Okay folks, we have another list coming today.
I was organizing my bookshelf today (don't laugh, it's something I do regularly) and it occurred to me that I would like to show off some of my most precious treasures. I am hopeless hoarder when it comes to books of any kind. I loathe to let any of them go, even that horrid paperback I dragged home only because it was free and I thought that I might read it someday but I never did. I care about how my books look like almost as much as I care about their content, so I have one book written in Chinese taking space in my shelf only because it's so damnably pretty. Neither of those has made it to this list. No, these are the best of the best. This list contains:
a) Books that are So Very, Very Pretty but also joy to read.
b) Books that don't look like much but are Rich and Fulfilling reading experiences.
c) Books that I come back to over and over again regardless their looks.
That being said and without further ado:
The top 10 books from my bookshelf
J.R.R Tolkien: The Hobbit or There and Back Again
I'm pretty sure I don't have to go very deep into the content of this book, since everyone and their mother has either read it themselves or heard it from their parents, teachers etc. I have been brought up with Tolkien, so this book is here for obvious reasons. While most people gobble up ice cream for comfort, I huddle in pillow fortress and read Tolkien. Especially Hobbit, since it is lighter and funnier than Lord of The Rings trilogy or The Children of Húrin (which is very obvious Kalevala rip-off and very tragic story.) It's also fun to spot things that'll get more refined and polished in the final LOTR books, to see where ideas and plot lines originated. And finally, even if this is for all means and purposes a children's book, it doesn't look down to it's audience. It has some pretty heavy stuff, from greediness to addiction, and it isn't wrapped in metaphors and baby talk. That is why to this day, Hobbit remains one of my very favourite books.
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| My copy is illustrated by lovely Tove Jansson, and her style fits Tolkien's world oh-so well. |
Neil Gaiman & P.Graig Russel: The Sandman: The Dream Hunters
Yes, graphic novels (or less pompously, comics) have their rightful place in this list too. I have collected them for some years now, especially The Sandmans, and I could have just put all 8 of the copies I own here with no remorse. It is hell to choose a favourite out of that bunch, so I just took the one who stands on its own better than others.
The Dream Hunters looks very much like a authentic folk story with some characters from The Sandman series, and for a longest time it was sold as one. The original short story, illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano was published 1999 with foreword by Gaiman who (out of modesty, I imagine) claimed that it was a real folk story he had rewritten. In remake, the one in my bookshelf, Gaiman apologizes to all the confused book-lovers and academics who had been looking for the original story all this time, and confesses that the whole story is from his pen. The point to the story is that The Dream Hunters really is THAT good. Both the original and the remake are also achingly beautifully drawn, obviously.
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I can never quite grasp what it is in Kundera that keeps me coming back for more. Whatever it is, it works. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is in its core a twisted love story between a neurotic woman with mother issues and pathological adulterer man. There is also artist who is unable to settle down and a mouse of a man who fucks his life up pretty brilliantly. In short, the type of story I normally try to keep at arms length. But in typical Kundera fashion, all the pathos has been wrapped in a delicious package with philosophy and some history, and even with all their problems and faults, the characters are likable and genuine. To me, the ideas presented in book make sense in a way very few things do. Einmal ist Keinmal has somehow, accidentally become the cornerstone of my own life views.
No picture, but a quote:
“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
And that is what Einmal ist Keinmal really means.
Hal Duncan: Vellum - The Book of All Hours I & Ink - The Book of All Hours II
Hal Duncan's style is to avoid definition and genre. Some might say that his style is to avoid sanity all together. According to wikipedia, Vellum is something called
The New Weird. Reading The Book of All Hours is difficult, weird, exhilarating and inspiring. Things happen in multiple dimensions and times, you can never be quite sure in which corner of reality or sub-reality or post-reality or non-reality you are. Reading these books from cover to cover in hopes to get some closure and explanation is futile. And that is in nutshell what I love in Hal Duncan. You get the feeling that he doesn't really care about the reader or order or any of those things. But as long as you hang on on the ride somehow, both of these books are incredibly rewarding. The ideas, the possibilities! The Book of All Hours is something quite unlike anything else you have read before or anything you will read in future.
“We are our own worst enemies. How banal and trite that sounds, but [...] have come to believe that all the greatest truths are trite and banal, when spoken aloud in their simplest and most honest terms. Perhaps they can only be imparted in the Cant, in a language which writes itself onto your heart so that you understand not just the words but all the shattering ramifications of of a sentence which, when heard without true understanding, seems quite risibly simplistic.
