30 books to read before 30 according to me

so here is my list of 30 before 30.

1.  to kill a mockingbird- harper lee

2.  the catcher in the rye- j.d. salinger*

3.  the perks of being a wallflower- stephen chobsky*

4.  dandelion wine- ray bradbury

5.  one hundred years of solitude- gabriel garcia marquez

6.  a tree grows in brooklyn- betty smith*

7.  everything is illuminated- jonathan safran foer

8. on the road- jack kerouac**

9. the picture of dorian gray- oscar wilde

9. lord of the flies- william golding*

10.  middlesex- jeffrey eugenides

11. 1984- george orwell*

12. pride and prejudice- jane austen

13. this side of paradie- f. scott fitzgearld

14. the sun also rises- ernest hemingway** 

15. a clockwork orange- anthony burgess

16. maus- art spiegelman

17. war and peace- leo tolstoy

18. breakfast at tiffany's- truman capote

19. the house on mango street- sandra cisneros

20. jane eyre- charlotte brönte

21. the bell jar- sylvia plath

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27. something by haruki murakami (i recommend "norwegian wood")

28. something by shakespare

29. brave new world- aldous huxley***

30.  the bible*** (amended 6.6.13)

so i only have 24 books.  i have a lot more classics that i need to read before i can finish this list.  so accept this now and i promise to have an updated list by my 31st birthday.

*read in high school

**read in early twenties

***i haven't read.

their eyes were watching god. zora neale hurston.

this has been on my list to read ever since high school. i "borrowed" it from my friend samantha's older sister's amy's book shelf. (amy, if you are reading this, sorry i stole your copy, send me your address so i can mail it to you, also your notes were helpful!)

so a while back flavorpill listed "30 books to read before you are 30" (link:  http://www.flavorwire.com/298020/30-books-everyone-should-read-before-turning-30?onswipe_redirect=never) and since i am turning 30, figured i should start sorting out life and read that list. (in addition to this, since i am turning 30, i have decided to create my own 30 list.)

then the library of congress came out with "88 books that shaped america" (link:  http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/) and i decided to check out some of the books on that list. and so lucky me because "their eyes" is on both.

i will start by saying that i had no idea that "their eyes were watching god" was the original "how stella got her groove back." and though i always admired angela bassett for her youthfulness and beauty in that movie, she is nothing compares to janie crawford. after reading, "their eyes" janie crawford was added to my canon of amazingly strong women.

when first introduced to janie, what i admired most was her self-assurance. she had just returned home and was the talk of the town but she didn't let the gossip faze her. she had gone out and lived life and all the small town-ness meant nothing in contrast because as she tells her friend pheoby, "ah been a delegate to de big 'association of life. yessuh! de grande lodge, de big convention of living' is just where ah been . . .". growing up in a small town i admire her outlook. i don't know if anyone talks trash about me but i have encountered some people who talk down to me. however, i remind myself that in the large scope of life, it doesn't matter because i have experienced things in life that they never will, so should not be insulted by their negativity.

interestingly enough, janie's self-assurance is a due to her sexuality. sexuality is a major theme of the book, especially the oppression of female sexuality. janie discovers her sexuality under a pear tree at the age of 16 and spends the rest of her life searching for the feeling she experienced under that tree. her nanny instantly recognizes and represses it by forcing janie into marriage with mist' killicks. janie then runs away from her husband with a man, joe who sparks something in her, but ends up extinguishing her flame by keeping her as a trophy wife. then joe dies and janie meets tea cake and he awakens life inside of her. but the issue is that tea cake is half her age! but janie decides that she has lived her life doing what was others expected of her but now she was going to live life for herself!

however, before you assume this is all about sex (there isn't really actual sex in it). let me explain that janie's sexuality is not simply sexual desires but a symbol for freedom. janie's search for freedom of sexual expression is actually a search for freedom from gender roles. it is like the free love movement, where sex is a means of female empowerment. where by taking ownership of our bodies, we take ownership of ourselves. and by having sex on our own terms, we redefine life for ourselves. janie discovers how to life once she learns how to truly love. this discovery of love than leads to the discovery of happiness because janie now has the power to recognize what she wants out of life.

