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1. The Thorn Ethics, or possibly The Thorn Trap, by Gerald Durrell, author of many hilarious books such as My Family and Other Animals. In my dream last night, which also involved a flood, an old Japanese guy who gave dream-girl/me a yukata, and Nazis invading the ashram, that was a book by Gerald Durrell that I hadn't ever heard of, let alone read. As you can guess from the title if you're familiar with the author, that's because it doesn't exist.
I sometimes dream about books I've never read by authors whose entire oevre I've read several times over, but I never manage to read them in the dream. Even if I try, people keep interrupting me. It's very disappointing, especially when I wake up.
2. Strikeforce: Morituri. Like The X-Men, this was a comic book that I read obsessively when I was in India, though I was only able to catch up on missing issues when I returned to the US. Earth is invaded by aliens, and needs super-soldiers to save it. But the process that gives people powers also kills them within a year. I was utterly miserable, so I loved reading about people who, like me, had great angst and were Special and unappreciated. This unusually grim comic had some great issues early on, but became overly wedded to keeping the story in more-or-less real time, which meant that by the end of the first twelve issues, most of the original team was dead and replaced by less interesting and likable characters.
It was also notable for the single stupidest issue of any comic ever. The power process goes wrong, giving the volunteers mad powers but turning them into ugly monsters. Everyone is utterly horrified by this, because being ugly is a million times worse than being dead within a year, and the monsters decide to commit suicide because they're such unpatriotic cowards that they can't bear to use their mad powers to help the war effort in the year they have left before they die anyway, because-- horrors! they're ugly. Meanwhile, one of the non-ugly Morituri had the totally lame power to create a zone of silence. So she says, "I'll silence your hearts," and they all drop dead. Because blotting out the noise of a beating heart stops it.
3. The Mahabharata. In the form of comic books, books for kids, a TV series, various translations and adaptations, and pervasive cultural imagery, this was a formative influence on me as a child. I have a plot (when we've all finished Genji) to make you read it so you'll know who Karna was and why he was beautiful and doomed, and who Gandhari was and why she went blindfolded all her life and how she came to sizzle off God's toenail when she briefly lifted the cloth from her eyes, and why it was so emblematic of the juggernaut of war when, near the end of a story, the villain (who is not all that villainous) can't bathe in peace without being challenged to a duel to the death by one of the heroes (who is not that heroic, in addition to not being all that bright.) Also, it has treachery, heroism, compulsive gamblers, the fate of the kingdom decided in a game of dice, magic saris, spirits descending to have affairs with humans, and a loyal little dog.
4. Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey. Like many of you, I taught myself to read when I was about three. That was the first book I ever read by myself.
5. Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson. My Dad used to read books aloud to me that were too hard or had too much cultural context for me to read by myself. I loved having him read aloud, and we'd have little discussions after and during the chapters. When he was reading Kidnapped, and my Mom was listening too, after the thrilling battle Alan Breck exclaims, "Come to my arms!" and Mom and I simultaneously added, "My beamish boy!" His next line, which is one of my all-time favorites, is "Am I no' a bonny fighter?"
I sometimes dream about books I've never read by authors whose entire oevre I've read several times over, but I never manage to read them in the dream. Even if I try, people keep interrupting me. It's very disappointing, especially when I wake up.
2. Strikeforce: Morituri. Like The X-Men, this was a comic book that I read obsessively when I was in India, though I was only able to catch up on missing issues when I returned to the US. Earth is invaded by aliens, and needs super-soldiers to save it. But the process that gives people powers also kills them within a year. I was utterly miserable, so I loved reading about people who, like me, had great angst and were Special and unappreciated. This unusually grim comic had some great issues early on, but became overly wedded to keeping the story in more-or-less real time, which meant that by the end of the first twelve issues, most of the original team was dead and replaced by less interesting and likable characters.
It was also notable for the single stupidest issue of any comic ever. The power process goes wrong, giving the volunteers mad powers but turning them into ugly monsters. Everyone is utterly horrified by this, because being ugly is a million times worse than being dead within a year, and the monsters decide to commit suicide because they're such unpatriotic cowards that they can't bear to use their mad powers to help the war effort in the year they have left before they die anyway, because-- horrors! they're ugly. Meanwhile, one of the non-ugly Morituri had the totally lame power to create a zone of silence. So she says, "I'll silence your hearts," and they all drop dead. Because blotting out the noise of a beating heart stops it.
3. The Mahabharata. In the form of comic books, books for kids, a TV series, various translations and adaptations, and pervasive cultural imagery, this was a formative influence on me as a child. I have a plot (when we've all finished Genji) to make you read it so you'll know who Karna was and why he was beautiful and doomed, and who Gandhari was and why she went blindfolded all her life and how she came to sizzle off God's toenail when she briefly lifted the cloth from her eyes, and why it was so emblematic of the juggernaut of war when, near the end of a story, the villain (who is not all that villainous) can't bathe in peace without being challenged to a duel to the death by one of the heroes (who is not that heroic, in addition to not being all that bright.) Also, it has treachery, heroism, compulsive gamblers, the fate of the kingdom decided in a game of dice, magic saris, spirits descending to have affairs with humans, and a loyal little dog.
4. Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey. Like many of you, I taught myself to read when I was about three. That was the first book I ever read by myself.
5. Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson. My Dad used to read books aloud to me that were too hard or had too much cultural context for me to read by myself. I loved having him read aloud, and we'd have little discussions after and during the chapters. When he was reading Kidnapped, and my Mom was listening too, after the thrilling battle Alan Breck exclaims, "Come to my arms!" and Mom and I simultaneously added, "My beamish boy!" His next line, which is one of my all-time favorites, is "Am I no' a bonny fighter?"
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From:
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http://www.bluedove.com/Hindu_Mahab.htm
and here
http://www.bookstore.siddhayoga.org/templates/frmTemplateP3.asp?CatalogID=125&Zoom=Yes&SubFolderId=277
The second place also carries the other version I would recommend, which is the Amar Chitra Katha comic book (bound) retelling:
http://www.bookstore.siddhayoga.org/merchant/index.html (except it looks like it's incomplete.)
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Further Mahabharata recommendations
And there's a version by Ramesh Menon that comes highly recommended, but good luck finding it in the USA, where it's selling for $ 170 on amazon! I will be reading the British ($30) version courtesy of a helpful LJ-er when I finish Genji, and will report on it.
Huh. The complete Amar Chitra Katha set is selling for $ 70 in the US, which is ridiculous.
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Re: Further Mahabharata recommendations
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Just like any American, Christian or not, could give you a pretty good explanation of what Noah's Ark is or what the expression "to bear one's cross" refers to or what Lazarus was famous for, so any Indian knows who Arjuna was and what weapon he was really good with, why it was that a woman named Draupadi was married to five brothers, or why it was significant that both a man and an elephant were named Aswathama.
However, the big difference between the Mahabharata and the Bible is that the Mahabharata is
much more funmore of a continuous narrative, like the New Testament, but with sharply defined, if larger than life, characters.There is a long poetic and philosophical interpolation, the Bhagavad Gita, which is famous in its own right. Edward Teller is supposed to have quoted one translation of it when he witnessed the testing of the atom bomb: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
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I'd love to take part of a group reading of the M-thing. I know (and like) some stories from it, but that's like appreciating the Iliad from the Andromeche and Hector on the walls, Nestor's speech to Odysseus (the long one -- no, the OTHER long one), and the description of Achilles's shield.
---L.
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I used to have this dream where I would find book I had been desperately wanting to read in the library, but wouldn't have my ticket with me.