Interlude: a biographical list of favorite novels
Novels are delicious. I have relishing them since I was a little girl. Here is a brief biographical essay in novels.
A wrinkle in time (I can’t recall the story, only that I loved it and read it when I was very young)
Jane Eyre (read in High school)
Le Premier Siecle apres Beatrice (read in High School)
Spring Snow (read in High school – images of cherry blossoms stuck with me for years until I was finally able to travel to Japan after my PhD)
Le Conte de Monte Cristo (read late at night while I was studying like mad in Paris, right after my Baccalaureat and miserable in my classroom)
A prayer for Owen Meany (read during a summer holiday during college years)
Leon l’Africain (read on a bus while traveling in Mexico when I was a college student) – this novel put me on a path that eventually gave rise to this.
Posession (read during a summer holiday because my mom’s friend left the book in my room)
Cryptonomicon (read during my PhD studies because a dear friend recommended it, just as I was discovering Sci-Fi)
Foundation (I read all Isaac Asimov while I was writing my PhD)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (read while I was a student in London because my sister left it at home after one of her trips from New York City)
Le Hussard sur le toit (read while living in Morocco)
The Blind Assassin (read in a 4 poster bed in an old cottage on the Dupont de Nemours estate in Delaware – I was spending one week there for archival research)
Les Bienveillantes (read while I was pregnant with my first child, never finished it – too twisted and dark)
Harry Potter (read in the first months of my son’s life – it’s the book that motivated me to figure out how to nurse and read at the same time, an art I perfected with my second child!)
Wolf Hall (read in the first months of my daughter’s life – in small installments before I napped or slept)
Love in the Time of Cholera: I think this is the only book I have read twice.
As I write this I’m salivating for the new novel I’m about to start: Freedom.
If you read this, you have to send me the name of your favorite novel. If you can’t tell: I love novels with plot
()
button
