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10 books worth reading

1) for a vacation

One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This wonderfully poetic novel follows the Buendia family in a way that is at times deeply touching, terribly amusing, and genuinely tragic. The book reads like a dream: slow, circuitous, confusing, beautiful, enchanting, disturbing. I could list adjectives forever, but I won't. Garcia Marquez takes the reader through one hundred years with an amazing touch that makes the magic feel so real.

2) about human nature

Lord of the Flies: A Novel
by William Gerald Golding

William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island. In the book, Piggy, a fat boy with bad grammar who represents the brains and integrity of the group, gets pushed over a cliff and his body shatters on the rocks. Some people argue that Golding takes the dimmest possible view of human nature. My guess is that Golding would reply that optimists are nothing but grinning idiots and that only the depressed are reality-based.

3) crime stories

Fatherland
by Robert Harris

There's nothing wrong with Edgar Wallace but this novel has an additional nightmarish twist. It's also a good book for all those people who can't stand "The Merry Widow".

4) about history

War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy

This novel is so much more modern than the history books we used in high school. It' s about a group of amazingly spoiled rich people have their lives interrupted by a war and most don't learn anything from it (sounds familiar?).

5) about reality

The Trial
by Franz Kafka

This book takes you on a journey through a surrealistic dream. Instantly you are reminded of Dali, Kahlo, and other great art works that show you the objects you recognize and seem to understand, but then you find yourself enthralled trying to decipher the meaning of them. You are pulled into the vortex of the unknown and yet dangerously tempted to sort it out for yourself until you realize that the beauty lies in NOT understanding.

6) science fiction

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams

This book is amazingly funny. It is totally unlike any sci-fi book you've ever read, and cannot fail to amuse even the most uniterested of people. To briefly summarize the plot: a simple Earthman, Arthur Dent, discovers that a good friend of his is actually an alien working for a remarkable guide to the galaxy. This alien friend, Ford Prefect, rescues Arthur from the planet Earth which is demolished and takes him on a highly entertaing spin around the galaxy in which they are both blown up more times than is healthy, and are almost totally deprived of tea. My favorite character is Marvin, the depressed robot.

7) classics

Professor Unrat
by Heinrich Mann

Heinrich Mann was the brother of the better-known Thomas Mann, author of the forbidding modernist masterpiece "The Magic Mountain." But don't be intimidated -- Heinrich Mann is a lot more entertaining. They say that stylistically, Heinrich Mann has a lot in common with social realists like his American contemporary Sinclair Lewis. But who the heck is Sinclair Lewis?

8) about dreams

The Little Prince
by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

People should look to the dazzling simplicity and spare beauty of The Little Prince. It's a magical book about a strange visitor from a another planet who befriends the narrator, a fallen pilot. Reading The Little Prince vividly displays the drudgery of adults caught in adulthood, the fear and frustration of children who know nothing of the ways of adults (which I believe is simply a metaphor for all things in life that have no easy answer), and the pleasure that can be gained in simply looking at life through innocent eyes. There are wonderful encounters and memorable scenes in the book (accompanied by fanciful illustrations by St. Exupery himself) that cut to the bone of meaning and touch the heart.

9) about nothing in particular (maybe about life in general)

To The Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf

This book is about words -- the writing is breathtaking. Particularly the first section is an assault of waves of words washing over the reader. The book has no real plot. (A family and some friends live on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. That's about it.) From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles.

10) about modern life

Letters Back to Ancient China
by Herbert Rosendorfer

The story of a tenth-century Mandarin who travels through time to Germany in the 1980s, Rosendorfer's book is told as a series of letters to a friend back home. At heart, this book is an attempt to examine the fundamental questions of how our lives are affected by progress. For the most part, it succeeds. This book is quite humorous, and a highly enjoyable reading experience.

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