Book Monster

I started cataloguing my books last night. It’s number 53 in my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I got the idea from Triplux, the website/blog of Photographer Michael Green. I still haven’t had the chance (courage, actually!) to post my to-do list in my blog (task #48), but I will probably put up a partial one soon or an update of what I’ve already done. Having it published on the world wide web is such a scary thought for me—it means that I have to make a real commitment to do everything I said I would do. I know, that’s the point of the whole exercise, but UUUFFFFFFF! Afraid. I’m also superstitious so I am wary of jinxing myself and my future. I just try to think of this as an affirmations list of things to come. It’s a very useful tool, though, for a procrastinator like me. I’m not into long-term planning either, so every little thing helps.

I’ve had my list for some time now, but I never got around to number 53 till last night. I went on a book-hunting frenzy after watching Pride and Prejudice. Twice. In a row. I absolutely adore Matthew MacFadyen’s Mr. Darcy! I wanted to prolong the lovely-touchy-lighter-than-air-kilig feeling I got from the movie by reading the novel. I knew I read it a looooong, loooooooong time ago, but I wasn’t sure if I had a copy at home or not. It turns out that I don’t. Sigh. So in my desperation to keep my spirits up, I looked for a similar type of book (i.e. something light, sweet, romantic) and, unfortunately, couldn’t find one. NADA. What I did see and what I realized was that I have a vast collection of novels that were written by white, middle-aged, angst-filled men who are (almost all) dead. Hmmm… Interesting.

I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of my collection. I forgot my initial assignment to find a "happy" book and wanted to read every title I saw. Julian Barnes’s Staring at the Sun… I don’t remember reading this. I had forgotten that I had Dostoevsky’s Demons! I want to read Witches by Roald Dahl again. Oooooh… and I have a copy of his Tales of the Unexpected. I love, love, love them all! God, it would be hard to just pick one to read again.

TING!!! Amidst the flurry of dust and excitement I created by rummaging through my library, I challenged myself to name 10 of my all time favorite books. VERY difficult thing to do, right? Quite cruel, actually, considering I have so many to choose from. Which ones can I read over and over again? Which ones would I take with me when I move again? I certainly love most of the books I have, but if I can narrow down my list, which ones would make it? Which ones touched me the most?

I didn’t give myself much time to think and just brainstormed for a couple of minutes. I decided not to include the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the list because, well, it’s a given already. I also wanted to keep it to one book per author, otherwise, the top five places would all be occupied by just one person. The following came off the top of my head:

1) The Stranger-Albert Camus
2) Kitchen/N.P.-Banana Yoshimoto
3) Franny and Zooey-JD Salinger
4) Letters to a Young Poet/The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge-Ranier Maria Rilke
5) Something Wicked this Way Comes-Ray Bradbury
6) Dracula-Bram Stoker
7) Darkness Visible-William Styron
8) The Garden of Abdul Gasazi-Chris Van Allsburg
9) The Talisman-Stephen King and Peter Straub
10) The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse/Steppenwolf-Herman Hesse

The Stranger (Outsider) could be my number one choice of all time. I’ve read it more than 10 times already and I never get tired of it. I can still feel the scorching heat emanating from the book every time I read it. It’s easy enough to digest, but its simplicity belies the complexity and tension hidden underneath. I love reading it while listening to the Cure’s Killing an Arab. Camus wrote this after years of campaigning for Africans/Muslims who had been maltreated, were misunderstood, and wrongly accused of crimes. This was almost 50 years ago and, still, we face the same issues.

Most of the books I picked were "quiet" ones—not much is happening on the surface but they silently make your soul churn on the inside. They like passing though the backdoor unnoticed before whacking you over the head.

I have to write down the honorable mentions, the ones who almost made it to the list:
Romantic Movement/How Proust can Change your Life-Alain de Botton
A thousand cranes-Yasunari Kawabata
Veronika Decides to Die-Paulo Coellho (It would have been on the top 10 but my feelings about it change every time I read it. It depends on my mood, I guess)
In Search of Stones-M. Scott Peck
An Artist of the Floating World-Kazuo Ishiguro
Notes from the Underground-Fyodor Dostoevsky!
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game, Headless Cupid, The Witches of Worm, Libby on Wednesday, etc, etc.
Madeleine L’Engle’s grown-up and kiddie/fantasy books
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (the first 3)
The Sorrows of Young Werther-Goethe
A Prayer for Owen Meany-John Irving
Dawn-Elie Wiesl
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-James Joyce (I brought my copy of Finnegan’s Wake to Spain and lost it!)
Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots series
The Lust for Life-Irving Stone

Books I’ve read recently that I liked:
Time’s Arrow-Martin Amis
Angela’s Ashes-Frank McCourt
The Life of Pi-Yann Martel
Lovely Bones-Alice Sebold
A Woman Speaks-Anais Nin
Atonement by Ian McEwan. I’ve yet to read Amsterdam.

I like reading non-fiction as well—
Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung
The Hero with a thousand faces-Joseph Campbell
Howard Gardner (Creating Minds, Framing Minds, etc)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow, Creativity)

*Special Note on NEIL GAIMAN: He is still one of my all time favorite writers. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HIM. I didn’t include any of his books in my list though because as much as I like his novels, nothing beats his illustrated stories and comic books. He has a separate category of his own.

I realized the following things by looking through my collection:
Like a lot of people, I have a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, but I never read it.
I don’t like Hemingway.
I like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien!)
I thought I liked Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary but when I read it again recently I actually couldn’t finish it because my blood pressure went out of control. What was I thinking?!?!
I LOVE Short stories. I have a lot of anthologies and collections of horror ones.
I’ve never read mills and boone’s (spelling?) but I loved reading sweet dreams
I have 3 copies of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hardbound/US, paperback/UK, Spanish)
I frequently peruse through Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable
I have a Klingon-English Dictionary and 2 Star Trek Encyclopedias
I have 3 For Dummies books: Vegetarian Cooking, Astrology, and Art History (which I can’t find!)
My favorite and most used cookbook is Filipino Cooking Here and Abroad.
I love Shel Silverstein but, amazingly, I don’t have a copy of any of his books
I can’t find my copy of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild things Are
I’m not much of a fan of Latin American Literature—I love Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Julio Cortázar though. A Hundred Years of Solitude was just that—a hundred years of solitude.
I’ve never read Cervantes’s Don Quiojote (I read the comic book or Cliff Notes for school). I would like to read it in Spanish someday.
I’ve read Noli Me Tangere in Spanish. I am still looking for a copy of El Filibusterismo.
I only have one management/business book in my collection—Make it So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek the Next Generation by Wess Roberts, PhD and Bill Ross. You have to trick me into reading one of those.

WHEW.

As you can see, #53 is turning out to be a real chore. Distractions, distractions. Such an enormous task of making an organized list for someone with an attention span of a five year old. GARGH. And if I wasn’t so OC (obsessive-compulsive) about it, I would probably finish in no time. Thank God for Excel though.