How It All Began (For Me, In Earnest)

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How It All Began (For Me, In Earnest)

Created by Doug - Updated on June 30th 2017

I read a lot as a kid. A. Lot. I would finish a book and pick up the next right away (I remember reading many "The Baby-Sitters Club" books this way, I'm a bit embarassed to admit). Sure, I liked the books in junior high and high school, liked them very much, in fact (I named my son Holden, fer crissakes!).

It wasn't until Junior AP English when books (I'll go ahead and say literature), struck me as an essential source for insight and instruction, truth and beauty, and a powerful potential for shared experience. We read a bunch of books that year, and I loved every one (except the one I didn't read, shhhh). So, thanks Mr. Brown and Mr. Wright.

If you visit the library with a school-assigned reading list of the classics, I would be happy, thrilled, eager to go over it with you.

The scarlet letter

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864.

From the Publisher

Boston 1642: Imprisoned for the crime of adultery, young wife Hester Prynne is condemned on her release to bear a public display of her shame - a scarlet letter 'A' stitched upon her dress. For the sake of her baby daughter Pearl, the product of her illicit liaison, she determines to weather the scorn of her Puritan community with defiance and dignity. Meanwhile, her husband is resolved to uncover the identity of Pearl's father - information Hester refuses to divulge to a single soul. But while...

My Thoughts

The first book of the year, and the one I didn't read. To this day, I feel I should be walking around wearing my own scarlet letter for the oversight.

The great Gatsby

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940.

From the Publisher

The authorized text which restores all the language of Fitzgerald's 1920's story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.

My Thoughts

Definitely in the running for my absolute favorite book, despite close competition. Delve deeper with Maureen Corrigan's "So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures," which is also very good.

For whom the bell tolls

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961.

From the Publisher

Set during the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway tells a profound and timeless story of courage and commitment, love and loss, that takes place over a fleeting three days.

My Thoughts

A little long, this one, but I remember enjoying reading it, though I prefer his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises," as well as "In Our Time."

Invisible man

Ellison, Ralph.

From the Publisher

The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land , Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

My Thoughts

I remember this book having a profound impact on me and can still readily recall the dining scene where the nameless protagonist silently shreds his napkin into tiny pieces, an amazingly telling detail.

Death of a salesman : certain private conversations in two acts and a requiem

Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005.

From the Publisher

Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman , has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age 63, he searches for the moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his relationship with his wife and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses...

My Thoughts

Anyone care to discuss planned obsolescence? Or the trials of the working class and the resultant stress on families? Or how classics are usually classics for a reason? Or about how I should maybe get off my soapbox?

One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Kesey, Ken.

From the Publisher

A criminal feigns insanity and is admitted to a mental hospital where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse.

My Thoughts

Another contender for my favorite book, for different reasons, including the amazing characterization, especially the anti-hero, McMurphy, and the conception of the "Combine." The Milos Forman film is also excellent and among my favorite movies.

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.

From the Publisher

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

My Thoughts

The wit and wisdom of Twain in playful yet daring language shows, along with books like "Alice In Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz," the potential depth to be found in kids' books (see picturebook list for additional suggestions).

The red badge of courage and four stories

Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900.

From the Publisher

During his service in the Civil War a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.

Leaves of grass

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.

From the Publisher

Today, this masterful poetry collection remains not only a seminal event in American literature but also the incomparable achievement of one of America's greatest poets--an exuberant, passionate man who loved his country and wrote of it as no other has ever done. Walt Whitman was a singer, thinker, visionary, and citizen extraordinaire.

Moby-Dick : or the whale and an extract from : Narrative of the most extraordinary and distressing shipwreck of the whale-sip Essex

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.

From the Publisher

When Ishmael sets sail on the whaling ship Pequod one cold Christmas Day, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him out on the vast and merciless ocean. The ship's strange captain, Ahab, is in the grip of an obsession to hunt down the famous white whale, Moby Dick, and will stop at nothing on his quest to annihilate his nemesis.

My Thoughts

Technically, I read this book my first year in college, but I had to include my third contender, and most likely triumphant victor, for favorite book. Look for "Why Read Moby-Dick" by Nathaniel Philbrick as well.