A friend who refuses to join facebook (smart friend) asked if I’d post this here, so she can see it. Okay, here it is.

I’m not sure how this challenge thing works, [name redacted to protect the innocent], so I’m just going to do my best. Here are ten books (actually eleven (well, maybe it’s eighteen — plus two CDs)), arrayed in roughly the order I read them/listened to them, that shaped how I think and perhaps even who I am:

1) A Wrinkle in Time — I didn’t know there were bookstores when I was in second grade (my parents believed exclusively in libraries, you see), so I spent several days trying to hunt and peck the whole text out on the old Underwood typewriter that sat on a battered desk in the family room.

2) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler — I’ve loved compound adjectives and The Metropolitan Museum of Art ever since.

3) Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH — So harrowing for a third grader. So filled with anxiety and loyalty and wonder and weird allusions to scientific research. I loved it so much then. I still do, though I now realize that it’s very unfair to corvids. I should also mention Robert C. O’Brien’s Z for Zachariah, a terrifying account of survivors wandering the land after a nuclear holocaust. Bonus fact: O’Brien died while writing that book. His death was noted as an aside in the text, which freaked the fuck out of little me.

4) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — I hate admitting it, but this one was important for a kid who wanted so badly to be cool in middle school — and just wasn’t at all. I used to be able to recite big chunks of this book. My brain is put to better uses now: like keeping up with facebook.

4a) Under the Big Black Sun — I’m breaking the rules here, I know, but John Doe’s and Exene Cervanka’s lyrics were like a novel (ed. note: that’s a very pretentious thing to say!), and had, like, a totally yooge impact on how I understood the books I was reading at the time. Or so I told myself.

5) To Kill a Mockingbird — Yeah, sure, it would be way hipper to say this or that book by William Faulkner or, better still, Walker Percy — As I Lay Dying? The Moviegoer? — but I’m a very trite person (see above).

6) Go Tell it on the Mountain or Another Country — We’ve arrived at the dreaded college years, when I read a lot of books, most of which I’ve totally forgotten, and so try as I might, I can’t pick just one thing by James Baldwin. Oh man, Giovanni’s Room just gutted me, so maybe that one?

6a) It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back — What I said in 4a is just as true here. I can’t really think about what I was reading at that time without remembering this CD BLOWING MY MIND. Also: I remained terribly uncool in college, but I was still working at it. E for effort, Ari!

7) Slouching Towards Bethlehem or The White Album — And now we’ve entered the maelstrom (a really great maelstrom!) of graduate school, and I can’t possibly choose just one of Joan Didion’s collections of essays. Yes, Didion’s politics are weird (at best), and she’s sometimes hugely off-putting as a person and writer, but she sure can set a scene.

8) Virgin Land, Machine in the Garden, Black Image in the White Mind, White Over Black, and Civilizing the Machine — What can I say? I’m a
huge sucker for great works of intellectual history and American Studies.

9) Nature’s Metropolis — Were it my book, I probably would have lopped off the last chapter (sorry, Bill!), but I still think it’s a work of real genius (which means that it couldn’t possibly be my book, so I should just shut up).

10) The Pine Barrens — John McPhee, like Didion, is who I want to be when I grow up and become a writer. The Pine Barrens is McPhee’s best book.

11) Independence Day — Because this list goes to eleven, I’m going to add my favorite of Richard Ford’s books and essays. I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t contain a single sentence that isn’t almost perfect.

I’m so sorry, Lorrie Moore! I totally heart you and should have found room for you on the list during the college/graduate school years!

Also, I’m not going to tag anyone else, because I loathe chain letters.