasy and made me an Anglophile in one fell swoop.

PETER PAN for Barrie’s gorgeous omniscient narration; a children’s book that’s even more meaningful for adults. “All children, except one, grow up.”

Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, which I read fairly young and therefore without expectations. I was blown away by how real and painful his metaphor became, and will never forget the last line: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

THE STAND by Stephen King. I read it the year it came out in (impossibly thick) paperback, and it lingers as one of the most terrifying views of an apocalypse ever.

SEPTEMBER by Rosamund Pilcher - so many characters brought to life! Such loving descriptions of the setting and mores of the well-to-do Scots and English. Plus a galloping, irresistible plot. It’s like rolling up Dickens, Trollope and Barbara Bradford Taylor in one enormous doorstop. 

So, my takeaways? All except for King are British authors. I like big, expansive stories. And I love fantastical worlds that seem completely grounded in reality.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: So interesting to see where overlap and where we differ! And so hard to narrow down to five.

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle. 6th grade. The first book that really introduced me to the power of good prose, and world building.

THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE by C S Lewis. More fabulous world building, and surely a big contributor to Anglophilia.

LORD OF THE RINGS by J R R Tolkien. Ditto, but more so!

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T H White. Gorgeous, funny, heart-rending, and it started me on an obsession with Arthurian England that lasted for years.

It occurs to me now that all four of these books are about good vs evil and moral choices, and I still think about these stories every day.

GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers, in order to get in a mystery. This is the book that showed me what you could do within a mystery. And it made me fall in love with Oxford.

RHYS: Isn't it interesting that we have overlapped so much? And when I wrote my list I didn't think of children's books I've loved all my life. Black Beauty... oh how I loved that book. And The Hobbit. And the Chronicles of Narnia.  I still re-read them.

So, dear Reddies, how about you???