BAN Books

My Bookshelf

This is essentially my literary Hall of Fame.  It's a place where I'll display my favorite books and give brief explanations as to why.  Not surprisingly, I'm starting it with my 10 essentials, which are not necessarily my 10 favorite books of all time, but certainly 10 of my favorites. 

1.  I'm gonna get all my cheating out of the way (the biggest cheat is #3), so I'll just tell you right now. My first entry is the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien.  Each of the novels is split into two books, but Fellowship is told mostly chronologically.  The other two devote one book to Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, and one book to the rest of the Fellowship.  Tolkien's style pays off for readers who want to know as much as possible about Middle-Earth, because in this trilogy alone we learn much of the history and civilizations there, not to mention the hints at stuff fleshed out in the Silmarillion.  The battles here are enjoyable, but not nearly as exciting as their cinematic counterparts (especially Helm's Deep), but what kept me intrigued, as with all great stories, was the journey.  I just couldn't get enough of the Fellowship's quests and the towers they'd encounter (about 6 in the Two Towers alone) and the politics of Rohan or Gondor.  My favorite aspect to these books is that the world felt lived-in, probably more than any other books I've read.  Everything had a past, and all historical events build up to this climactic battle.  And these particular versions are the ones I own and adore thanks to the cover art by Alan Lee. 

2.  Secondly, and cheating still further, I'm including the fabulously controversial His Dark Materials trilogy.  To be honest, I didn't find them that blasphemous.  Yes, they take down The Authority, but the system was corrupt.  Was their quest not noble?  Did Lyra not learn the value of independent thought?  Did Will not find love?  I was captivated by these books from about the second chapter (I'll admit the opening passages in alt-Oxford were a little tiresome), largely due to Pullman's clear sense of style.  His world is not one of dragons or elves, and that is clear from the start.  But talking bears and old Texan balloonists fit right in.  Even the dragonfly chevaliers seemed to me perfect additions.  I also loved that the mystery continues until the end, and every time we learn a bit more of the answer, we see how wrong we'd been.  Lyra taking Roger to the Gobblers, for instance, or Lyra trusting, then fearing, then trusting either of her parents.  Loyalties are constantly shifting and never absolute.  And in the end, Lyra helps destroy "God," and re-commits original sin, but knowingly.  Amidst the tapestry of Lyra's and Will's journey through worlds and underworlds fly the angels, the witches, the great daemons (Pantalaimon and Hester being my favorites), and the fabulously careless Mary Malone, scientist-nun extraordinaire. 

3.  And as you can probably guess, my final cheat is for the Harry Potter septology.  How could you include just one?  This is the series of my generation, and the books are filled with such rich detail that you can't help but fall in love with Rowling's whimsical style.  It's like the wizarding equivalent of Pushing Daisies.  I don't know what to say that I haven't already written at length about.  The characters are fantastic, the artifacts and spells are intriguing, and the gradual history we uncover of all the characters is incredible.  Again, it's the details and the rich, consistent style of the world in this series that has me returning to it even now that we know most of the secrets.  And in case you haven't heard, at the same Q&A where JK Rowling revealed Albus is gay, she also revealed that his brother Aberforth's goat obsession was sexual in nature!  No other children's author has the balls to include bestiality references. 

4.  From here on out, I promise it'll be one book per slot, so I must give this one to America the Book.  Distilling the best parts of the Daily Show into a textbook on American government (complete with an introduction written by Thomas Jefferson), this is a hilariously strident look at US history, current affairs, and the flaws of our government in action.  Probably the only book advising kids to disenfranchise a black student as a class activity, this book is best when it's doing semi-inflammatory satire.  The naked justices of the Supreme Court is just a bonus.  It's no surprise that the book has won various awards, including, most awesomely, the Grammy for Best Comedy Album (for the audio-book version). 

5.  For my dinosaur entry, I'm going with the obvious, Dinotopia.  I know many of you have probably not read Dinotopia, so I'll do my best to establish the world, for the actual island of Dinotopia and its civilization are my biggest reasons for loving it.  Dinotopia is an island in the Atlantic where dinosaurs (from the time of Pangaea, or if you don't believe in that, from lies perpetrated by godless Sodomites) have survived untouched by man.  The island is surrounded by vicious coral reefs (and aquatic dinosaurs) that have led to many shipwrecks, whose survivors are ferried by the kindly Dinotopian dolphins to the coast.  There, they developed a whole society of human-dinosaur cooperation, and the books only require that as suspension of disbelief.  Aside from the idea of dinosaurs living here, no real fantasy elements exist.  The stories are written as Victorian travelogues (they are technically excerpts from old-fashioned Arthur Denison's journal), and the first one is thrown into the sea at the end--to be discovered by author James Gurney and published.  I love the story of Arthur and his son Will searching for a way home, only to discover that Dinotopia is a perfect home for them, mostly because I believe Dinotopia would be a perfect home for me.  The art is breath-taking, and each of the different cities (Waterfall City, Treetown, etc.) have their own cultures reflected in their art, architecture, and social customs.  Further, Gurney has come up with several interesting uses for the dinosaurs, such as taxis, a fire brigade, pterodactyl-riding messengers, and the like, which helps ground the civilization.  But really, it all comes down to this:  any book that makes me wish I lived in its pages has earned a spot on my bookshelf. 

