Top Ten, in no particular order

Tonight when I was walking Piper, I was thinking about Susan Minot's novel Evening, which I finished reading today. I can't seem to shake this book. It was hauntingly sad, but not in the typical lugubrious, saccharine way. It ached in the places where you put away lost loves and relationships that will never, despite your best effort, actually work. I'm not sure the film adaptation will capture what made the book work, but whatever. God knows I'll see it.

Reading this book reminded me of my Moon Goddess of a sister Cyndy and the Top Ten lists on her blog. They started with the top ten "songs of her life" that she was playing to her stomach and unborn baby, and then she later carved out her top ten choral and orchestral pieces, and her top ten books.

Frankly, I loved reading these top ten lists, and would like to be the first to call for their return. In any shape or form, on any topic.

In that spirit, it seems a little absurd to not make a book list of my own.

I should say that this list is based on the presupposition that some books are too obvious to list. Those would be Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Orwell's 1984, anything by Shakespeare (with the exception of a few of the histories), Bronte's Jane Eyre (sorry, but I'm still a little in love with Mr. Rochester...and what the hell, you might as well throw Pride and Prejudice in there because Mr. Darcy is about as good as they get in Victorian literature), Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and Huxley's Brave New World.

It also does not include the obvious drama choices, which would be Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and Wilder's Our Town.

Also, "Birches" by Robert Frost is my favorite poem.

In no particular order:

1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

I think every junior high girl should read this book. I honestly believe it would make them stand up straighter and love themselves more.

2. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

This was the first book that made me believe there was more to literature than a plotline. It's probably the book I would credit with turning me into an English teacher.

3. The Family of Man created by Edward Steichen

Okay, so this one isn't actually a book, but was an exhibition created by Edward Steichen in 1955. It consisted of 508 photographs from 68 countries. The professed aim of the exhibition was to mark "essential oneness of mankind throughout the world." I wasn't around in 1955, but I have it in book form.

4. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I once made all of my high school friends read this on choir tour so we could discuss it. And my dad thought I was going to be a doctor. Right.

5. The Once and Future King by T.H. White. This book should be required reading for all ninth graders of the world. I loved it so much (and like Cyndy, loved the last chapter of it so much) that I typed the whole damn thing out for Abby my junior year of high school. God, I was destined for nerdiness.

6. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

This book made me believe that not all great books were written by dead authors. Probably the best book in any high school curriculum.

7. Beach Music by Pat Conroy. I love this book and have read it more times than any other book (that I haven't taught). I don't know what else to say about it. It is wonderful in every way.

8. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. This was the first of many Picoult books that I've read. It was good enough to keep me glued to the pages while driving through the beautiful Swiss countryside. I think I put it down to look out the window when we got to the Alps, but I'm not entirely sure. This book made me weep in a humiliating, undignified way.

9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I think I love this book so much because I did NOT read it in high school. There's too much going on with this novel to not mention it on the top ten list. It should also be on a list of novels with great last sentences.

10. Last and painfully not least, I love a particular trilogy of books by Heather Graham that are historical romances about the Civil War. In no way am I proud of this choice or would I deem these selections "Great Literature." In fact, if in front of a room of sophomores, I would deny this selection to my dying breath. But as a junior high girl, I absolutely adored these books--I fell in love with the Cameron brothers, I admired the witty heroines with whom they fell in love, and I believed wholeheartedly in the beauty and lost glory of The South.

While I'm admitting things, I might as well admit that I also reread them on a trip to Mexico in college and found them equally entertaining.

Ugh, so, SO embarrassing. You can tell how embarrassing by their cover images and their titles: One Wore Blue, One Wore Gray, and And One Rode West.

You can borrow them if you'd like.