in addition to sex, race is also a major theme. this work is a reminder of all the injustice that african-americans (esp women) have encountered in the past and still experience today. i could not help but think of hurricane katrina and kanye west's "george bush doesn't care for black people" remark while reading about the tea cake's experience with hurricane clean up. and at the risk of sounding like a pessimist, even with the progress that has been made in terms of race relations, some things stay the same.

i will add that i was surprised by the outcome of janie's trial. (spoiler alert) i had no faith in the court, well the white court to be exact. it was interesting that the remark "well, you know whut dey say 'uh white man and uh nigger woman is the freest thing on earth.' dey do as dey please" was made at the end of her trial. especially since it contradicts a remark made earlier in the book by nanny that "de nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as ah can see." however this change in perspectives is based upon the change in janie. she went from being a mule to being free all by seeking what made her happy in life.

so should you read this before 30? yes, especially if you are a woman, janie is an excellent role model. in fact, this has a spot on my 30 before 30 list.

and did this shape america? yes it's an important narrative of america from the perspective of a african-american woman.

quotations:

“when God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. so they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. so they covered each one over with mud. and the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is dead and dumb.”

“love is lak de sea. it's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore. ”

pride and prejudice. jane austen. (56)

before i start, this is not the bookcover i checked out. the one i checked out was old, blue and plain. i choose this cover because it shows my newest obsession thanks to "pride and prejudice" . . . colin firth.

i have to say that at first i didn't care for "pride and prejudice." maybe i was blinded by my pride, there were times when i found darcy's and elizabeth's conversation hard to follow, were they flirting with each other?!?!
or maybe i was unjustly prejudice against it, the brönte sisters didn't win me over with their "great" romances, so jane austen didn't stand a chance. i wasn't completely invested in elizabeth and darcy's romance, maybe because i knew it would sort out from. so my anticipation resulted in impatience and so the book moved too slowly for me. i mean it was like get on with it already. and stop with the weird stares, darcy!

however, like elizabeth's feelings toward darcy did a 180. so did mine. i read "pride and prejudice and zombies" immediately after and found mr. darcy, oh so more romantic on my second reading. (the zombies didn't help, but the re-reading of austen's text did.) then i checked out the BBC mini-series and of course after watching colin firth in that bathtub and diving into the lake, i was smitten, with firth and "pride and prejudice".

that lake scene is not in the book. but it sure is in the mini-series. and i mean he doesn't even get close to naked but watching him walk around wet afterward, sure is sexy!

prior to reading the book, i had never seen the mini-series, only knew colin firth played darcy. yet as i read, i visualized firth as darcy, even more random it was firth as mark darcy from bridget jones' fame that i actually imagined.

nonetheless, it resulted in me being obsessed with colin firth afterward. the embarrassing kind of obsessed. i.e.:

a. watching "what a girl wants" (yes, starring amanda bynes) not only once but twice (abc family and MTV randomly aired it)
b. watching "love actually" (it's the only firth film i own) and fast forwarding to watch his scenes
c. watching the mini-series twice in 1 week (i wanted to get my viewing worth before returning it to the library)
d. buying "fever pitch" on ebay (i had no idea it existed until i amazoned "colin firth dvd", okay maybe amazoning "colin firth dvd" is the embarrassing part)
e. borrowing "a single man" from friend (though this isn't that bad)
f. buying the pride and prejudice BBC companion novel cos he was on cover
g. buying "the king's speech" book cos he was on the cover (in my defense it was only $1)
h. contemplating buying the episode where he proposes in the mini-series so i can have it on my kindle to watch whenever i want

sad, i know. i realize that i am not actually in love with the colin firth but it's the lloyd dobler effect that chuck klostermann writes about in "sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs". (women love john cusack because we are in love with his character lloyd dobler from "say anything".) colin firth has the mr. darcy effect. and i know, he is 20 years my senior and happily married with a family but in a perfect world, we would have a "lost in translation" friendship. we'd meet in some hotel bar (maybe at the four seasons), i'd take him karaoke-ing (in k-town) and wear a pink wig. we'd end the night at some random taco truck and when we'd part, he'd whisper something in my ear that only i could hear and would never share with anyone . . . okay, i'll add:

i. making up fantasy about hanging out with him in LA ala "lost in translation"

oh and i have to share one last "pride and prejudice" purchase! this adorable tank that i got at uniqueLA. i was a little tipsy when i bought it and had this longest discussion about "pride and prejudice", colin firth, the bbc version, the keira knightly version and the zombie novel. ps this doesn't get a letter cos its not embarrassing.

