Some of my favorite books of all time
John Irving - When I read "The World According to Garp" in college, something changed in my brain. I have always been an avid reader - the kind of kid who read with a flashlight under the covers until way past my bedtime, loving "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Borrowers". But when I read Garp, I suddenly felt like an adult for the first time. I can't remember exactly WHAT happened, but everything afterwards was "before Garp" or "after Garp"!
Marion Zimmer Bradley - "The Mists of Avalon" launched my career as a dreamer of dreams and my fantasies of living in a mystical past where magic was possible and all truths could be known. Ever since reading this book, I can imagine the layers of past lives beneath my feet, and will always carry within me a childlike wonder of the unseen I can imagine around me.
Agatha Christie - "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is one of the reasons I became a huge fan of mysteries and British fiction. Reading Christie has led me to discover countless other British crime writers, and probably provided me with thousands of hours of pleasure, plus lots of ignored housework.
Anne Rice - "Interview With the Vampire" came along about 90 years after Bram Stoker's famous novel. What I love about Rice's vampire novels is that her characters have lived for so many generations. They tell their life stories, some starting over a thousand years back. It is such an interesting perspective, to be alive for so long and having lived through so many ages! Rice is such a good author, she makes me wish I was a vampire!
Piers Anthony - "Macroscope" expanded my little teenage brain to encompass other universes and alternative worlds. Looking through the macroscope, you could see other planets like ours, watch them develop life, explode with development, then implode from self-destructive behavior - lessons for our own planet. Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series also made a big impression on me - life, death, love, justice, hope - all written in a way that engaged my teenage sensibilities and mind.
The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal
Highly original, this novel takes us to an imaginary medieval Scandinavian town seen through the eyes of Ava, a poor seamstress. Her luck waxes and wanes as she is pummelled by the vagaries of the brutal times she lives in. Her pluckiness and survival instincts lead her into and out of trouble, as she navigates the dangers of the royal court. The mysterious illness affecting the queen's children spreads a miasma of fear throughout the castle, catching up rich and poor in a web of intrigue and evil. Involuntarily, Ava must team up with Midi Sorte, a mute nursemaid. They attempt to extract themselves from the escalating situation using ingenuity and daring, playing on others' superstitions and fears. I found this novel very captivating - it gave me a strong feel for what life must have been like in the Middle Ages in Scandinavia. Death and pain were shadows over daily life, and religious beliefs and superstitions ruled absolutely.
Mariana by Susanna Kearsley
While the cover of this book is a bit shabby and the title doesn't tell you a whole lot, the novel itself has all my favorite elements of a good read: mystery and romance and mystical past lives entwined with the present. Several times during her childhood, Julia chances upon the ancient house Greywethers in the English counrtyside, and develops a strange connection to the house. When a Sunday drive once again brings her to it's doorstep, she grabs the opportunity to buy it. Her sense of deja vu encompasses not only the house and gardens, but also her new neighbors, and suddenly she is stepping through time to 1665 and the life of Mariana. Time flickers back and forth as Julia finds her connection to the events that unravelled in the past, and she quickly is teetering between two worlds. Deliciously gothic and with a smashing surprise ending!
The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey
Bailey was the first historian admitted to Belvior Castle in Leicestershire, England. She was there in order to research her planned book about WWI and it's effects on the local area. Quickly she discovered that there were deep mysteries surrounding John, the 9th Duke of Rutland, and his family, owners of the castle dating back to the 11th century. Digging through the family letters, she was amazed at what she found and at what she DIDN'T find - large portions of the family history had been excized. With amazing diligence, Catherine Bailey slowly uncovers the Duke's secrets. In a world where some were born high and some were born low, it is hard to concieve how much the world has changed. Letters were written, and kept. Telegrams were sent, servants delivered messages by hand, and WWI was carried out by today's standards almost in slow motion.
Reading almost like an old-fashioned english crime novel, I was completely gripped by this book. At times disgusted by the era's air of social inequality and the wealthy's absolute sense of entitlement, I was at the same time fascinated at the picture painted of these people's lives. Better than fiction!
This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon
An unlikely love story between the sad Irish Addie, and Bruno, the American looking for his Irish roots, this novel was simply lovely. Bruno, a puppy-like American who gushes over anything european, Irish, old or having to do with his ancestors, made me at times cringe. I'm sorry to say that he's a bit of a stereotype that I recognize from my own family. When he tells Addie that she shouldn't complain because her people obviously survived the potato blight, I choked on my morning coffee.... Addie is sweet but somewhat lost in life and at loose ends. The event that is approaching the two of them like a runaway train will stay with you for a long time....
We Are Water by Wally Lamb
This is a novel to be savored, with deeply developed characters and a wide-reaching story that will sweep your imagination. Lamb is a master storyteller! Sentered on Annie, we meet her on the cusp of her second marriage, a controversial match that is sending shockwaves through her family. Her ex, Orion, comes into the story, giving us his side of the story, then spreading to their three children, each viewpoint like sparkling jewels of clarity and humanity. A complex, interwoven tale, taking us into each character's past and illuminating the effects the past have on our present selves. If you read one book this year, this should be it!
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Set in Iceland in the 1880s, this story tells of a primitive people where the setting might as well have been in the year 800. People live in crofts made of dirt and hay, with windowpanes made of stretched fishskin. If your neighbor says that their cow died because you looked at it funny and therefore put a curse onit, then so is it and you will suffer the consequences. Red-heads with freckles are doomed at birth to be stamped as evil, and superstitions rule without question. Into this setting, imagine a dirt-poor woman, possessing intelligence and a mind of her own, accused of murdering her master. Winter and weather rule all elements of time in this country of ice and snow, so Agnes Magnusdottir is sent to work on a farm while waiting execution. Her host family slowly hears her story, told in bits and pieces, as her beheading approaches. My heart was pounding as I arrived at the last page of this dark and fascinating novel!
Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio
When a heavy snowstorm hits Seattle in May, news reporter Claire is sent off to cover the story. When she discovers that the city had been hit with an identical "blackberry winter" the same date but in 1933, Claire delves into the archives looking for points of interest. Trying to distract herself from her own troubles and sorrows, she comes upon the story of little Daniel May, age three, who went missing the night of the snowstorm in '33. Claire determines to find out all she can to solve the mystery of his disappearance, taking the reader on a journey to the past to show it's ghostly shadow on who we have become today.
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
A magically compelling historical novel blended with an author's engaging journey in writing the story of her ancestor, I was completely won over by "The Winter Sea". Carrie travels to the wild coast of Scotland to write the story of Sofia Paterson, set in the early 1700s, at the castle Slains, now a ruin being dashed by the encroaching waves of the sea. In a small cottage by the ancient walls, Carrie increasingly channels what seem to be ancestral memories more than actually writing fiction, as the characters in her book come to life, relentlessly whispering their stories to her. The story magically brings to life the history of the attempts of the Jacobites to return their King James to the throne of Scotland. With this backdrop, Sofia's personal challenges and sorrows bring to life a deeply moving novel. For Carrie, the story becomes completely enmeshed in her own life and own history. I want to read more by Kearsley now, without a doubt!
