Recently a student (AT) asked for a book recommendation. I did cough up one of the three below, but the question threw me into an existential crises. Do I make a recommendation from the catalogue of my 40 or so years of reading? Do I try to project one my favorites into what I know about her psyche? And, to top it all off, I am painfully aware of how subjective my own list of favorite books is. If only I had read that book when I was 16! Or, if only I had waited to read this other book until I was in my late 20's. If only I had tackled this classic at a quieter time in my life, I might have appreciated it more. Anyway, I've decided to work myself out of this existential crises by thinking about which books from my teenager years were the most influential on my own imagination. Which books catapulted me at that time in my life into a world so rich or foreign or disturbing that when I came back from the out-of-body experience that was reading it, the landscape of my dreams and my constant inner Walter Mitty was forever changed?
Once I posed the question in this way to myself, these three books sprang right up and if I think about other books I love or that were influential, they don't come close to these three according the criteria I listed above. I just happened to be in the right frame of mind and at the right place in my life for them to plant seeds all over my subconscious:
1. Dune by Frank Herbert. 12 years after reading this book, I was so powerfully moved telling a friend about why I love it so much that I stood up to act out a scene from the book just the way it plays out in my head. In fact, when recommending it the other day, I had to force myself to stop talking about my favorite parts in order to not spoil their own experience of it!
2. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. The only book I read twice as a teenager. Every time I walk through the woods (every single time!), images from that book waft through my mind like real memories.
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I actually blogged about this one in 2010.
What will I do the next time a student asks for a recommendation? I don't know - probably have another existential crises!
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