Abcde BLOG

I grabbed this from Bev over at My Reader's Block.  She says it's been going around Facebook, but I don't have an account, so I seem to have missed it.

Shakespeare--The English Master.  What more is there to say?

Donne--Subject of my dissertation.  Crams passion/pathos and logos into every line

Milton--I would not want to have him over for dinner, but Paradise Lost and Areopagitica are works of absolute brilliance

Anna Quindlen--I dearly wish I'd written Imagined London because it's just perfect

Agatha Christie--Ever since I was young, I've been reading and re-reading Christie.  Genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle--See above.  And especially with the new BBC Sherlock.  Guh.

C.S. Lewis--The first Lewis I read was The Discarded Image about the medieval and Renaissance worldview.  Then I read the Chronicles.  He is so clear while being academically smart.  I long to write like that.

J.K. Rowling--Harry Potter has been a big part of my life, and I have met many friends through fandom.

Umberto Eco--The Name of the Rose and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana are both masterpieces of fiction.  And he writes criticism as well.

Anne Fadiman--Ex Libris:  Confessions of a Common Reader is inspiring and fun.  Fadiman has a wonderful relationship to books--one that started young and continues unabated.

Carolyn See--To be fair, I've only read Making a Literary Life, but it has definitely stuck with me.  I highly recommend this book.

Edward Albee--Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has some sort of strange hold over me.

Bronte(s)--Cheating here because I'm counting Charlotte and Emily as one, but I just can't choose between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

Kazuo Ishiguro--The Remains of the Day may very well be the perfect English novel.  I *sobbed* through the last 50 or so pages. Quiet tragedy.

William Faulkner--I grew up about 3 hours from Oxford, MS, where Faulkner wrote.  His novels have always felt strangely like home.