I knew this would come my way as soon as I saw Jeff Miller did it. Turns out Will Duquette laid it on me. Turns out the first two books on his list are the first I thought of also. Here goes ...
Rules: list 10 books that have stayed with you. Don't take more than a few minutes; don't think too hard. They don't have to be great works, just the ones that have touched you. Here's mine, in no particular order :
- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
- The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold
- Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie
- The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
- Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
- Only You Can Save Mankind - Terry Pratchett
- While We Still Live - Helen MacInnes
- The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom
- One Door Away From Heaven - Dean Koontz
I'm supposed to tag 10 people and I did tag a few on Facebook, but I'm just going to leave it up to whoever wants to join in, whether blogging, on Facebook, or just in the comments box here.
This was a great exercise. I listed my ten on my blog and I linked you. Thanks for inspiring me to try my hand at it. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/2013/12/ten-books-that-have-stayed-with-you.html
Okay, fast enough:
ReplyDelete1. The Outsiders by S.E Hinton
2. Phantastes by George MacDonald
3. Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy
4. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
6. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
7. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Silence by Shusaku Endo
10. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
A bit of an odd list, but I wouldn't be honest if it was different.
I almost chose And Then There Were None, but the one that touched me more was the Egyptian mystery. Though, now that I think of it, I really should have put Christie's short autobiographical account of her life with her archaeologist husband ... Come Tell Me How You Live.
DeleteI'm honestly not a big mystery reader. Not because I don't like them, but because there usually isn't much beyond the initial mystery to interest me. But "And Then There Were None" was the first I had ever read where there was far more going on beyond the killer, though admittedly I'm not the most familiar with Christie's work despite it. I'll definitely need to change that.
DeleteIn fact, now that I think about it I could have put "Red Harvest" up there as well.
1. A Song for Nagasaki by Fr. Paul Glynn (I would LOVE it if y'all did a podcast on this book!)
ReplyDelete2. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
3. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman
4. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
5. The Great Divorce by CS Lewis
6. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
7. What It Means To Be A Christian by Joseph Ratzinger
8. The Silver Chair by CS Lewis
9. Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
10. God and the World by Ratzinger
A Song for Nagasaki has long been on my "to read" list ... that WOULD be a great podcast book. Or there is the autobiographical book on that. Have you read it?
DeleteI've been meaning to! I'm sure they both have their own unique merits, but it's sort of shameful that I haven't yet read Nagai's account of his own life. A Song is FULL of his writings and journal entries, plus has the benefit of Fr. Glynn's artful descriptions and explanations of Japanese life and customs (something I imagine is absent from Nagai's autobiography for obvious reason).
DeleteYou make a compelling case for Fr. Glynn's book and it is more easily available. Perhaps it is a good entry to the story, much like reading about Teresa of Avila before reading one of her books (which was how I met her). Thanks for the scoop on that!
DeleteYou are most welcome! Anything I can do (short of sinning) to get more people to read A Song for Nagasaki, I WILL do. That's how profoundly it has affected me.
DeleteI too have posted it on my blog at http://zombieparentsguide.blogspot.com/2013/12/10-books-that-have-stayed-with-you-meme.html
ReplyDeleteVoyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis
ReplyDeleteA Father's Tale by Michael O'Brien
The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Moveable Feast by Hemingway
City of Joy by Dominique LaPierre
Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon
Frangipani by Celestine Vaite
The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin
Kind of an eclectic list and I might make some changes if I took more time but this is it on this Friday morning!
Odd Thomas was a contender ... it was a toss up between that and the one I chose.
Delete1. The Wind In the Willows - Kenneth Graham
ReplyDelete2. A Little Princess/The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet
3. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4. Lord of the Rings
5. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment [Paradox, Outrage & Vindication in the Parables of Jesus} - Robert Farrar Capon
6. Persuasion - Jane Austen
7. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
8. Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
9. The Grandmother's Tale - R.K. Narayan
10. How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton
This was fun! Thanks, Julie.
Tante Leonie
A Little Princess ... oh yes, that's one that also could have gone on my list. I never cottoned to The Secret Garden though. I disliked that little girl just as much as everyone else did. :-D
DeleteMy list will look very odd next to all the classics listed above!
ReplyDelete1. A Man Called Peter (Catherine Marshall)
2. John, Son of Thunder (Ellen Gunderson Traylor)
3. The Big Fisherman (Lloyd C. Douglas)
4. Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis)
5. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)
6. Yours, Jack (C.S. Lewis letters)
7. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
8. The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
9. And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
10. He & I (Gabrielle Bossis)
I'm going to give the reasons on my blog. Thanks so much for asking us this one! Made me think!!
No list is too un-classic! Plus we share several books so you know we're on the same page! :-D
DeleteThanks to Ouiz for listing my book, John - Son of Thunder! I have always said that if I could have only written one book, it would be John.
ReplyDelete