twenty-five and tardy.

I promised to post this yesterday, but I didn't get around to it. Apologies.

In honor of my twenty-fifth birthday, here is a lengthy post about my twenty-five favorite books. It's kind of long, so read at your own volition. People ask me all the time for book recommendations, so consider the following my reccs:


1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck. While the rest of the list will not follow in descending order, this is my all-time favorite novel. Everything I have read of Steinbeck is written as nearly to perfection as I imagine fictional writing can be, but this story in particular captured me the first time. I have read it again and again, and each time it is simultaneously new and familiar. The theme that runs throughout is the story of Cain and Abel, but it is explored in the intertwined lives of a few families in the Salinas Valley in California. My favorite written character in all of fiction so far is Samuel Hamilton, who exists in this book. The narration is brilliant, the dialogue is accurate and the discussions are rich. The story is gut-wrenching and satisfyingly lengthy. It’s a bit daunting to look at because it is really thick, but once I was into it, I kept hoping that it would never end.

2. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It was a fluke that I even brought this book home from Borders several months ago, but I picked it up because the cover is catchy, and read the first pages—a bird’s eye view of New York City on one particular morning, with the focus eventually narrowing in on a tightrope walker making his way across his thread plank between the World Trade Center towers. Again, it was the narration that got me. The book is a weave of vignettes, similar to the movies Crash or Love Actually, where the focus changes with each chapter, and the background characters move to the foreground, and visa versa. It is a brilliant, brilliant book. When I finished, I sat there just staring at the back cover for a long time. McCann is an Irish writer, and his Irish-ness comes through in the book. Irish lit is probably my favorite genre.

3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. A.L. is hilarious. Everything she writes—from her memoirs in Traveling Mercies to her fiction, and back again to this book, an instruction manual for writers—is doused in humor. Every thing I have ever read of hers has made me laugh the whole way through. In college I took a writing course where the professor had us read a chapter from Bird by Bird called “Shitty First Drafts.” Later, I “borrowed” this book from a dear friend’s parents’ library, and admittedly never returned it because a. I moved away from that area and never went back to their house and b. I didn’t want to give it up. (I did admit this to Susannah later, volunteering guiltily to mail the book back to her folks, but she assured me they wouldn’t miss it…) The great thing about A.L.’s work, aside from her way with humor, is that it is strung together with great understanding and emotion. This was the first book I read about the craft and process of writing, and it filled me up because I realized that I am not the only person who thinks the way I think, who watches the world and stores up observations for plot ideas in the future. She has some pretty interesting thoughts on Jesus too, which I appreciate.

4. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. If you ask my sister what my biggest gripe with writing is, she’ll tell you it is dialogue. I cannot stand dialogue that would never actually be said, and I am my own biggest dialogue critic. I spend more time reading my written dialogues aloud during the editing process than any other thing because if dialogue is bad, then the whole book is rotten. Bad dialogue pulls you out of the story and reminds you that you’re just reading a book. Dialogue should immerse you into the story and make it MORE REAL. This book has great dialogue! That’s not why I love it, though. Plenty of books have great dialogue. I loved this novel because the story was so creative and colorful, it was so fun to read, it was the perfect balance of love story and other story. It’s about a traveling circus in the 1930s, and the details are so far out, so interesting, and so well-written. (As a disclaimer, I read this book long before there was mention of a movie and loved it then. I have not seen the movie yet, but I’m going to go when it comes to the $2.50 movie theater this week… I heard the movie was OK. The book is way better than that. Great beach read, but not in the brainless-blonde-romance kind of way.)

5. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. I.adore.every.single.one. There is really no need for me to go into great detail, since you all probably know, but I will say this: When Mark and I got married, he had never read the books. I spent months 1-15 of our marriage reading each and every book to him aloud, and we both fell in love with the series, for me, the third time. It was so fun, and we capped it all off with a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter last fall. If you haven’t given in, just do it. Even if you’re thirty years old you will love it. Just got my sister in law to read the series, and she loved it. Books three and five are my favorite I think.

6. Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. A biography of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived through the Nazi occupation of Germany during the second World War. Bonhoeffer had dedicated his life to studying the life of Jesus, teaching and studying theology, but could not turn a blind eye to the rise of Hitler in Germany. Along with a band of others, Bonhoeffer was part of one of the assassination plots to bring down the Third Reich, a plot which was ultimately unsuccessful and which led to his death in a concentration camp. The story is unbelievably inspiring, to see someone who followed Jesus so closely, who clung to the Beatitudes fiercely, and who lived a radical life. This book stirred my soul so deeply, and I would recommend it to anyone.

7. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of Bonhoeffer’s theological works. One of the first books I read in high school that really challenged me on what it means to follow Jesus. Probably my favorite book on the Christian life.

8. Dubliners by James Joyce. A collection of short stories that take place in the city of Dublin, Ireland. I read this book in high school for AP English and gobbled it up. The brevity of each story line is refreshing and allowed me to digest the stories one by one. The writing, again, is probably why I love it so, and the fact that I read at the beginning of my love of literature. I have since tried to enjoy Joyce, Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, but I just couldn’t get into those books. But Dubliners… that’s a different story.

9. 95 Poems by e.e. cummings. I am not hugely invested in the world of poetry, but I do enjoy about a fourth of that which I run across, and in college I loved the poetry classes I took—both to study and to write it. However, (this is a huge however), I adore the poetry of e.e. cummings. I enjoy every single one of his poems, even if I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about, which does happen more often than I care to admit. My brother and sister in law gave me the complete works of e.e. cummings a few years ago for my birthday, and it is a centerpiece on my desk, but my first anthology was 95 Poems. I read and re-read and pulled apart every one of those ninety-five poems, and loved every second. Kaili read i love you much(most beautiful darling) in my wedding (#45), and I have memorized more lines from the poems of that anthology than perhaps any other book other than the Bible. These poems are PERFECT.

10. A Voice in the Wind (series) by Francine Rivers. I do not read Christian fiction often, except on a strong recommendation. My mom read this series a long time ago, and I finally read it the summer before I went off to college. It is a three-book series that takes place in the thirty years after Jesus’s death, in Israel. It is a fictional story about the persecution of the early church, the relationships between different people groups, the Romans, the nation of Israel, the Christians… what could have taken place, based on historical documentation of what did take place. It is SO good. Especially books 1 & 2.

11. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wall. This memoir of Jeanette Wall’s bizarre life is incredible. I read it on a sail boat in the Virgin Islands last summer and it captivated me wholly. She is the oldest of three children in a family where the parents just didn’t quite know how to parent. There is humor and so much feeling, and the story is so triumphant, while also realistic. Whenever I read a true story of a real person’s great triumph, it blows me away. READ THIS BOOK if you haven’t.

12. Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love obviously got a lot of press, and it seems like it was one of those books that you either love or you hate. I know a lot of people that hated it. I happened to love it, mostly because the third of it when she is in Italy was SO fun for me to read, having been in Italy myself, and re-living all of those weird Italy-isms along with this narrator that made me feel like I was back there. That pizza—somehow she nailed it. I went to see Elizabeth Gilbert speak in Winston-Salem about two years ago, and her presentation moved me so deeply, and encouraged me to continue writing. And she talked about this book, Stern Men, and how it was re-released after E,P,L because obviously at that point it would sell better. I bought it and LOVED IT. It is a down-to-earth, somewhat fantastical, humorous, quirky, lovely story about lobster fishing islands off the coast of Maine. Sounds strange, but she actually moved up there for a time to study and learn the trade, the lingo, the people. It’s brilliant.

13. On Writing by Stephen King. This book, like Lamott’s BbyB, is a book about the art of writing, but it is peppered with tons of anecdotes from Stephen King’s own life and process getting to his height of fame as a writer. Granted, not a lot of writers become bajillionaires like Stephen King, but this book was so life giving for me. It was another case of “Wow, somebody feels how I feel, knows what it’s like to edit, knows the emotions, knows the disappointment and exhaustion of being rejected time and time again.” The best part of this book is how he describes his first acceptances for publication. I keep saying this word, but it was wholly INSPIRING.

14. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. A while ago, maybe two or three years, I read The Hobbit. I liked it a lot. Maybe not top 25, but it was really enjoyable. Of course I have seen the movie trilogy, but never felt inspired to read the series. Well a friend of mine said that he had a friend who had read the series something like sixty times, and I thought, “Well, hot dang. I guess I ought to try.” I did, from about October to December of last year, and enjoyed it so much. I became so immersed in those books that I thought about them often even when I was not reading. The books are quite different from the movies in many ways, which made it more fun to read. I love the stories for the writing, for the allegorical quality and for the way they bring you into a world that we’ll never live in, but which I wish we could.

15. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. This series has to follow the last, since it is also an allegory of the Bible and God’s love for humanity, and was (as I am sure you all know, but I have to say it anyway) written while Tolkien was writing about the battle for Middle Earth, the two men being great friends and contemporaries in the world of literature of that time in the mid-1900s. My mom read the series aloud to my sister and me when we were kids, and then I re-read the series in college, and it meant just as much to me then as it did when I was a child, only in a different way. I think I ought to read the series once a year, but seeing as there are too many books in the world, I might need to spread it out a little further.

16. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. My long-time mentor Mrs. Brennan, my high school AP English teacher, gave me a copy of this book when I graduated from high school and said, “I think you will love it.” She was right. It is about a preacher who takes his family of four girls to the Congo to be missionaries and “convert the natives.” The story is told alternately from the perspectives of the four daughters and the mother as they watch their father descend on a people he knows nothing about to “convert them,” all the while forgetting about his family. The story is brilliant and thrilling and heart-wrenching, and it is so memorable to me even now. As I write this, I realize I need to read it again ☺

17. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. He is just the best. This book, although not quite as beloved to me as EofE, is a beautiful saga of the Joad family, traveling to California during the Dust Bowl to try and find work for their family. The perseverance and camaraderie of the family is both heartening and tragic, and, as usual, the writing is so vivid with words perfectly selected. This book is a good Steinbeck intro—it is a bit shorter than EofE.

18. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Much like Bird by Bird and On Writing, so I don’t want to re-iterate. I can’t help it, I just adore good books on writing. I love reading people who feel how I feel because it is actualizing. Here is a quote: “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” As Clyde always says, “That will preach.”

19. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Talk about a daunting book. I stared at this baby for months and months before I finally decided to crack it. It took me several months, which is not usually my manner of reading, but it is so dense. Every chapter is sort of a story on it's own. When I finished it was incredible satisfaction. Sometimes I read classic literature as a duty, and it is painstaking. This, however, was a lot like EofE. The story of Jean Valjean transforming from a thief to a heroic beacon of light is beautiful, and it is no wonder this is considered a classic. Although it is a little overwhelming, I encourage anyone to try it. You can do it! And then, hopefully we can all take a little trip up to NYC and see it on Broadway!

20. The Firm by John Grisham. I usually try to mix up the genres of books I read, and occasionally a CIA or government intrigue novel gets in there, and I love it. I enjoyed this book SO much when I read it the first time, and I’m sure if I started it again, I would love it again. I have read several of Grisham's books, but The Firm is one of my favorite books ever. Another one I could not put down. I could never write literature like this, but I sure do love to read it.

21. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This is the story of Francie, a little girl growing up poor in Brooklyn, NY. It is not full of drama, or a big event, or travel or important people, but it is the story of one wonderful, interesting, tragic, sweet, dysfunctional family. The brother-sister relationship is excellently described, and I love this book because I could not put it down, which supports the belief I cling to that everyone has a story, and likewise, every life is a brilliant story. Beautiful, perfect words.

22. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. A good friend gave me this book one year for my birthday. I put off reading it until one day when I didn’t have anything else. It didn’t really seem like my kind of book, until I started reading. It’s the story of a nanny in New York City, working for a wealthy family to take care of their children, run their errands and basically help manage their lives. It is written by former nannies, and the stories and events of the novel are unbelievable in their audacity, humor, and over-the-topness. This book was so entertaining, and also surprisingly deep. It is one of those stories that goes opens the closed doors of families with a great deal of money and power to show the relational family dynamics that are never seen in public.

23. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. One of the best. Maybe number two or three on my list. The story is utterly captivating, and the characters are developed so richly, so fully I felt like they could have been my siblings. The story flips between the present day and the wild, lawless childhood of Savannah, Tom (the narrator) and the oldest brother Luke. The whole book points to one terribly tragic event that happened when they were children, and the rest of the narrative builds toward the revelation. I devoured every single page, although there were a few pretty terrible scenes. This book was incredible. However, I did read another Pat Conroy book a little while after, and didn’t like it nearly as much…

24. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. It's Lewis's idea of what purgatory, or hell if you stay for good, could be like. The narrator finds himself there, and encounters several people he has known on earth. He also encounters George MacDonald, who Lewis has said was the most influential person in his own writing life. In the end, the narrator wakes up to realize it was a dream. This book was very interesting, very thought-provoking in the way some things are, not directly challenging or stating, but showing the ideas through story and allegory. Such an interesting read, just like everything Lewis wrote.

25. Lost Lily by me. I know, it's cheap. Plus, you can't go out and get it to read this summer. But here's the thing, I LOVE THIS BOOK. It may never be published, but it's still one of my favorites. It's about this girl, Elena, who travels to Siena to study abroad during her senior year of college. Before she leaves she finds out that her deceased mother, Lily, also spent time in Siena and while she is there, she begins to trace her mother. The end is good, good good, with a plot twist that gives me chills whenever I read it. It's my second book, but sort of my first real one. I just like it, I'm allowed.




So, there you have it.

Now, on my summer list:

Bel Canto
Sarah's Key
The History of Love
Zorro

Any other ideas? I only want the good stuff...