A while ago, I asked friends, fellow bloggers, and some family members: What one book have you read more than any other? The first post is here.
I’m in CT for Thanksgiving, and here are my family’s answers.
“‘One for the Road’ by Tony Horwitz. He travels around in Australia. I keep reading it. I love it. I’d like to do something like that, maybe.” – Cousin Dan
“I don’t really have one book I’ve read more than once. There’s a whole list of books I keep in the back of my head, to go back to, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Madness, or Ayn Rand. I read Ayn Rand when I was in high school. She was the first libertarian. I read her, and I had that moment of recognition, and I’d been kind of an oddball in my town, and then I saw what she was thinking, and I recognized it was what I’d been thinking all along.”- Uncle Steve
“I really liked ‘Ice Bound.’ Jerri Nielsen was the doctor who was at the South Pole. She wintered over. She diagnosed herself with breast cancer, and biopsied herself and gave herself chemo. It’s fascinating, because modern medical conventions don’t work in that setup.”- Cousin Clarke.
“I’m not a big read-it-twice kind of person. ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ by Zora Neale Hurston. I think I read it twice in high school and twice in college. It’s been a while since I read it last, though.” Courtney, Dan’s wife. (I guess that makes her my cousin-in-law?)
“‘The Road From The Past: Traveling Through History in France,’” by Ida Caro. I first read it in 1992. She traveled through France, tracing the way civilization spread there, starting in Provence. That was really what made me want to study French, and travel in France.” – Richard, Aunt Beth’s husband.
to both Twilight fans, and those who found Twilight disappointing. It’s gorgeous and chilling and convoluted. Lovely prose followed both a modern mystery and the slowly unfolding spookiness that made me love reading Dracula.
which, I hope, will garner more interest now that “Twilight” fervor has got teenage girls all frenzied for fangs. A lonely girl, an undead boyfriend. Their love tinged with the tragedy of his vampiric true nature. I feel like this is the vampire romance done right, not clumsily teetering on the edge of whining or camp. I’m afraid to reread it, because I might find myself feeling snarky, instead of fond
because the no-nonsense narration from Sookie kept the vampires’ pretensions from overblown. I haven’t watched the Showtime series yet. I’m mildly curious. (Also mildly peeved that you can’t get a copy of the first book with the original, painted cover. I hate it when they cover books with their media tie-ins!) I liked the first two or three in the series of novels, but stopped reading them. I felt like the humor had faded, which really lessened their appeal.
) seasons allows a different progression. Also worth remembering: a television series is vastly different from a novel, being intensely collaborative, rather than the work of a solitary author and a handful of editors.
