Twenty Novels I’m Grateful For

by | Nov 27, 2013 | Great Reads

I had this idea to choose twenty books I was thankful for as an homage to one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. But then I realized I couldn’t choose only twenty, or decide which to include. So welcome to my multi-part series, Books I’m Grateful For, with today’s installment: novels. (Still to come: poetry! And more.)

Happy Thanksgiving, readers. I’m thankful for so much this year, and I hope you are, too.

Twenty Novels I’m Grateful For:

1. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

2. The Longest Journey, E.M. Forster

3. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

photo-44. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

5. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

6. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

7. Room, Emma Donoghue

8. The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy

9. Spartina, John Casey

10. The Color Purple, Alice Walker

11. The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri

Thank you google images

Thank you google images

12. State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

13. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson

14. The Road, Cormac McCarthy

15. Possession, A.S. Byatt

16. Disgrace, JM Coetzee

17. Another Country, James Baldwin

18. American Pastoral, Philip Roth

19. My Antonia, Willa Cather

20. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

I could go on, and on, and on…but I will stop there.

What novels are YOU grateful for?

Books You Can Lose Yourself In

by | Feb 5, 2013 | Great Reads, Writing

I thought it was really interesting that two blog posts today were about the immersive (I think I just made up a word) world of fiction. The Living Notebook writes about Absorption today, about fiction that “brings us further into [a] dream, overwhelming our senses until the dream seems real.”

And over on popcorn, Karen McHegg discusses books that “create a world different from the one [she] lives in.” You can read about those books here.

It made me think: which books have most absorbed me in recent years? My first thought was Emma Donoghue’s brilliant novel Room. I also felt immersed in the strange world of Karen Russel’s Swamplandia and the more-real-yet-also-quite-strange one of Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder.

Which books have absorbed you lately? Head on over to popcorn and tell Karen McHegg.

And me? Today I’m immersed in three-year-old land. L. had a touch of pinkeye, and I knew I’d get the stink eye if I sent him to school.

Onward,

Susie