Three Sets of Five Things (plus the leftovers)

[moon_custafer]

handful_ofdust was circulating the “five movies to watch if you want to understand me” meme, and we’ve now segued to “five novels to read if you want to understand me.” This one’s trickier – some of the novels that influenced me have sort of become touchstones for subcultures I don’t belong to, so naming them is more likely to make people *misunderstand* me. Posting here because I need more room to manoeuvre.

How about short stories/novellas?

Hello, Moto, Nnedi Okorafor

The Girl Detective, Kelly Link

The Happy Hypocrite, Max Beerbohm

Dead Bodies Possessed by Furious Motion, Gemma Files

The Temple, H.P. Lovecraft

Honorable mentions: The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol (in translation, obvs); The Hollow Man, Thomas Burke; Of No Woman Born, C. L. Moore (someone needs to adapt this as a vehicle for Janelle Monae, stat); The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn, Usman T. Malik; The Roll-Call of the Reef, Arthur Quiller-Couch; The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes, Marjorie Bowen; All Cats Are Grey, Andre Norton; ETA - Chivalry, Neil Gaiman.

Short story collections:

The Cyberiad, Stanisław Lem (translated by Michael Kandel, who deserves some kind of award for this if he hasn’t got one already)

The Mysterious Mr. Quin, Agatha Christie

Who Fears the Devil, Manly Wade Wellman

Frog and Toad Are Friends, Arnold Lobel

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter

 

OK, the novels:

Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirilees

Watership Down, Richard Adams

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Daniel Pinkwater

Night of the Jabberwock, Frederic Brown

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

Honorable Mentions: The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton; The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov; The Nightmare Fair (novelization of an unproduced Dr. Who story); Many Dimensions, Charles Williams; Black Betty, Walter Moseley; Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake; The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin; Not Wanted On the Voyage, Timothy Findley, Through the Looking Glass, do I even have to say it?

 

 

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Comments

[sovay]

OK, the novels

I don't see the room for misunderstanding here. What am I missing about people who like The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death?

[moon_custafer]

I was more concerned about The Man Who Was Thursday and The Master and Margarita. I'm under the impression Chesterton was claimed by the Republicans years back, although that may no longer be a thing; and I'm pretty sure I recently saw the Bulgakov on someone's list of "Books Men Keep Telling Me to Read," which worried me that it's turning into a pretentious-douchebro shibboleth. However they're both safely contained in the Honorable Mentions.

I don’t mind that my tastes evidently skew towards genre and/or children’s lit (or as I call it, “fiction with actual plots”), but I have to admit I also tend to gravitate towards early-to-mid twentieth-century and the UK.

[sovay]

I'm under the impression Chesterton was claimed by the Republicans years back, although that may no longer be a thing

He was a Catholic convert and I think of him as personally conservative (with the usual idiosyncracies—his anti-Semitism was worse than average for the time, but he thought eugenics was pure quack science and publicly said as much; it's unfair of me to wonder if he would have been able to reconcile these facts had he lived into/through World War II rather than just the initial stages, but I am curious if he would have been able to keep up his ludicrous characterization of Nazism as an ultimately Jewish philosophy or if reality would have started to get through), but I didn't know he was a Republican darling. Unless you feel that's revealed something in his work that you're no longer comfortable claiming, I don't see it as an impediment to putting him on your list.

and I'm pretty sure I recently saw the Bulgakov on someone's list of "Books Men Keep Telling Me to Read," which worried me that it's turning into a pretentious-douchebro shibboleth.

Confound them if it is! The Master and Margarita is an intensely important book to me and I'm not giving it up just because pretentious dudebros like it. I'd have to jettison many of my comfort movies if I felt that way.

I feel very strongly about this subject. Don't cede the things you love to people who misuse them. Don't let other people define the terms. I have complex feelings about my country, but I'm not going to agree with Trump and his White House that I am not a real American and therefore nothing I feel or say or require matters.

[edit] Sorry for the parenthesis-dump about Chesterton; his opinions about Nazism are one of the biographical facts that sticks with me because what the flipping heck.

[moon_custafer]

I try not to cede things -- it's more that I thought "ok, if these books are my introduction to someone who knows 8absolutely* nothing else about me..."

I never blame anyone for parentheses, and I can well understand the WTF -- it's always worse when it's someone who otherwise makes sense, or at least is interesting.

ETA -- I don't even know if Chesterton is actually a major Republican darling or if it's just the William F. Buckley types who like him.

[sovay]

"ok, if these books are my introduction to someone who knows *absolutely* nothing else about me..."

I just don't think either of them would have been misleading: I don't know exactly what you like about either book, but I tend to feel positively toward people who like Bulgakov and The Man Who Was Thursday is a sufficiently weird novel that my first association with it is not "Ah! Republicans!"

ETA -- I don't even know if Chesterton is actually a major Republican darling or if it's just the William F. Buckley types who like him.

We still have William F. Buckley types?

[moon_custafer]

Probably not; if there are any I doubt they still have any influence.