December Days: Favourite Book
Dec. 28th, 2014 11:54 pmI was never the sort of person who could choose a favourite book, but ages ago I began taking questions to name my favourite book as an invitation to talk about some books I liked especially much, not that I had to have exactly one favourite and be partisan about it.
So I started collecting a list of 20-30 books I liked the most, with the aim of being able to choose some that are more likely to be interesting to any particular asker.
A little white ago I posted an updated version of the list, the closest to "what is my favourite book", here: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/857208.html
Now I'm looking over that again. One thing I notice is several themes. Several books I think of as "recent classics", books that I first read when they were first published, or still fairly current. Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrel, Name of the Wind, Game of Thrones.
Another is, books with a main character who is super-outstanding and acts like an arrogant asshole, but has some convincing reason for acting like that that means they get to be considered a nice person really. Ender's Game. Lord of Light. Where how much you enjoy them may depend whether your suspension of disbelief is broken by those rationalisations.
Several intermediate-classics, ones I share with my parents, Hornblower, Watership Down, Tolkien.
However, I also notice, as several people strongly reiterated, they're heavily represented by traditional white male nerd no-family type characters. And they're heavily represented by books which are strong in simple plot and sometimes ideas, but not massively deep character observations, adolescent-type books. And I am trying to read more widely, and find books which are more satisfying, and have enjoyed many books by a wider variety of authors, but have found very few I can confidently add to the list of ones I really enjoy, and don't really want to add books I thought I ought to enjoy but didn't really.
There are some books I loved because of the ideas, but I find it hard for those to go on being favourites, because one first falls in love with them for being the first to show some particular idea (that space travel could be a plausible near future, that society could be progressive, that we could explore the universe somehow), but that when you've internalised the idea, and lots of other books have done something similar, what was unique about the original books slowly wanes.
I used to name "Cryptonomicon" as my favourite, because even if it wasn't the best objectively, it was the one most quintessentially me, heavily exemplifying a mathmo-ness in all characters, from whatever walk of life, always massively overthinking things. In some ways, it felt stuck in the 90s, but in other ways, it seems to have got more relevant, both for me personally as I've learned more about founding small but high-revenue companies, and for the world as a whole, as crypto-currencies have started to be more of an actual thing, and suffered lots of political wrangling. However, the flaws of the book, which I always acknowledged existing, have started to bother me a lot more, so I don't really want to name it. However, I'm not sure what to replace it with. Ideally, something that still feels like a perfectly rounded book, couldn't be improved on, but also is a favourite of me personally, and also, is more progressive than a lot of the other dominent-culture books. Possibly Jonathon Strange and Mister Norrel, about magicians in england contemporary to the napoleonic wars, because I love it as a book, it's one that always has more to say to you, and although the two main characters are white male landed gentry, the author and a lot of the most interesting characters aren't.
So I started collecting a list of 20-30 books I liked the most, with the aim of being able to choose some that are more likely to be interesting to any particular asker.
A little white ago I posted an updated version of the list, the closest to "what is my favourite book", here: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/857208.html
Now I'm looking over that again. One thing I notice is several themes. Several books I think of as "recent classics", books that I first read when they were first published, or still fairly current. Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrel, Name of the Wind, Game of Thrones.
Another is, books with a main character who is super-outstanding and acts like an arrogant asshole, but has some convincing reason for acting like that that means they get to be considered a nice person really. Ender's Game. Lord of Light. Where how much you enjoy them may depend whether your suspension of disbelief is broken by those rationalisations.
Several intermediate-classics, ones I share with my parents, Hornblower, Watership Down, Tolkien.
However, I also notice, as several people strongly reiterated, they're heavily represented by traditional white male nerd no-family type characters. And they're heavily represented by books which are strong in simple plot and sometimes ideas, but not massively deep character observations, adolescent-type books. And I am trying to read more widely, and find books which are more satisfying, and have enjoyed many books by a wider variety of authors, but have found very few I can confidently add to the list of ones I really enjoy, and don't really want to add books I thought I ought to enjoy but didn't really.
There are some books I loved because of the ideas, but I find it hard for those to go on being favourites, because one first falls in love with them for being the first to show some particular idea (that space travel could be a plausible near future, that society could be progressive, that we could explore the universe somehow), but that when you've internalised the idea, and lots of other books have done something similar, what was unique about the original books slowly wanes.
I used to name "Cryptonomicon" as my favourite, because even if it wasn't the best objectively, it was the one most quintessentially me, heavily exemplifying a mathmo-ness in all characters, from whatever walk of life, always massively overthinking things. In some ways, it felt stuck in the 90s, but in other ways, it seems to have got more relevant, both for me personally as I've learned more about founding small but high-revenue companies, and for the world as a whole, as crypto-currencies have started to be more of an actual thing, and suffered lots of political wrangling. However, the flaws of the book, which I always acknowledged existing, have started to bother me a lot more, so I don't really want to name it. However, I'm not sure what to replace it with. Ideally, something that still feels like a perfectly rounded book, couldn't be improved on, but also is a favourite of me personally, and also, is more progressive than a lot of the other dominent-culture books. Possibly Jonathon Strange and Mister Norrel, about magicians in england contemporary to the napoleonic wars, because I love it as a book, it's one that always has more to say to you, and although the two main characters are white male landed gentry, the author and a lot of the most interesting characters aren't.