The Bookworm's Booklist
- 8 minsI was the type of kid who read a book a day.
I don't have as much free time now, but these books hold a special place in my heart. Maybe they will for you, too.
1. A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
Genre: contemporary fiction
"On and on they stare, until Jude's face becomes almost meaningless as a face to him: it is a series of colors, of planes, of shapes that have been arranged in such a way to give other people pleasure, but to give its owner nothing. He doesn't know what he is going to do. He is dizzy with what he has heard, with comprehending the enormity of his misconceptions, with stretching his understanding past what is imaginable, with the knowledge that all of his carefully maintained edifices are now destroyed beyond repair."
Running at 800+ pages, this visceral novel tore my heart apart and barely put it back together. It follows the life of Jude, a broken and enigmatic man haunted by his past. Some readers view this as a masterpiece; others, misery porn. I'm of the former opinion. Jude's friendships, the abuse he endures, the love he thinks he doesn't deserve, the addictions that tear his friends apart, the art he inspires, his brutally human faults: all coalesce into the most beautifully written book I've ever read.
2. Gödel, Escher, and Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Genre: nonfiction, philosophy, mathematics, cognitive science
"Can all of reality be turned into a formal system? In a very broad sense, the answer might appear to be yes. One could suggest, for instance, that reality is itself nothing but one very complicated formal system. Its symbols do not move around on paper, but rather in a three-dimensional vacuumm; they are the elementary particles of which everything is composed. The 'typographical rules' are the laws of physics, which tell how, given the positions and velocities of all particles at a given instant, to modify them, resulting in a new set of positions and velocities belonging to the 'next' instance."
I bought this book as a souvenir from The Strand in NYC, and I have yet to finish it. As far as I can discern, it discusses how Gödelian loops in formal systems give way to some sort of awareness, animation, a "sense of self." I've explored fugues and canons, axioms and theorems, recursion, paradoxes, isomorphisms, geometry. It's brilliantly written and encourages you to savor each concept: thumb through my copy to find post-its trying out the MU-puzzle, notes working through a formal system representing primality using hyphen-strings, or an airplane napkin reminding me to listen to Bach's Contrapunctus. Anyone interested in math, consciousness, or philosophy should pick it up at least once.
3. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
Genre: science fiction
"Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being she was before. Parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order; her hierarchy of attention was no longer under complete control. She kept losing the focus of her attention, shifting to meaningless activities on worlds that meant nothing to her; she began randomly twitching, spilling errors into hundreds of different systems. She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out."
My interest in sci-fi was never quite realized; in fact, the only reason I read this was because a friend recommended Ender's Game. Its sequel proved much more interesting. I poured through the pages, entranced by Ender's journey to Lusitania. What caused the descolada virus? Are the pigges raman or varelse? And what created the super-powered AI capable of instantaneous communication across light-years? I don't think I breathed for most of the novel.
4. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Genre: children's fantasy, adventure
"'Don't be too sure,' said the child patiently, 'for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are. You see,' he went on, 'it's very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it's there but you just don't know where - but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean it's not worth looking for.'"
A love letter to the pursuit of knowledge. When life proves difficult, I turn to this book and rediscover the joy of learning. It follows Milo, a boy who considers the "process of seeking knowledge as the greatest waste of time," and his journey to the Lands Beyond to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason. Clever and witty, this novel shines brighter than the City of Illusions, sings sweeter than the Symphony of Color, and chases away the Doldrums.
5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Genre: fiction, romance
"'In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.'"
We all aspire to be Elizabeth Bennet, though without her judgements, and we all aspire to find Mr. Darcy, sans his arrogance. The two engage in a battle of wits and barely contained self-control, two sides of the same coin. The drama, the confessions, the unexpected dinner parties - I fell in love with love, and I'm reminded over and over again that perhaps not all is hopeless.
6. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Genre: gothic fiction, romance
"'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? A machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.'"
I was invited to the intimate thoughts of the eponymous heroine, too independent, too intelligent, and too self-respecting to do what is asked of her. Jane, the new governess under the mysterious Mr. Rochester, has the courage to seek out the mysteries of Thornfield Hall, and leave when she must. Another novel for the cold-hearted to melt upon reading.
7. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
Genre: fantasy
"'Tell him that we reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much spam... you should know that if we do kill you then we'll just delete you. You got that? One click and you're overwritten with random ones and zeros. Undelete is not an option.'"
From the perspective of stoic Shadow Moon, caught in the middle of a war between the Old and New Gods across America. For someone like me - growing up in an obscure town, loving to travel - this book hits hard. Gray winters in the countryside, jukebox bars, gleaning citys, broken-down apartments in Chi, sea breeze in SF: Gaiman captures 21 years of nostalgia in a single novel.
Happy reading! For best results, curl up with a sleeping cat and a fun drink.
Kaylee J. Rosendahl
Searching for that asymptote