Lip Lit: True Favourite Books

Once in a postgraduate creative writing class, a teacher asked me what my favourite book was. Adamantly claiming I could not pick one, I answered The Great Gatsby, Therese Raquin and Atonement. While this is not completely untrue, I realised later I didn’t approach the question correctly. The only one of the three I could honestly claim as a favourite is The Great Gatsby.

This is why: your true favourite books are the ones you return to again and again and again. This is how you can distinguish your favourite books: the book is puffy from bathwater; the cover is beaten up; the pages have traces of red wine and coffee. You don’t loan out your favourite book. You buy a second-copy to loan out to friends, because even though you want to spread the love, you can’t bear to think that the words won’t be close. Your favourite book might hold a sense of slight embarrassment, but for whatever reason, you connect – sometimes inexplicitly so – to the content.

Therese Raquin and Atonement may be two of the books I respect the most, but they definitely are not my favourites. While I admire and respect the literary devices and content of both novels, it’s really emotionally difficult to put myself through reading them on a regular basis. They don’t feel like an old friend I want to snuggle up with.

So, I went through my bookcase and found those books of mine that are in the most worn loved condition. Here’s the top five:

1 and 2.
The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is my favourite writer. He has beautiful imagery and language. His characters are beautiful, vulnerable, deceitful and completely broken. There is something so tragic, raw and honest in the way that his characters are always their own worst enemy. To quote some lyric by a band I forget: it’s the beauty in the breakdown.

3.
Where the Heart is by Billie Letts. Stylistically I could tear this book to shreds, but it has so much charm and heart that I would never.

4.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I’ve already written a post solely devoted to by love of Eggers. I think I keep returning to AHWOSG because there is something so oddly comforting about reading a memoir that holds such bleak humour and complete honesty. Eggers is a rare writer in the way that he doesn’t hold back and gives us all of him.

5.
Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman. Having first read this at eight, I still read it at least once a year. The novel deals with cancer, AIDS and homosexuality. Keep in mind this was first published in 1989 when these themes were much more topical. The novel was republished eight times between 1989 and 1994 alone, which just demonstrates how much care and compassion Gleitzman wrote with. This novel still makes me cry every time I read it, and there’s nothing about it I would change.

So. Be honest with me. What books are on your most-read list?