Pip and his merry friends are enjoying this meme right now in which people list 10 books which stayed with them. By “books” you are also allowed to lists series or collections of works. After seeing the second Hobbit movie (and liking it), I realized that I would love a Hobbit movie by definition, because I loved Lord of the Rings and especially loved the films. (With that said, nowadays I think that Elvish sounds disturbingly nordic while I always remembered it to sound more beautiful and less… guttural?)
So this is my list of books, roughly ordered by the chronology in which I read them:
1. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
3. Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep
4. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
5. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
6. Ödön von Horváth, (almost) all plays + Jugend ohne Gott
7. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
7b. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
8. Leo Tolstoi, Anna Karenina
9. Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
10. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Making this list is tough! I kicked out “1984” and “Briefe einer Unbekannten”, and I couldn’t include “Eugene Onegin” because I never read it in its entirety despite my obsession with it. I also didn’t include any Schnitzler plays because honestly, they are all kind of the same and none of them stand out by themselves, but the same goes for Chekhov who definitely has an outstanding piece (“Uncle Vanya”).
What’s on your list?
I’m glad to see you and Osu share a book again :). I need to read Horváth and Huxley (the H’s).
Hoho, I could predict most of the books in your list and I am very proud of it! :D Where is your list, Pirrip?
Anyway, it’s still a tough choice. I wouldn’t necessarily (still) call these my favorite books, but I guess these had the biggest impact on my life:
1. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
2. Frank Wedekind, Frühlings Erwachen (or Lulu)
3. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
4. Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
5. Paul Celan, Poems
6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
7. Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
8. Juli Zeh, Spieltrieb
9. Hans Lebert, Die Wolfshaut
10. Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
HAHAHA ridiculously I forgot “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and I also chose not to include “Frühlings Erwachen”. I like the Lulu play but find it ultimately less intriguing than “Frühlings Erwachen” which has a less generic story I guess?
OK I think I will have to kick “Asleep” for the infamous Kundera book.
I can send you Pip’s list if you want.
10. In the Penal Colony – Kafka (along with many other stories, but I chose one)
9. Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein
8. Speaker for the Dead – Card
7. Hyperion Cantos – Simmons
6. The Face of Another – Abe
5. Light Snow (The Makioka Sisters) – Tanizaki
4. Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky
3. Dune (all of them) – Herbert
2. The Book of the New Sun – Wolfe
1. The Woman in the Dunes – Abe