1.) MIDDLEMARCH, by George Eliot. MIDDLEMARCH is a sharper, smarter, more tragic and hilarious PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. An early 19th century tale about a girl who thinks she has it all figured out and then realizes she knows nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing at all, a situation I know too well as it has repeated itself enough times in my own life to form the most unfortunate of patterns. I have the hardest time picking my favorite book (it was a sweaty, teeth-gritted struggle to get it down to fricking five) but in the gun-to-the-head hypothetical, I pick MIDDLEMARCH. This book encapsulates the human experience for me. Or, at least, it encapsulates my human experience.
2.) THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, by Stephen Chbosky. If you are under the age of, I’m just going to arbitrarily say 28, you are yelling at the screen right now “YES, PERKS IS MY JAM.” A 90′s epistolary novel about a high school freshman boy writing anonymously to a stranger about his first year of high school, this book captures everything that is gorgeous and excruciating about figuring out how to be an adult when you weren’t even sure you knew how to be a child, discovering how to take an active role in your own life (hence, title), and learning how to belong to others and let them belong to you. This book is so f—ing exquisite I can’t even stand it. This should be the model that YA holds itself to, this and HARRY POTTER and A WRINKLE IN TIME and THE GIVER, but especially this.
3.) THE RAZOR’S EDGE, by Somerset Maugham. I was not ready to jump back into Maugham waters after OF HUMAN BONDAGE (I mean, it’s good and all, but if you’re raring for more Maugham after that you are either a librarian with six cats and/or insane.) I was working at an indie bookstore (rah, rah) at the time and a fellow employee practically pushed RAZOR’S EDGE on me. “No, I know about HUMAN BONDAGE,” he acknowledged, “Just trust me on RAZOR’S EDGE.” An early 20th century tale that follows Larry, an American pilot, traumatized by his combat experience in the first World War, who sets off on a messy, confusing, stumbling quest for meaning in life that none of his straight-laced friends (who narrate the story) can understand. As the chorus of “normals” suffocate in the confinement of their conventional choices, Larry actually turns out kind of okay in the end. The ultimate “F— everyone who says you’re crazy for being different and wanting more” book, this is the book for the times in your life when you feel lost or stuck and everyone won’t shut up about how you are lost and stuck and you need to believe that you aren’t crazy for wanting to beat your own drum as you walk down the road not taken.
4.) THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE, by Haruki Murakami. A Tokyo man loses his job, his cat, and his wife, and then things get REALLY twisty, dark, magical-realism nuts-crazy. I love all of of Murakami, I don’t care if he’s overexposed in the indie-reading community and everybody and their skinny-jeans-unwashed-hair-dour-expressioned-barista-by-day-bassist-by-night-boyfriend is obsessed with Murakami, I’m obsessed too, and this is his opus. He sends my imagination to the stratosphere and back, part novelist, part philosopher, part magician, I love Murakami and TWBC to itsy, bitsy heart-shaped pieces.
5.) THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, by Margery Williams. “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” This book, you guys. Just, this book. I can’t even be articulate. I’m crying so hard all over my keyboard right now. United States of America, are you listening? Turn off REAL HOUSEWIVES and please effing read this.
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