The funny thing is that you’re very rarely enough of anything for anyone.
When I write about radical-lady-type-stuff, I’m always too feminist for some people, and not feminist enough for others.
When I get worked about something, I’m always too outspoken for some, and not outspoken enough for others.
When I wrote that post about Easter, I was, according to commenters, either too Christian or else too atheist.
A few commenters even wondered if I was a pantheist, the thought of which sent me scrambling to my bookcase, scanning the shelves until I finally found Ann-Marie McDonald’s Fall On Your Knees.
I flipped to the end of the book, the section that’s an excerpt of Kathleen’s diary, and, after re-reading all of her love scenes with Rose, found the passage I was looking for:
O Diary. My loyal friend. There is love, there is music, there is no limit, there is work, there is the precious sense that this is the hour of grace when all things gather and distil to create the rest of my life. I don’t believe in God, I believe in everything. And I am amazed at how blessed I am.
That’s the kind of paragraph that makes me want to take a long drag on a cigarette, exhale the smoke oh-so-slowly , and mutter, Yes, yes, exactly, yes.
Fall On Your Knees was my favourite book when I was a teenager. I mean, Jesus, what’s not to love about it? It’s a huge, generation-spanning Canadian epic that takes place in early 20th century Cape Breton (NOVA SCOTIA REPRESENT) and jazz-age New York. The writing is teeth-achingly beautiful, not to mention clever, funny and smart as hell. The characters are brilliant, multi-faceted and all that other good stuff that actual literary-type people say in actual book reviews; in fact, I think that my first ever girl-crush was on Frances Piper.
When I was in university, I had the chance to go see Ann-Marie McDonald give a reading from her latest, The Way The Crow Flies. She was gorgeous and articulate and funny (naturally), and I was totally smitten. Afterwards, I got the chance to meet her and have her sign my copy of Fall On Your Knees. I felt like I was meeting a movie star; my palms were sweaty, my mouth was dry, my chest felt tight. I felt light-headed, and kept having to remind myself to breathe.
When I made it to the head of the line and she asked me my name, I somehow managed to squeak out that her book had really been important to me. I knew that it was going to sound stupid and trite before I even said it, but I didn’t know what else I could say. Here was this person who had strung together the loveliest, smartest, best words possible to create an absolutely perfect story, one that I could disappear into any time that I needed a break from the real world. I wanted to tell her everything that I loved about her book, from why Frances was my favourite character all the way to how her brief mention of Nova Scotia’s Africville had spawned an hour-long conversation with my grandmother about Halifax’s racial landscape.
But how was I supposed to do that with the auditorium lights shining in my face as if I were being questioned for a crime I hadn’t committed? How was I supposed to tell her all this with my clumsy tongue and my woefully inadequate vocabulary?
So I told her that it was important. And she smiled and thanked me and scrawled For Anne, From Ann-Marie McDonald inside the front cover of my book. Afraid that I might embarrass myself, I hurried away, stumbled down the steps, and, while walking home, thought up a million brilliantly witty remarks that I could have made to McDonald if only I’d had the wherewithal.
(Hint: I very rarely have any wherewithal whatsoever)
All of which is to say – oh my dear sweet Jesus I love books so fucking much.
I love reading books, I love buying books, I love writing about books and I love talking about books.
So with that in mind, I asked you guys what your all-time favourite, desert-island books were.
Here’s what you had to say:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
In The Time Of The Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Long Walk by Richard Bachmann/Stephen King
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Oz series by Frank L. Baum
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Claudine series by Colette
Little, Big by John Crowley
The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Devil’s Teardrop by Jeffery Deaver
Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
Wyrm by Mark Fabi
The Refugee Summer by Edward Fenton
Headhunter by Timothy Findley
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Neuromancer by William Gibson
China Court: The Hours Of A Country House by Rumer Godden
Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky by Patrick Hamilton
The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune series by Frank Herbert
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
Winter Of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
It by Stephen King
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Operating Instructions: A Journal Of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott
Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie McDonald
If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Fool by Christopher Moore
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Apathy And Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll
Popular Music From Vittula by Mikael Niemi
1984 by George Orwell
Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
Skinny Legs And All by Tom Robbins
Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Harry Potter series, specifically The Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
Franny And Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Cat In The Hat by Dr. Seuss
Love Is A Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
There’s A Girl In My Hammerlock by Jerry Spinelli
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To A God Unknown by John Steinbeck
The Log From The Sea Of Cortez by John Steinbeck
The Eagle Of The Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Queen Elizabeth Story by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Mary Poppins series by P.L. Travers
The Making Of A Psychiatrist by David Viscott
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments, and I will add them to the list!
The Belle Jar 
Anne Of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy + The Hobbit Prequel by J. R. R. Tolkein
Added! 🙂
Dear Anne:
I have only just discovered your blog through a tenuous chain from a post on my Facebook page. I must tell you that, even from thee little I have so far read that I admire your writing immensely and that you have a gift for vivid imagery that astounds me in one so young. You also seem to unerringly put your finger on the crux of any issue or emotion.
