Yesterday, someone asked me for a list of my top ten books and I started to laugh. I was like, on what subject? But she just wanted some book recommendations and wouldn't pin me down. I can *kind of* do this for fiction, but non-fiction is too wide an area, even though I do give her some non-fiction recommendations here.

In some cases, I found on these boards what I'd written about the books, so some of what is posted below has been seen here before, in some cases more than once.

Then I thought, well, you know, if I took all this time to make a book recommendation list, I might as well post it.

Follow up with yours, and let's make this an archivable thread by describing the book(s) you recommend, rather than simply naming them.

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This list changes from day to day. I have runners up that I could argue in favor of or substitute in for almost any of these and still feel like I haven't scratched the surface, but these are the ones that jumped out at me while I was having my coffee this morning and pondering the question.

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Fiction

**The Goldbug Variations, by Richard Powers (or maybe Plowing the Dark)

What's great about Powers is that he always takes more than one story line, usually seemingly unconnected, and ultimately binds them together really strongly and deeply. His first book, Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance, is a good example of this. So is Plowing the Dark.

Sometimes it's not directly two different story lines but different times in the same story, but times so far removed that they seem irreconcilable. Gold Bug Variations is a good example of this.

Sometimes he takes the same story and emphasizes different aspects of it. Well, okay, here I'm thinking of The Time of Our Singing and the themes of music and race, but this one could also fall into either of the preceding categories.

So he makes you see how disparate ideas and seemingly unconnected stories all work together.

I sometimes feel as though reading his work enriches my life because he gives words to intuitions that I've had that I haven't had words for. Sometimes I think he has identified emotions or responses that I felt but couldn't articulate. So I actually believe that I am a more whole person emotionally than I was before I started reading his writing, and that is an extremely unusual experience for me with respect to a novelist. I think mostly what I get from books is recognizable and known emotion, or imparted intelligence/knowledge. I don't think any other writer has actually enriched my life in this way.

***The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Russell is an anthropologist and a cradle Catholic who converted to Judaism. She wanted to write about the meeting of two cultures that have nothing in common and the role of faith in such a meeting and the only way she could do this is to set her book in the future and include space travel, because every culture on Earth is permeated by Gap and Starbucks. So she brings her anthropology background and her thoughtful exploration of faith to this, her first (and best) novel. The story is fun (including the idea that the only organization with the will and the funds to undertake space exploration is the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), who have a long and dark history of exploration already, lol) and compelling (and beautiful and ugly and sad and uplifting and a lot of things), but what's really going on here is the question of the role of God in one's life, and what does it mean to your faith if you feel as though you have been abandoned by God. It's a kind of modern day Dark Night of the Soul, but it completely sneaks up on you.

***The Names of the Dead, by Stewart O'Nan

This is the first book I ever read that made me think that Vietnam War lit would have anything to add to my life. This is the story of a man in search of himself, a man struggling to be a good man and a whole man and a good father and so forth, and also struggling to assimilate or work through his experiences in Vietnam. It also has aspects of thriller/mystery, which keeps the plot moving along.

***The Human Stain, by Philip Roth

I could never quite get why people raved so much about Roth until I read The Human Stain. It has passages of some of the best writing I've read in recent years, and it's sad and it's thought-provoking and it's funny. The film could never match the book because of the nature of film. The book is written from a particular point of view -- the perennial Zuckerman, who looks at Coleman Silk and thinks about how Silk's life happened to move in the paths that it did. This is a FAR cry from just telling Silk's story, which the film more or less purports to do. In the book Zuckerman is always saying to himself things like: So I thought about what it would have been like or what would have motivated him.... And that makes it very moving in a really quiet and lovely way. But there are also just hysterically funny passages. And the characters are drawn so vividly. There are other books of Roth's that I like a lot, but to my mind nothing measures up to this.

***Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

This book is like those Russian nested dolls. You open one and there's another, and you open that, and there's another one. Cloud Atlas is six nested stories, all different genres, all very lightly connected thematically. Story A begins and abruptly stops in the middle, and then Story B begins and, again, abruptly stops halfway through. Same with C, D and E. Then you get all of Story F, then the last half of Stories E, D, C, B, and A. Sounds gimmicky and very complicated. And yes, it's a gimmick, but it works. And yes, it's complicated but the stories are so different that they're easy to keep track of.

So then, past the structure, the substance of the book is really remarkable. It's about bondage and freedom and how we bind ourselves and how others enslave us and where true freedom lies. And there are portions of it that are really so beautiful and sad that you'll cry. There aren't a whole lot of books that make me cry, although I think every one that exists is on this list.

***The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt

Not about Japan and only about samurais in the respect that the son uses Seven Samurai as a model for searching for his father.
It's about what makes a worthwhile life or a life worth living.
And it's about the value of granting an individual autonomy over his/her own existence and what, if anything, we can responsibly do to aid a person who is in distress without compromising their autonomy.
And it's about what it means to look for your father, and who is a father, and what is it to have a father.
And it's about brilliance and the limitations of brilliance.

