The bookstore I work at semi-frequently sends out questionnaires
for the staff to fill out regarding our top book lists to be complied and
posted online. It’s usually stuff like “Top Books Made into Movies” or “Best
Short Stories”, but the second to last one they called for was top "25 Books to
Read Before You Die". This is a common list that people have. I remember seeing
a “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list circulating around the internet
several years ago, full of Austen, Fitzgerald and Rowling- stuff I’m not super
interested in reading. I read books frequently,
but I can’t say that I’ve read an abnormally high number, nor can I say that I’ve
read “the classics”, or most popular books.
I have a tendency to read more non-fiction than fiction, which can often
be the snobbiest, grossest thing someone can say when it comes to pleasure
reading. Though I was once a complete
book (and music, and life) snob who wouldn’t read certain books because they
were popular, or a certain genre, I’ve grown up, started openly listening to
Justin Timberlake, and become a strong
believer in reading what you like. I’m not going to waste my time on something
that I just don’t care about because I think I should read it to appear a
certain way. I’ve been there, done that in high school, and I don’t work for
Hot Topic any more, so I’ve no longer got a reputation of misty indifference to uphold. Since reading is so personal, I think lists like that for the general
population are sort of dumb… what is important to me is most certainly not
going to be important to anyone else. I
decided to make my own list of titles that I’ve read in my life that were
important to me for whatever reason. Some show up on common lists, some are
super random.
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Sophomore year in high school, I took a Creative Writing
class that was the complete opposite of creative. The teacher insisted that all the work we turn
in be dark, melodramatic “Teen Fiction” about bad home lives and self mutilation,
and all I wanted to do was write funny stuff, and ultimately, band fan fiction.
My grandfather got me a copy of this book around the same time, and it was eye
opening to me. This shit was funny, and it was taken seriously as actual
writing. Imagine that!
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
Though this book is often lauded as SENSITIVE MALE VOICE
NUMBER ONE, there are few, if any, characters that I relate to more than the
asshole main character Rob in this book. There’s one bit where he says
something along the lines of not being able to relate to human beings, but can
list all of Al Green’s records in chronological order, including East German
bootlegs, not just the major stuff, and that is so real.
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
In sixth grade, my class did a unit on Shakespeare, and I
went in deep. We actually performed “The
Tempest”, in which I did a completely shitty job of portraying Sebastian with a
bob hair cut, along with reading several
of Shakespeare’s works. I loved Romeo
and Juliet deeply; along with Hamlet, it was my favorite. However, I couldn’t give two shits about
Romeo or Juliet- those assholes had it coming. I was in it to win it with
Mercutio. That rat bastard was nuts- bawdy, gross, and goddamn fucking funny. I remember reading speculations that
Shakespeare had to kill him off because he was going to steal the show away
from the titular characters, which duh, by the time he'd had worms meat made of him, he already had.
Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
The
most comprehensive study of America’s first sex scandal-haver and all around $10 dreamboat was released when I was in 9th grade and I remember glamorously buying it at Costco. Hamilton was my first favorite historical figure, as he is for many (quickly followed by Marquis de Lafayette, for me), and this massive tome is all encompassing. Following the scrappy redhead from his bastard childhood writing emo poetry about hurricanes in the Caribbean to his bratty aide-de-camp-dom in the Revolutionary War, to his dumbshit affair with Maria Reynolds and the consequential ~escándalo nacional~, to the DUEL TO END ALL DUELS (inaccurate), this book enthralled me and made me want to know more about the 18th Century, domestically and abroad. And also, were his flowery letters to Lt Col John Laurens just typical of the florid writing style of the era, or SOMETHING MORE????
Rolling Stone’s Encyclopedia
of Rock and Roll, circa 1983
My seventh grade history teacher had us write a letter to
our future selves at 22 listing all the things we had hoped to accomplish by that age. She held onto them and mailed them when we
would actually be 22, and I received it the year I had flunked out of Portland
and had to return to Methenburg CA to work at Walgreens and live with my mom again.
Needless to say, I wasn’t interested in reading the high hopes pre-9/11 me had
for my future (hint: it wasn’t living with my mom and working at Walgreens). I
recently found it again during my mass cleaning for my most recent move, and
one of the career options I was seriously considering was something in the lucrative field of Rock
and Roll- journalist or historian.
I clearly wasn’t going to make it as a musician, since I was a chunky
girl ( I know, I know) who only knew how to play the clarinet, but I could write
about it from behind a dark and creaky desk at Rolling Stone. One of my deepest
connections with my dad has always been our shared love for music, and I’ve
always been impressed with his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of music
released before 1985 (but not after. Video killed the radio star, indeed). I
remember finding this book in his collection of 70s rock and roll ( and alternately
70s country) periodicals and poring over it, desperately wanting to memorize as
much of it as I could, despite how stupidly out of date it was.
Bossy Pants, Tina Fey
Even though it is a fairly conventional memoir that people
either love or hate (much like the author herself), this title is one that I
can reread without being bored. I love
listening to comedians talk about comedy. Does deconstructing humor ruin the “magic”
of it? Probably. Does learning that the piss jar subplot of the Sun Tea episode of
30 Rock was based on actual events that took place in the writing rooms at SNL
in the early 2000s make me happy I’m not a comedy writer employed at that network? Absolutely not.
Runners Up:
To Kill a Mockingbird
East of Eden
Beloved
A Clockwork Orange