sorry i know this a book blog, so some thoughts on the actual book. i had seen bits and pieces of "becoming jane" so got that storyline confused with the book. but i guess if austen wrote about her life than this makes sense. i now want to read her memoir.

this too was on flavorpill's 30 before 30. though i am not sure if it would make my list. i did admire elizabeth for her boldness and unconventionality; not accepting mr. collins' proposal, standing up to lady catherine (at dinners and the proposal inquiry) and of course landing darcy. and she does have a great cinderella story, a girl without strong social relations marrying a man having ten thousand a year! and it is a reasonable love story. although i love romances (and romantic comedies), i am also very skeptical of them. (i have also never been in love so that is probably where my doubts spring from.) however, with this romance, elizabeth's love for darcy grew throughout the book so their love was "real" because it wasn't based on an instant attraction but something that strengthen as elizabeth learned more about the real darcy. (though austen still has a place for love at first sight with jane and mr. bingsley). so i take that back. maybe it will make my 30. i need to read more of her works to decide.

ps i also hated how lydia and wickham were saved from their mess. but will get to that in my "pride and prejudice and zombies" entry.

dandelion wine. ray bradbury. (52)

believe it or not, my source for the latest news on celebrity death is twitter. it's almost like a game, who can tweet that someone has died first but it also resourceful because i end up being one of the first to know. when ray bradbury passed away, i found out on twitter. i also noticed that majority of the tweets included some type reference to dandelion wine. i racked my brain, did guy montag drink this? but i found my answer when i checked out his books at the library. "dandelion wine" is one of his works.

before i go on, i have to gush. i love love love love love this book. if you haven't read it, please pick up a copy. i have no idea why "dandelion wine" isn't forced upon high schoolers instead of "fahrenheit 451". "dandelion wine" has so many great life lessons. and due to these lessons, it is on my list of 30 to read before you are 30.

to be honest i didn't expect to love this book . i think of bradbury as a sci-fi writer so i wasn't too sure what this novel would be about. would everyone turn out to be aliens? but i was wrong and silly because it turned out to be a whimsical and wonderful story of a boy, douglas, and his adventures one summer in the small town of green town, illinois.

i hate to be judge-y but i always assume that sci-fi novels will be a little dorky and dry. but bradbury is not a sci-fi writer but a poet as i discovered in the foreword to "the martian chronicles". and it's especially true for "dandelion wine" which was based on bradbury's childhood but also makes any reader nostalgic for their own childhood.

there was so much beauty in this book. it is filled with valuable lessons on life, death, growing old, growing up, and of course, how to be happy. there are also many memorable characters, one of my favorites was the time machine, colonel freeleigh. i was delighted when i discovered that the time machine the boys had discovered was the colonel and how he was able to transport him with his memories. i also adored miss helen loomis not only for her unconventional romance with william forrester. but her bravery when it came to death for as she explained:

"i'm not afraid. when you love as long as i've lived you lose that, too. i never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because i'd never tried it. on my eightieth birthday i tried it. i can't say i'm greatly excited over lobster still, but i have no doubt as to it's taste now, and i don't fear it. i dare say death will be a lobster, too, and i can come to terms with it."

it is true nobody likes death but we all have to try it once.

bradbury filled this book with clever little lessons like this, some sad yet true and others happy and promising. and it feels one with joy, nostalgia and whimsy as they read. just writing this i am filled with that warmth, the kind that one would assume that can only be found in a bottle of "dandelion wine." so go pick up a copy and fill your glass!*

ps i feel like i didn't go into too deep analyze on this one especially cos i love it but there is something about it that is indescrible and you just have to read it for yourself.