We are our own worst enemies.People die.”
Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos H. Papadimitriou - Logicomix
Logicomix is quite different from everything else I have included in this list. It is partly a lecture about history and basics of logic in the form of a comic, partly it's about process of making a comic about logic, and partly it tells about one logician in particular, Bertrand Russel and his story, fears and accomplishments. Even if mathematics are really not my division, I find it comforting that there is whole science dedicated to finding logic in all things. That there are people who are ready to spend years and over two hundred pages for proving that 1+1 is, indeed, 2.
The aspect to this graphic novel I found particularly interesting is the fear Mr.Russel has for insanity. He sees many of his tutors and fellow logicians to go insane, bitter and mentally ill in their search of certain knowledge. I can also totally relate to his difficulties at his youth to find that one right academic pursuit, since I'm currently struggling with similar problems myself.
Leonardo da Vinci - Työpäiväkirjat (collected and translated to Finnish by Laura Lahdensuu)
Työpäiväkirjat (= work diaries, or as Da Vinci himself called them, codex) is collection of found and translated notes by master himself. Notes are sometimes very rough, draft-like, and Laura Lahdensuu haven't left anything out, not even shopping lists or lists of seemingly random words and thoughts Da Vinci often scribbled in margins of his sketches. The notes are about various subjects: anatomy, perspective, geometry, etc. There are passionate arguments about why visual arts are at least as valuable, if not even more valuable, than poetry or music, general notations of natural phenomena like echo or shadows. Everything is written with almost childlike enthusiasm. It is highly amusing to find out how science has changed, how much more we know nowadays about simple things like how water behaves and moves.
Not to mention how amazingly well this book has been laid out. It has been huge effort, to take the remaining pages and put them in logical order. Studying Da Vinci's sketches never gets old. It is so well made that it won vuoden kauneimmat kirjat award (the most beautiful books of the year) in 2009
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
I'm one of the probably thousands gullible youths who read The Secret History and saw their lives changing in a matter of seconds. I wouldn't be the person I am without it, and I still come back to it yearly, when I need a reminder why I am pursuing the things I do in the first place. I still think it is beautifully written, I am still in love with the characters. I know I am very much in debt to The Secret History, for my overly romantic views of academic world, for my love of old, stuffy books and pompous scientists.
The Secret History is also irreparably tangled with the messy things in my history - reading it is nowadays a painful stab of bittersweet nostalgia. It raises repressed memories and old aches I'd rather leave behind. But even with all that sentimental package, I love it to bits and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?"
Art Spiegelman - Maus
Maus is one of the most resent additions to my collection. It is true story about authors father who went to Auschwitz and back, and survived. It is haunting, to know that all things told in the novel have really happened. The holocaust has never seemed to me this close, this personal. I appreciate that the author haven't tried to cover the faults of his father, trying to make him some sort of hero or worse, a victim. His choice to draw people as different animals (Jewish are mice, Polish pigs, French frogs...) is effective way to show otherness and isolation the war made between nations. Language has been left rough, there are very similar grammar mistakes than I do when writing in English, or than in the letters from my Polish penpals. It adds to intimacy of the story.
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of Baskervilles
Yet another book that made it to the list because of my childhood. We used to watch the Granada's Holmes series with my family every Saturday. I must have been about 9 or 10 and I had a ridiculous crush on Jeremy Brett. It is only natural that I moved on to the books as soon as I could read well enough. We had only a copy of 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' in our bookshelf, the collection that begins with 'A Scandal in Bohemia' and ends with 'The adventure of the Copper Beeches' which was, at the time, my favourite. For a longest time I thought that that was all there was to Sherlock Holmes and I was quite content. Then BBC's Sherlock happened, I was reminded of my previous devotion for the hook nosed detective. Sooner than one can say "Elementary, my Dear Watson" I caught up with the rest of the stories and bought few of them to fill my previously lacking collection. I could have chosen any of those books (I am rather fond of 'Study in Scarlet', where Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes meet for the first time) but my copy of The Hound is too pretty to not to include in this list.
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| You can't tell by the picture, but the cover is fabric. This is part of Penguin Classics series, which I warmly recommend for friends of pretty books. |
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's series
Also known as the only five part trilogy on Earth, The Hitchhiker's is insanely funny scifi novel series (also a movie, radioshow and obscure PC game) After writing 4 hours about books I have loved and obsessed over (and doubt not, this is definitely in the latter category) I can't seem to say anything about this. Except maybe: Don't panic, bring your own towel and let the journey begin.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
