30 Books to Read Before You Die (Pt. 43)

Part 43! Wow we've come a long way ever since the days of the single digit parts. We've covered a ton of books, talked about lots of experiences, and even talked about everything from reflecting on reading to celebrity book clubs. I am not going to lie to you, I'm really running out of things to talk to you about so—I'm going to talk to you about how I discovered one of my favourite modern authors of all time: Truman Capote.

When I was in school, I had heard of things like In Cold Blood and the obvious Breakfast at Tiffany's (by that point I'd never read it, but the film annoyed me). The first Capote book I actually ended up reading I believe was Summer Crossing (I think). Over time, I ended up reading In Cold Blood next and I was around 15 or 16 when I read it for the first time and around 19-20 when I revisited it once again. In Cold Blood is a modern masterpiece, and literally makes you want to read Capote's entire bibliography. This I did after reading In Cold Blood at 15. I went through his entire bibliography and recently, I updated my tattered copies and got my own copies of borrowed Capote novels and stories. As you can guess, I read them all again in the process.

God, I have loved revisiting Capote and re-reading all of those mysterious and glamorous stories that have such a great amount of modernism and darkness to them. I remember when I was younger, I loved reading Capote's short stories, and in revisiting them, it's nice to know I love them just as much—if not more—now.

I recently re-read one of my favourite Capote novels from my teens: Answered Prayers, and now I have my own copy of it. I regret to inform you I may have gone through and underlined a bunch of quotes I like. Here are some of them:

“That's the question: is truth an illusion, or is illusion truth, or are they essentially the same? Myself, I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.” “Freedom may be the most important thing in life, but there's such a thing as too much freedom.” “If I could do anything, I would go to the middle of our planet Earth and seek uranium, rubies and gold. I'd look for unspoiled monsters. Then I'd move to the country. --Florie Rotondo, age 8” “It was an atmosphere of luxurious exhaustion, like a ripened, shedding rose, while all that waited outside wad the failing New York afternoon.”

Thank you for partaking in some quotations with me. Now, we're going to do this the same as always—I'll go through thirty books I've read with you and mark off with an (*) which are my favourite. I may talk about some of them if you haven't had enough of me talking already. Here we go then, numbers 1261-1290!

1261-1270

1261. The Country of the Blind by HG Wells

1262. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

1263. McTeague by Frank Norris

1264. Flatland by Edwin Abbott

1265. Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore

1266. Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sachar Masoch

1267. Flowers in the Mirror by Zu Chen Li

1268. Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

1269. Captain Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

1270. Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

1271-1280

1271. The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy

1272. The Fortunes of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

1273. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

1274. 'The Algebra of Infinite Justice' by Arundhati Roy*

I don't normally enjoy reading much of Roy's work, because I find it to be a bit over the top with the wannabe magical language. But this book has to be up there as one of the best to come out of India. It's a lesser known book by Roy, but it is a brilliantly-constructed one. Funny story is, I actually found it whilst looking for a book called A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul. I'd forget about the Naipaul book for another six months or so until I actually found it.

1275. The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

1276. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

1277. The Beautiful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

1278. The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklos Boneffy

1279. Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

1280. Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac

1281-1290

1281. At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald

1282. The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan

1283. Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston*

1284. To Have and Hold by Mary Johnston

1285. Romola by George Eliot*

1286. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami*

1287. The 4 Loves by CS Lewis*

1288. Wake by Elizabeth Knox

1289. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte

1290. The Wolf Leader by Alexander Dumas