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!

Tags: books, happiness or something like it, literary pretentions, literature, pantheism, reading, writing