6.  My first graphic novel on the shelf stars its seminal hero (don't say Superman), Batman.  Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is, without a doubt, the most trenchant criticism of the 1980s I've seen, and I think paired with The Watchmen (which I'm almost done with), it proves the worth of comics and graphic novels in the artistic world.  By the time of the novel, citizens aren't as naive as they once were and are split on whether Batman (and vigilantism) is good or bad.  It's like the credits footage from Boondock Saints; is it acceptable for someone to operate outside the laws if they are fighting crime?  Aside from this, I'd rather not give away any plot points.  Suffice to say that it is devastatingly apocalyptic, which seems to reflect the zeitgeist of 1980s' America. 

7.  I am not leaving much room for "classics," so let's throw in one of my favorites right here:  Wuthering Heights.  I'm not sure this is my all-time favorite "classic," but it certainly ranks up there for me.  It helps that the experience of reading it enhanced the subject matter; it was my summer reading for senior English, and I read it over a few nights after everyone had gone to bed during a rainy week--very Gothic.  I'm not sure if I can explain why I love this book so much, but there are certainly a lot of elements with self-explanatory appeal:  storms and ruins, betrayal and revenge, a ghost in the attic.  Everyone's mean to everyone else, and it all makes for a wonderful generations-long soap opera affair between Heathcliff and Catherine that extends its umbrella of devastation to encompass everyone in their lives.  Almost everyone dies, and as Shakespeare can attest, that means the story is perfect. 

8.  And from American literature, I gotta go with Catcher in the Rye, the quintessential adolescent boy's book.  I did my junior English paper on it, and reading it felt nothing like work.  Basically, Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of yet another private school and, before going home to tell his parents, leaves in the night and takes a couple days wandering around New York citing everything phony he finds in society.  He goes to Radio City Hall to see the Rock-ettes, he skates at the rink at Rockefeller Center, and he hits up several other New York hotspots, like bars, jazz clubs, and a hotel room with a prostitute, endlessly pursuing sex.  I especially enjoyed his conversation with the nuns and of course the ending.  Society is too fake, and it deserves to be called out on it.  So thank you, crazy JD Salinger. 

9.  Chuck Klosterman IV is my philosophical pick.  It's divided perfectly into three sections, the first of which is a collection of previously published interviews.  The Bono interview is an incredible examination of his persona that comes down to one question:  Has the man who named himself Bono become his persona, and is that even a bad thing?  I also loved the Val Kilmer interview of course, but every interview had me praising Klosterman's style and the specific focus of his probing questions.  Often, hour-long interviews would give way to one specific area that was focused on in the article.  The next section is a collection of articles questioning why certain things happen the way they do, and each begins with a great hypothetical question.  Klosterman distills all my thoughts about the Olympics in one brief chapter quite eloquently.  And at the end, we get the beginning of a book that he would have written.  Maybe.  Klosterman can be wrong, and sometimes he can be a bit arrogant, but I love hearing his thoughts on pretty much everything relating to pop culture, and this was my first foray into Klosterman's repertoire. 

10.  And my first modern lit spot goes to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.  I gave a speech about this book to my Women's Lit class, so I want to try to avoid regurgitating that here, but the basis was that this novel is incredible.  Susie Salmon gets raped and murdered in the first chapter, and what follows are 300 pages of her watching her loved ones from Heaven and flashing back to flesh out the story.  Everything is sad, but its not overwhelming.  The despair is certainly pervasive, and rightfully so, but it is never too heavy, like Requiem for a Dream or something.  And in the end, the characters grow closer and learn to move on.  The lovely bones, you see, are the bones that make up your legacy on Earth.  In other words, they're the relationships you leave behind.  And the ending is both happy and positive and inspiring and incredibly poignant.  I don't want to ruin it, but like the final four words of 1984, I will always remember the final sentences of this book. 

Brandon's Bookshelf

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