I used to have my bookshelf arranged by color and now it is unpleasantly random. The 27-hour drive back from college, from Virginia to Texas, boxes of books thudding in the back and me wanting to die of sadness and amphetamine dehydration–it led to a haphazard, nervous unpacking binge as soon as I got home, and a bookshelf arranged in such a way that this is my bottom shelf, left to right.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden: Cain/Abel, Charles/Adam, Cal/Aaron, clever/a lot more enjoyable than Grapes of Wrath
C.S. Lewis, Perelandra: Eden on Venus! New Adam and Eve! Plus the annoying devil! I have an extreme love for this book.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own: Women couldn’t write for forever because they didn’t have the space or the freedom, but now things are different! Like, I currently have a room of my own. In my parents’ house. I will soon have a room of my own in the sheep-centric bowels of Kyrgyzstan. Basically I have the functional, if not photogenic oven and it’s just waiting for my bun, a bun also known as “Jia’s Amazing First Novel,” which when it emerges will have to lose the words “amazing,” “first,” and “novel.”
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders: Do you know how to pronounce Socs? Does Ponyboy sound like a hooker name?
George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man: Aha, this one is not my book. Josh, I will mail it to you if you feel the need to revisit your mustache.
Ian McEwan, Atonement: It sucks to be all of them in this book.
Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision: Obvious first post-MFA project, pretty miserable.
George Orwell, 1984: Syntactically, Newspeak=Esperanto? Without this book, would we have had Big Brother?
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: I love love love love this one. Mick Kelly, the tomboy protagonist, is like a Scout Finch type, except in this book she becomes friends with the Boo Radley character early: sad, grotesque awesomeness ensues.
Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring: I hate historical fiction because A) it is like watching a Lifetime documentary about the Renaissance Fair B) if that weren’t enough, those earnest, earthy descriptions of hooking up during pre-bathing eras are seriously gross.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things: My second year of college I had a floor-to-ceiling map of the world in my overly expensive loft apartment that was fun to stare at when under the influence. Easter weekend, we were doing just that, and some really moving song was playing, and one of my friends (with a legendarily commanding speaking voice) grabbed this book and started reading the last chapter aloud and like seriously we all cried. Stoners! But also the last chapter of this book (along with all of this book) is ridiculously good!
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family: Oh, just a little light reading, guys. By that I mean this book was interesting but even while reading it I knew I was just a lil bit too stupid to retain the facts. All I’ve got is the feelings.
Edward P. Jones, The Known World: There’s one description of a slave being hobbled, like his Achilles tendon being cut, that made me feel like my stomach was going to crawl into my small intestine.
Michael Cunningham, The Hours: Gorgeous, amazing, wonderful. Plus, have people talked enough about the fact that half of Mrs. Dalloway’s common-man appeal comes from the fact that it starts with party preparations? And with this book you have it times three!
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: I got this to see what all the fuss was about and 45 pages in I thought, “Oh my God, the reason why people are so inspired by this book is because it was written by a retarded person!” And then I looked it up, saw that that wasn’t the case, and vomited.
Tony Kushner, Angels in America: I saw a London production of this once in which the angel looked like Grace Jones and spat drool all over the stage and audience. Also, my one of my extremely bland and cat-like English professors at UVA once made two similarly bland, blond, cat-like girls read that masturbation-on-the-beach scene out loud together and I had to leave class because I was laughing too hard. Also, sometimes I get “Perestroika” stuck in my head to the tune of “Frere Jacques.”