I felt exactly the same way when I got Terry Pratchett to sign one of his books to me, with the addition of the fact that, while I wouldn’t queue for five minuted to see the Second Coming of Christ, I waited in line for four hours to get to him.
If pushed, my five favourite books, in no particular rode would be: “The Log From The Sea of Cortez” by Joh Steinbeck, “The Wind In The Willows” by Kenneth Grahame, “Miss Pym Disposes” by Josephine Tey, “Night Watch” by Terry Pratchett and “A Catskill Eagle” by Robert B Parker. If you are not familiar with any of them, may I commend them to your notice.
Please keep writing.
Regards
Douglas
Dr Douglas Sutherland-Bruce Senior Writer
douglassb@iinet.net.au 0418 934 850 http://www.weekendnotes.com/profile/105991
Dear Doug,
Thank you so much!
I can only imagine what it must have been like to meet Terry Pratchett – his stuff is amazing! My favourite is Good Omens, which he wrote with Neil Gaiman.
I’ve added in all of the novels you mentioned.
Thank you again 🙂
Anne
I’ve read The Alchemist at least six times and everything else by Coelho twice. Vonnegut is also amazing. My second favourite book (after The Alchemist) is Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan – brilliant. However, the most skillfully crafted and well-written book I’ve ever read is Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I note you are Canadian. You must read it. No ifs ands or buts. I also like Illusions by Richard Bach.
Thanks for putting together a great list 🙂
Saving Francesca by the Australian author Melina Marchetta – despite being incredibly flawed, the main character is a girl I continue to fall in love with every time I read it.
❤ If I have a favourite book at all (and I'm usually pretty sure I couldn't ever possibly pick just one, but if someone insisted) it’d have to be Fall On Your Knees as well. “Teeth-achingly beautiful” is the perfect phrase, too, so thank you for that.
Oh my god… I love you. The fact that you put up this books list is just… I’m at a loss for words. So many books I have never read! *squee*
Here’s a strange addition to an already perfect list. I never forget to remember Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. One can read this yet today as an adult and find a way it becomes painfully or delightfully applicable.
Yes! Where the Wild Things Are is totally moving as an adult!
Yay! Thought I was weird for a moment.
Reblogged this on A Provocative Mind and commented:
Yes. This is my summer reading list materialized.
Good list. A few so-far-unmentioned favourites:
The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
Our Lady of the Flowers by Genet
Cocksure by Mordecai Richler
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Valis by PKD
The Crock of Gold by James Stephens
Deafening by Frances Itani
I have so many, but here’s a few to Caribbean up your list a little…
Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid
A Small Place – Jamaica Kincaid
The Last Warner Woman – Kei Miller
Krik? Krak! – Edwidge Danticat
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Good Morning Midnight – Jean Rhys
Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys
Dancing Lessons – Olive Senior
Small Island – Andrea Levy
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack – Austin Clarke
The Sly Company of People Who Care – Rahul Bhattacharya
I could go on, but I’ll stop. I just know that not many people read West Indian lit. But they really, really should.
I can add more postcolonial lit if you want…I tend to force this stuff on people–but only in the nicest and friendliest of ways. 🙂
Love the work of Kincaid and especially Danticat! Her Breath, Eyes, Memory is stunning.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Oh, I just love how long and eclectic this list is.
This is an amazing list. One of my favorite books is also “Fall on Your Knees.” It’s been a while since I’ve read it, and I’m definitely going to go back and read it again soon. Also, just wanted to say that I just started reading this blog and it is quickly becoming my favorite. Thanks so much for sharing!
Thank you for your great kindness in including The Good Mayor. I am touched and honoured.
Best wishes
Andrew
I absolutely loved this post, and anyone who can get so passionate about books! It’s hard to add any more titles to the fairly comprehensive list, but I adore Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’: I know it’s a bit of a love-it-hate-it kind of book but, unsurprisingly, I LOVE it. Also maybe some James Joyce, like ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’… At least then I’d have the time to actually finish (maybe even understand!) ‘Ulysses’.
What a wonderful reading list! I’ve read many of these and now feel inspired to read more. I recently blogged a list of books that changed my life, and you’ve reminded me I forgot a few of them!
We Are All In the Dumps With Jack and Guy by Maurice Sendak. I was given this as a child and it was the first book that I felt compelled to smell and trace my fingers over the coordinated cardboard box like paper that was glued to the inside. Reading it as an adult I am able to see the way nothing changes and yet everything changes between the first illustration and the last one. It also might be a tool to help teach your Son about empathy and helping those around you, I know it did incredible things for me.
I seem to have a thing for trapped women; some of my favorites are Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and House of Mirth. I also love Notes from Underground – Dostoevsky is hilarious!
