Jane mulls over a summertime reading list for her daughter and asks for suggestions. If you had to suggest a few books to a youth, what would you pick?
I chose Howard's End or A Room With a View by E.M. Forester, or Emma or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
I probably would have thrown in something by Barbara Pym or Penelope Fitzgerald if I had thought about it.
I am probably drawn more to stories about moments within our lives, the micro of the domestic novel, as opposed to the grand sweep of the epic.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
book list
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2 comments:
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is one of my favorites from youth. You didn't mention the age of the young lady. It's an epic, but I spent a great many lazy summer afternoons reading Frank Herbert's "Dune," if her taste runs to science fiction. The two Jane Austen titles you mentioned are among my favorites, also "Persuasion."
My daughter is 16, and soon to be a junior in high school. CJ has also enjoyed Anne McCaffrey's books, and Mercedes Lackey, and a series of vampire novels by an author whose name I cannot recall at the moment.
And yes, science fiction and fantasy are popular around here. I loved the Dune books, though I was far more enamored of the original trilogy than I was the succeeding novels in the series.
And To Kill a Mockingbird? That's long been a favorite of mine. It's the book that taught me that "quality literature" could also be a ripping good read.
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