***The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

Again, a book with interwoven plot lines and shifting times. Apparently this structure works for me. The writing is magnificent and the story is heartbreaking. It's a family saga, but it's not like any you have ever read before. In part because the story deals with Black families who owned slaves around the time of the Civil War. It is haunting and beautiful and dreamlike and razor-sharp.

***The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

This one is strange. I don't exactly know how it fits into this list. I'm not even sure exactly what it is that makes me love this book so much. Maybe it's because it evokes the environment of my own college experience so well even if the events are so dramatically different. If you read this and like it, I also recommend Bret Easton Ellis's book The Rules of Attraction. There are a lot of connections between the two, including some rather direct allusions in The Rules of Attraction to people and events in The Secret History, and there is some thought that Ellis helped Tartt write her book much in the way that Capote helped Harper Lee. Tartt of course denies this vehemently, but I still believe it.

***The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif

This is another book that tells more than one story and winds it together perfectly. Here, it's two love stories that take place years apart in Egypt. One is the story of a British woman at the turn of the century and the Egyptian man she falls in love with, and the other is the story of her great-granddaughter, a New Yorker, who falls in love with an Egyptian man in about the late 1970s. They're tied together by a third woman, Egyptian, who is observer and narrator and translator, and whose life we see in part as well. The backdrop of the love stories is the political climate in Egypt and the various difficulties of the Middle East vs. the West, especially as reflected in interpersonal relationships.

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Non Fiction

***Causing Death and Saving Lives, by Jonathon Glover

Glover is a moral philosopher with excellent credentials. This book raises the question, first, whether we can consciously and intentionally create a coherent moral philosophy about killing. In other words, is morality rational? and Is it possible to have a non-contradictory moral philosophy on this question?

Then he discusses how such a philosophy would be grounded. Like, do we object to killing on the basis of "sanctity of life"? on a sense that killing is *always* inherently wrong? on a belief that killing is wrong but can be outweighed by other principles (and if so, what would those principles be?) or on the basis of a general principle that it is better to increase happiness in the world? or on other principles?

Then he applies the question to various issues surrounding killing, ranging from: war, assassination, capital punishment, abortion, contraception, infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, you name it.

It is mind blowing. And engaging. And completely accessible. I STRONGLY recommend it. Not because he tells you what to think, not at ALL. He just describes ways of thinking and then tests them for contradictions and for utility.

And these issues are very important. It's true that most of us don't have to come face to face with many of the practical questions he raises, like for instance, I don't have to myself wonder whether I should be a conscientious objector if drafted to serve in a war. On the other hand, we all hold opinions on all of these questions, and it is good for us, as human beings, to think through all of our opinions to see where they lead and how strongly we hold them.

***Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder

The biography of Paul Farmer. Farmer is a doctor (specialist in infectious diseases) and anthropologist who has undertaken the treatment of AIDS in Haiti and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Russia (and elsewhere), and who looks at disease as social/cultural ill and poverty as the single most significant factor in healthcare issues. He makes a powerful case in his own writings for a radically new picture of the politics of health and the allocation of resources, and this book is a great introduction to him and his writings, because he tends to disappear in his own books. His own story is very much worth reading. He scoffs at the idea of "sustainable" programs (i.e., AIDS prevention to the detriment of AIDS treatment) and just tackles what is in front of him with all his force and determination. In the offices of his non-profit org, one of his co-workers has a little sign posted that says "If Paul is the model, we're fucked." And that's a good reminder. I mean, this book could totally inspire you or it could make you throw your hands in the air and think that if you can't give everything, the way the Farmer does, there's no point in trying. But Farmer, via Kidder, would say with Gandhi that everything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

***Love Thy Neighbor, by Peter Maas

I'd already been reading about genocide when I ran across an essay by Maas in The New Killing Fields, and I was so shaken by some of the things he wrote that I immediately sought out and read this one. It ranks among the most moving accounts of current issues, right up there with We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.

***War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges

Hedges is a really interesting guy. He did most of a theology graduate degree at Harvard Divinity School and then became completely disillusioned and became a war correspondent. So he thinks and writes about issues from a perspective that most war correspondents don't have. This short book helps frame the issue that my cat Boo keeps asking about: Why is there war?

***White Like Me, by Tim Wise

Wise is a hero of mine and his columns (available at www.timwise.org and his recent article on PETA at http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/animalwhites.html ) are incredibly smart, sharp and insightful. His thinking is really clear and he articulates his message powerfully even while he writes in a remarkably accessible manner. White Like Me crystallized a lot of my own thinking and put concepts into words for me in ways that I can get my arms around. I think this is one of the best books on white privilege out there (and there are more and more every day, thank God). He writes about his own history and that of his family and he doesn't pull any punches on any of them. I think it's really important for white people to know that there are in fact other white people who are committed to social change and to have someone like Wise as a role model.




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Breathe and know you're breathing.