Tagged by Concupiscence66! I am going to try not to go way overboard. Oh, and I'm including a comic/graphic novel :) (BTW the kicker of talking about books is that I haven't read one in ages. Whoops.)
Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag [ten] friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them.
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott - This book is a childhood favorite and I still pull it out to read once in a while. It's warm and comforting like an afghan. I think I loved it as a child because it was such an idealistic family setting. I didn't have a loving understanding mother, or sisters to share things with. The moralizing was totally lost on me, I was so involved in the happy home life.
House of the Spirits - Isabelle Allende - This is where my love of magical realism began. I read this book when I was too young to understand the political plot line, or know who "the poet" was but something about it resonated with me. I stole it from my aunt's house so I could read it over and over.
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - This story haunts me. How many steps away are we from this reality? Not many, I'd wager. I read it again when I moved to Cambridge and had myself a little dystopian walking tour.
Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson - Winterson is one of my favorite writers and I wrote probably the best paper of my college career about this book. But more than my brief moment of academic prowess, this book stays with me because of Winterson's use of language. My copy is highlighted in all the colors of the rainbow and underlined and written all over because every time I read it, I find something new I love.
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley - I have a fascination with Arthurian legend and as a young women's studies major I came across this book. I'm not a pagan, but I do love goddesses and the divine feminine and the depiction of that in this book.
The Sandman - Neil Gaiman - My psychological make up is primarily fairy tale tropes and mythology and the Sandman pressed all my literary buttons. The bonus of comics/graphic novels is all the wonderful stories were accompanied by so much beautiful art work. I even bought the Vertigo tarot deck because it was designed by the artist who did all the sandman covers. I'm a little obsessed.
The Sleeping Beauty books - Anne Rice - I didn't have the internet when I was a young'un...I had to learn my kinks the old fashioned way! Reading them now, they seem sort of innocent. As innocent as bdsm can be?
Pop Art - Joe Hill - It's a short story within 20th Century Ghosts and when I try to explain it to people, I start to cry and have to cop out and say just read it. I can't even type about it. I'm tearing up.
Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg - The first butch I dated gave me this book to read. I felt like a code breaker with a key to our relationship. It's just one story and there are so many stories and so many ways we access gender and sexuality but for me, this was one of the first steps I took, so this book will always be important to me.
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk - If books were music then Palahniuk's oeuvre was the soundtrack to my 20s. I got engaged while still in college and was facing down a life I knew I didn't want. So I blew it up, crawled out of the rubble, and have tried to make better mistakes since. "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
tagging: mooncontramundum9, eyeballseesaws, oblong-goblin, dives-and-divas, amusinglyuseless, engel-sehnsucht, littleredchucks, fishiegreen, theworstworstterrible, concupiscence66