Of the more recent books, one that brings me to tears each time I read it is David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary. It’s a short love story in the format of a dictionary, using each letter of the alphabet to tell a snippet of his relationship, in non-chronological order. One of the best things about the novel is that you can’t tell if it’s a heterosexual or homosexual relationship; it just is.
One of my favorite childhood books is Dear Mili, by Wilheim Grimm and Maurice Sendak. It’s beautiful, and kind of explains why I turned out the way I did.
Thanks for the list! These are some of the books that have stayed with me, regardless of whether I have a copy, or how long it has been since I read them: I seem to have a penchant for romance, in the broadest sense.
Winnie The Pooh, by A A Milne
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf.
Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
I Capture The Castle, by Dodie Smith
Possession, by A S Byatt
August by Judith Rossner
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
The Rules of Engagement, by Catherine Bush
Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan
Folly by Laurie King
A brilliant list – some old favourites and (even better) some I’ve never heard of. Thank you, if I ever get my printer connected I will print it out and start ticking them off! Can I suggest Frankenstein by Mary Shelley too…?
Anne, this was so fun to read at the end of the work week. To this I would add Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, and On Beauty by Zadie Smith.
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graham
Little Bee – Chris Cleve
Kindred – Octavia Butler
Love the opening to this post — I’ve been feeling the same way lately. Every time I write about feminism, I think, “Oh no! Gonna lose some readers.” And when I write about faith and doubt, I think, “Oh no! There go my feminists…” Blogs are supposed to have a “niche,” or so they say, but MY LIFE doesn’t have a niche, or has too many, so that’s going to overflow into my writing. I feel like I have limbs in all these conflicting worlds; I’m a lactating Quaker feminist academic who spends her minimal free time watching The Bachelor and googling things like, “Do I have a difficult baby?” I guess that’s my niche…?
No one belongs in a box. People are like diamonds – the more facets the better 🙂 Your niche is your authentic self. I just started blogging on WP and think you might like the vid in this post: http://amazingsusan.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/puke-your-life-out-with-passion/
AND, I’ve found it helpful not to think in terms of either/or but rather “both,” and in your case, perhaps “many” :). Good luck. Oh. And you can give up just about everything, but never give up being a feminist 🙂
Fall on Your Knees is my favourite book of all time. I buy it for people all the time. I read it every year or so because I love it. I am always nervous that it won’t be as good as I remember, but it always is.
I have to say, Anne, that that paragraph that you love so much doesn’t actually seem to mean anything very much. Lots of nice words stuck together, but that’s all, I’m afraid.
Hey everyone, we’ve got a word scientist here. Did your calculations determine that she was wrong about her feelings and that passage held no meaning for her? How did you get so brilliant. When are you going to write your very interesting book where every sentence makes the same kind of sense to everyone? I think you should start it now. Go from here to somewhere else and get writing. I bet it’ll be real riveting.
Thank you for your comment
The Tortall Books and the Circle of Magic Books by Tamora Pierce. They made me the feminist I am today. I am constantly re-reading them.
The DoveKeepers by Alice Hoffman
The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton
Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund
The Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
I wish Dorothy Allison would write more. And Junot Diaz, too.
Amen to that. Love Junot Diaz!
Thank you for this. I have read many of these and will be keeping this post bookmarked and looking into others of the titles with which I am not familiar. Much appreciated, everyone.
Reblogged this on There Are So Many Things Wrong With This and commented:
Reading list! Plus more in the comments. Yay!
I’m a new reader — I can’t remember exactly how I found you. I love the book list! I had to mention one book I especially love: “Harpo Speaks!” by Harpo Marx. It’s all the things a memoir should be, and a good deal funnier than most.
I just discovered your site recently, and I love it! I love this list. I read ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ every couple of years – it never lets me down. My three sisters and I all adore ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ so much that we frequently text each other quotes from it. And both of Ann-Marie McDonald’s books gutted me. Just turned me inside out.
I finally had a chance to read the full list. I added a few to my ‘to read’ list and smiled at most of the others. If you ever want to blow your mind with something excellent but completely different – Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor was one of the last books that changed my worldview.
I shall add to this the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
It’s like lollypop. With a jalapeño center. Set on fire and jumper-cabled to Beethovan. Playing Metallica. The only quest you, as a reader have is to get through the first ponderous 30 pages. And then the next thing you know, it’s 16 hours later and you suddenly realize you’ve had to pee for at least half of that. You disappear reading those books. You don’t exist. This world this psychotic englishman has created is the only thing in the universe.
I used to own a copy of all three (the third book is disappointing but the first two are enough. You can stop at the end of “Gormenghast if you so desire but i don’t recommend it..) I read them to death. There are still pieces here and there around the house that turn up now and then. I have all three on backorder at a place up the street.
I’m surprised Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts didn’t make the list.
To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Cutting for Stone, to name a few.
What a fantastic list, my suggestions: Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird – Brian Moore: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Leo Tolstoi: Anna Karenina – Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights – The Bible and many, many more.
Have you ever read Camus?
Yes! I love Camus 🙂