I READ, THEREFORE I AM

Aside: When I go to someone’s house for the first time, I love to quickly peruse 3 things: the bookcase, the CD and the DVD collection. As a Lit major, I have always been fascinated by what people read for fun and/or in their spare time. And as a pop culture sponge, music and movies are my way of assessing someone’s entertainment IQ.
 
Getting rid of my textbooks from college was a long overdue chore. For some reason I schlepped all of my sociology and feminism books from place to place after college. But as I spent several days on my side recovering in the guest room a few weeks ago, staring at our largest bookshelf, I realized that most of those books now merely serve as a reminder of the activism that I abandoned along with the Birkenstocks back in the early 90′s (thankfully). And I had to ask myself questions like, “will you ever really want to read The Beauty Myth again?” and “seriously, do you think you’ll revisit The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968-1992?”

But of course I will never abandon certain classics and authors; their novels are always welcome, wherever and as long as I live.

I don’t really have a point.

So I will make a list of my favorites authors and/or books, because you know I can’t resist a good list opportunity.

Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories

Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Summerland
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

David James Duncan
The Brothers K
The River Why [quite possibly my #1 book]

Nick Hornby
A Long Way Down
About a Boy
Speaking With the Angel (anthology edited by Hornby)

Michael Lewis
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (a fantastic look behind the scenes of building a professional baseball team, especially for an A’s fan like me)

Annie Proulx
Close Range: Wyoming Stories (includes original Brokeback Mountain short story)

Adrienne Rich [my favorite poet of all time]
The Dream of a Common Language

Sarah Waters
Affinity
Fingersmith
Tipping the Velvet

And a garden variety of other writers grace my shelves as well: Isabel Allende, Jane Austen, Melissa Bank, Michael Cunningham, Dave Eggers, Jeffrey Eugenides, John Irving, Frances Mayes, Rick Moody, David Sedaris, Alice Walker, etc.