Better Late Than Never Redux, or, I've Always Been A Reader

Just over at Thinking About ... and ran into the Herding Cats Challenge. Of course I couldn't leave that alone ...

Here's how the challenge goes:

1. List 10 books you have read and love.

2. Pick 3 books you haven’t read before from the ‘favorite books lists’ of other challenge participants. There's a wonderful master list, which makes me nervous because I haven't read a lot of the books on it, and some of my favorites aren't there. Geez, do I march to a different drummer, or what?

3. Read those 3 books, and review them on your blog. The time frame is May - November, 2008.

4. Of course, link to the main challenge blog.

Here, then, are 10 books I have read and LOVED.

1. The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I first read this while I was in high school -- and it was one of the books that my friend Joycelyn and I shared a love for. I loved it so much I had to steal them from the public library, because they weren't available to buy here yet. I've read it countless times, always finding some new detail, some new meaning in it. I pestered my ex-husband until he bought me the leather-bound copies. I loved the movies, but it's the books that have my heart.
2. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. I just read this book, mainly because my little f2f book club read it, & I found it in a thrift store. I hadn't planned to read it, but when it came to hand I changed my mind. And it's an incredible book! The basic story (it's non-fiction) is the background on the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, polyphanyed with the story of a psychopathic serial killer who lived in Chicago while the Fair was being built. I didn't care so much about that second theme, but it did make for a very interesting interweaving. What was fascinating was the wealth of details and background about the Fair, the personalities involved, the obstacles, the triumphs, the defeats, and how many things in our everyday lives today that originated at the Fair. Read it -- you'll be mesmerized!
3. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This is the first book I read by Connie Willis, and it endeared her to me forever! The title is the tag line from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome, which I also adore. Both are hysterically funny, at least to me. Desert island books.
4. Passages by Connie Willis. This book had a powerful effect on me -- so much so that I still remember the plot, several years later (these days I don't remember so good as I used to, & often don't remember the plots of books I've read a short while after I've read them). A seemingly ordinary sci fi story, set a bit in the futue, and then -- the pivotal happening, and it turns into a page turner. I won't give away the plot, except to say that it's about life after death.
5. Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher. A romance that gave me the warm fuzzies, set in the north of Scotland in winter. I like it because it's a story about ordinary people, people who think they've failed at life, finding love in spite of the failures. And also because it's set in Scotland, of course.
6. The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature by Loren Eiseley. Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist, science writer, ecologist and poet who published books of essays and general science. He's best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay", which he used to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, and about humanity's relationship with the natural world. These helped inspire the environmental movement. I first came across this book while I was studying archaeology, and it (and all his other books) spoke to me in ways that science or poetry alone could never have done. His essays are mystical, enchanting, delicate filagrees of words and ideas that drew me in and continue to haunt my mind.
7. Bowser the Hound by Thornton Waldo Burgess. "Bowser the Hound, outsmarted so often by Old Man Coyote, is taken advantage of once again when the coyote leads him on a long chase that ends far from the canine's home. But with the the help of Blacky the Crow and other friends, Bowser gets even."
Thornton Waldo Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for daily columns in newspapers. Many of his outdoor observations in nature were used as plots for his stories. In his first book, "Old Mother West Wind", published in 1910, the reader meets many of the characters found in later books and stories. These characters include Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, Bobby Raccoon, Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog, Billy Mink, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle and of course, Old Mother West Wind and her Merry Little Breezes.
I think I read them all as a kid, and loved them. I named my dog Bowser. And the books fostered a love of the natural world that has been one of the ruling passions of my life. They seem a bit outdated in today's electronic world of DSes and Leapfrogs and tv, etc. I've tried reading them to my grandson but he's not particularly interested, even though he's a budding naturalist and intends to be a zoologist when he grows up. But they hold a special place in my heart, and always will. I think I'll will my collection to him ...
8. The Mitford Series by Jan Karon. I'm not Christian (nor any other religious affiliation) by choice, and find organized religion distasteful and often hyprocritical. Still this gentle love story about a 60 year old Episcopalean priest and a "mature" writer of children's books creates a world I am always sorry to leave. Set in the mythical town of Mitford (which is based on Blowing Rock, North Carolina), the books transport me to a kinder, gentler world -- one that I wished we all really lived in. I've adopted Father Tim's prayer "Let me be a blessing to someone today" as a credo to live my own life by. And would that all denominations and sects were as true to the bedrock reason for religion!
9. New Worlds to Conquer by Richard Halliburton. Halliburton's exploits made him a living legend and provided five best-sellers to his eagerAmerican audience. He died in a blaze of glory and mystery that has never been solved. In 1939 he was attempting to sail a Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, from Hong Kong to San Francisco, when the leaky wreck disappeared without a trace.
When I was growing up in the early 1950's, my mother had all his books, and loved them. I read them also, avidly, at about 9 years old, and they gave me a case of incurable wanderlust, that I submit to even to this day.
One of the places Halliburton wrote about was Petra, the ancient Nabatean capital in southern Jordan, to which he, like everyone else, referred as the ''rose-red city half as old as time.'' (A stirring phrase, that, worthy of Ruskin or Wordsworth, but in fact the work of a feeble, long-forgotten 19th-century English poet named John William Burgon, who had never been there.) "The rose-red city, half as old as time ..." Who wouldn't be capitivated by that phrase? It rings in my memory still, even though I never got the chance to go there, and probably never will now.
In New Worlds to Conquer, Halliburton wrote about "The Place Where The Sun Is Tied": "One hundred of the [Incan] vestal virgins managed to escape [the conquering Spaniards], flee together over the crest of the Andes above Cuzco and disappear down one of the great tropical cañons that descend the eastern slope of the mountains and lead on to Brazil. For four hundred years the fate of these reguess remained an unsolved mystery. Then, in 1911, by archaeological accident, they were found -- found in a secret city at a place in the mountain fastnesses where the Sun is tied." It was Macchu Pichu, of course, and even though we now know his fantasy about its last inhabitants was false, still it created a sense of wonder I never recovered from. Or from his visit to Chichen Itza, and his dive into the ceremonial cenote, all alone at dawn.
Is it any wonder I grew up to be an archaeologist?
10. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. There are no words, no way for me to begin to convey what a powerful effect this book had on me. I read it just after returning from a month spent in the Four Corners region, working on archaeological digs and going to as many Anasazi ruins as I could. Desert Solitude captures the awful beauty and silence of that land so perfectly, it breaks your heart. I love all his work, but this is the first one I read, and it remains my favorite.

That's ALL? I can't talk about any of the other books I love? Maybe I can sneak in anonymously as someone else and get another 10 on the list ...

These are the three books I'm going to read for this challenge:

1. An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. I chose this book because I just found it at a thrift store in Laguna Beach. So, it's already in my TBR pile and if I read it, the TBR pile will go down by one. Plus, since I'm such an environmentalist, I'm a bit embarrassed about not having seen the movie, so reading the book will make me feel better.
2. Lilith by George MacDonald. The title caught my eye, because it was the name my friend chose for herself -- a name she adopted in adulthood, somewhere along the way. Since I just lost her, reading this book will be a way to honor her memory. I just grabbed it off of BookMooch, which is a lovely, evil place.
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Also taking up space in my TBR bookcase, and has been for a long time. Way past time to get it read and move it along.