Understanding Candy via her bookery
Aug. 8th, 2007 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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knittinggoddess' Livejournal (AS SEEN ON TV!), ibnfirnas mentioned a short list of books chosen to help somebody understand you. These are not (necessarily) non-fiction books that catalogue your particular disorders or quirks, but books that especially resonate with you, that express a facet of you in book form.
Here's my list:
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth: Slavery, insanity, the relationship between religion and commerce, high-seas adventure, the nature of justice--read this book to understand how I feel sometimes about humanity as a whole. But if you can't be arsed to wade through several hundred pages of slaveship shenanigans, "Humanity I love you" by E.E. Cummings condenses that attitude into a few scathing stanzas.
The BFG by Roald Dahl: Look, it's a book about the friendship between a little girl and a farting giant who dispenses dreams. If you can't figure out why this is on my list, you obviously don't know me at all.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: When I was a little girl, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to marry Mowgli, or just be him. Hell, it's still true.
A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky: It's about animals. It's about Africa. It's about the relationship between humans and animals. It's about (the futility of) conservation (in the face of human industrialization and progress). It's about an awkward nerd bumbling his way through a completely alien environment. It's funny. And it's utterly heartbreaking. If I were a neurotic Jewish neurocientist haring off to the wilds of Africa to study baboon immune systems instead of a neurotic Chinese technical-writer-and-soon-to-be-law student in the urban tameness of Portland, this would've been a book about me.
The Windflower by Laura London: This book probably captures a lot more of what I think love is like and what I want love to be than I'm comfortable with. And yes, that absolutely does mean I wish I were a charming American ingénue kidnapped by a high-born British privateer and brought onto his ship, where I proceed to charm all of the crew and the pet pig.
The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne: I am an unholy combination of Pooh and Owl.
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser: This book utterly changed the way I looked at food.
Wasted by Marya Hornbacher: Like many women I know, I don't have an eating disorder, but I think very much like somebody who has one, and that fact was driven home very strongly by this book. It was eerie, reading exactly how I felt about my body expressed in somebody else's words.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: The reason why this one is on the list should be pretty self-evident, I think.
Animal Farm by George Orwell probably best expresses the way I view politics and the nature of revolution, while
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes expresses why I think it's important to keep fighting, anyway.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot: This poem more than any other work of art resonates with my emotional space, barring certain Bach concertos. (God, how emo is that shit?)
What books are on your list?
knittinggoddess' Livejournal (AS SEEN ON TV!), ibnfirnas mentioned a short list of books chosen to help somebody understand you. These are not (necessarily) non-fiction books that catalogue your particular disorders or quirks, but books that especially resonate with you, that express a facet of you in book form.Here's my list:
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth: Slavery, insanity, the relationship between religion and commerce, high-seas adventure, the nature of justice--read this book to understand how I feel sometimes about humanity as a whole. But if you can't be arsed to wade through several hundred pages of slaveship shenanigans, "Humanity I love you" by E.E. Cummings condenses that attitude into a few scathing stanzas.
The BFG by Roald Dahl: Look, it's a book about the friendship between a little girl and a farting giant who dispenses dreams. If you can't figure out why this is on my list, you obviously don't know me at all.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: When I was a little girl, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to marry Mowgli, or just be him. Hell, it's still true.
A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky: It's about animals. It's about Africa. It's about the relationship between humans and animals. It's about (the futility of) conservation (in the face of human industrialization and progress). It's about an awkward nerd bumbling his way through a completely alien environment. It's funny. And it's utterly heartbreaking. If I were a neurotic Jewish neurocientist haring off to the wilds of Africa to study baboon immune systems instead of a neurotic Chinese technical-writer-and-soon-to-be-law student in the urban tameness of Portland, this would've been a book about me.
The Windflower by Laura London: This book probably captures a lot more of what I think love is like and what I want love to be than I'm comfortable with. And yes, that absolutely does mean I wish I were a charming American ingénue kidnapped by a high-born British privateer and brought onto his ship, where I proceed to charm all of the crew and the pet pig.
The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne: I am an unholy combination of Pooh and Owl.
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser: This book utterly changed the way I looked at food.
Wasted by Marya Hornbacher: Like many women I know, I don't have an eating disorder, but I think very much like somebody who has one, and that fact was driven home very strongly by this book. It was eerie, reading exactly how I felt about my body expressed in somebody else's words.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: The reason why this one is on the list should be pretty self-evident, I think.
Animal Farm by George Orwell probably best expresses the way I view politics and the nature of revolution, while
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes expresses why I think it's important to keep fighting, anyway.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot: This poem more than any other work of art resonates with my emotional space, barring certain Bach concertos. (God, how emo is that shit?)
What books are on your list?
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Date: 2007-08-09 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-13 09:12 am (UTC)Bolded books are the most resonant with me along this trend of the memeFuck that noise, I'm taking them all, and if I try and gnaw at this list any longer I'll add a few dozen more.Margery Williams and William Nicholson: 'The Velveteen Rabbit'
Katherine Dunn: 'Geek Love'
Neil Gaiman: 'Sandman'
Taras Grescoe: 'The Devil's Picnic: Around the World In Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit'
Max Brooks: 'World War Z'
Matt aka Mattilda: 'That's Revolting!'
Octavia Butler: 'Bloodchild' (both the name of a short story collection and one of the stories, I'm recommending the whole book)
China Mieville: 'Perdido Street Station'
Jesus Zarate, trans. by Gregory Zarrata: 'Jail'
Spider Robinson: 'Callahan's Chronicles'
Michelangelo Signorile: 'Queer In America'
Dan O'Neill: 'Hear the Sound of My Feet Walking, Drown the Sound of My Voice Talking'
Richard Goldstein: 'The Attack Queers'
Marilyn Wann: 'Fat!So?'
Matt aka Mattilda: 'Nobody Passes'
Diane DiMassa: 'Hothead Paisan'
Garth Ennis: 'The Pro'
Robert N. Munsch and Michael Martchenko: 'The Paper Bag Princess'
Christopher Moore: 'Lamb: The Gospels According to Christ's Childhood Pal, Biff'
Theodora Kroeber: 'Ishi: Last of His Tribe'
James Baldwin: 'Another Country'
Lawrence Yep: 'Dragonwings'
Kurt Busiek: 'Astro City'
Aimee Liu: 'Face'
Adrienne Martini: 'Hillbilly Gothic'
Louis de Bernieres 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts'
Joann Sfar: 'The Rabbi's Cat'
Frank H. Wu: 'Yellow'
Aimee Liu: 'Gaining: The Truth about Life After Eating Disorders'
Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mahen, eds: 'So Long Been Dreaming'
Paul Pope: '100%'
The main reason I commented on this one, actually, is to suggest 'Gaining' mentioned above. It analyzes eating disorders as symptoms of broader behavioral patterns and, as I recall, references and expands upon Hornbacher's story (which I still need to read). Anyway, this book I finished back in early June and have been holding off on reviewing or writing about it because it seriously is so many levels of fantastic and I don't know how to do it enough justice.