Reading, Listening, Watching

What’s happening with me right now?

• Reading (book): I’m two days and two chapters into Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. I’ve missed reading over the last month. We’ll see how long it lasts.
• Reading (poetry): Weirdly obsessed with Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality right now.
• Watching: I have to admit that I’ve been watching Game of Thrones to tranquilize my brain. I just finished season one.
• Listening: I’ve been playing Aicha by Cheb Khaled pretty much every day on the way to school.
• Eating: For breakfast, the pudding-like French soy yogurt in either pistachio or hazelnut-almond flavors, bread with doing jam, and fruit. For lunch, pesto, vegetables, and couscous. For dinner, vegetables and some protein type thing. Or my squash tofu curry.

The Real chef d’œuvre

What is a masterpiece?  Usually there’s a general critical (or at least cultural) consensus on what the ‘best’ novel is by any given author. Maybe it’s not explicitly called the ‘best’, but everyone recognizes it- it’s the book you’re assigned in high school and again in college, the one that people namedrop (title drop?) and the one you see on book lists. Which is really unfair because there are lots of under-appreciated books that deserve more love.  And because I’m all about spreading the love ❤ here are my favorite books that I completely subjectively think are the best by some veddy important authors.

My Favorite Authors

What qualifies an author to be counted among my favorites?
I have very high standards, as befits such a coveted distinction.  You know Orwell is just rolling over in his grave because he’s not on here.

It’s a fairly simple standard actually: if a book is written by one of these authors, I don’t have to worry too much about the risk of disliking it… because I generally won’t.

So in no particular order:

 

Henry James

The first book I read by Henry James was The Portrait of a Lady and it took me so long to begin because the first sentence was so convoluted I was terrified. But it’s an absolutely beautiful book, as are most of his novels and short stories.