*sorry that cheesy but i really love this book so please forgive me.

on the road. jack kerouac. (7)

in college, as a pleasure read versus an academic one, i read john leland's "hip: a history", sadly i wasn't too familiar with majority of the social movements or time periods it discussed.  i remember reading about the beats but hadn't read "on the road", "howl" or "naked lunch" so the impact of their hipness didn't really reach me. since then "on the road" has kinda haunted me. whenever i went to a bookstore, the back of my mind told me to finally pick up "on the road" but i never did.

what forced me to finally pick it up was an ed rusha exhibit at the hammer museum. on display was ed rusha's book version of "on the road". (the plaque next to his piece also taught me that kerouac wrote it all on one scroll. i can't remember if that scroll was on display, hmm). i can sadly admit that there were a series of pieces that i loved in this exhibit that i thought were solely ed rusha but turned out to be "on the road" quotes when i finally read the book. (yeah i am quite the poser.)

after reading "on the road", i reached one conclusion about myself. i have always been labelled a "flower child" by my family and though i do have hippie tendencies, i think my nomadic life is more on par with the beats. there is a rawness and grittiness to their lifestyle that is more attractive to me than putting flowers in my hair in san francisco.

if i was a male during the 1950's, i would have been a beat. i would have hitchhiked across the country, got drunk, got high and slept with girls and boys. and at the risk of sounding sexist, i would have to be male, there really wasn't a place for females in this movement; unless you wanted to end up used or abuse (not like physically or sexually though this did happen but also as a source of income as seen in the book) or dead like williams s. burroughs' wife (as in real life). as a female, i am not offended, these men were jaded by the war. did anyone actually survive the weird tension in the us caused by the cold war? all the creative spirits we recognize now were all tormented by it but that led to their genius. as i explained recently to darlene, i have a greater tolerance for communists and socialists in that historical context because society was so static that you had to believe in the extremes to have any hope for change. so i don't hold anything against the beats. they did let their women drink, do drugs and have sex so in a way that is liberating. their women were equal in their access to life's vices.

"on the road" is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and it will probably be on my list too. it would make my list due the great quotes in it. what i loved most about "on the road" was kerouac's poetic style. he had a chaotic and beautiful way of describing life (surprisingly at times, my life.)

my favorite quote of course was:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everyone goes "awww!""

i also enjoyed:

"people change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal."
(why i am a foodie)

"she threw down drinks when it seemed she was about to chuck up the last."
(how i drink)

"...and like the prophet who walked across the land to bring the dark word, and the only word i had was 'wow'!"
(how i feel at coachella)

one quote that stood out, was kerouac's nostradamus moment. he wrote:

"dean has a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. he said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up new york."

random, right?!?! i googled to see if at then time of 9/11, anyone drew a parallel to this. they didn't. but i did find an article about a professor who noticed post-9/11 that his students normally wrote their class papers on that excerpt.

but what i loved more was his descriptions of the city i love the most, los angeles:

"LA. i love the way everyone says ‘LA’ on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done."

"on corners old women cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hot sauce on newspaper napkins"

while in LA, sal eats at what i assumed was clifton's cafeteria downtown, so i emailed "ask chris" from los angeles magazine on the topic and he said possibly though there were multiple clifton's back than.

i love this book because of its carefree spirit. sal just went with the flow of life. and sometimes it worked for him and sometimes it didn't. sometimes he lived like a king and other times he had to scrape and scramble to get life together. the importance was the experience of life versus living by society standards.

i will admit that "on the road" made me romanticize a time period that was not as glamorous as it read on paper. it made me nostalgic for something that i never lived or could have ever live or even survive. i realized that today, i can not travel like sal paradise did, especially being a female. i can even admit that at the end i started to get a little bored and found the lifestyle tedious. being on the road would be exhausting however like the saying goes, it isn't the destination but the journey. and kerouac proves that to a t by making the destination obsolete. and i think this is why i would be a beat, it's about experiencing life instead of where you end up.

ps here is one of the pieces from the ed rusha's exhibit. it reminded me of delano, which is why i initially loved it.

breakfast at tiffany's. truman capote. (6)

i absolutely love audrey hepburn's holly golightly. i always watch "breakfast at tiffany's" filled with envy. if only i could have her sense of style (and petite frame)! my dream item is her shades. one of my favorite scenes is when she is peering over them at the girlie show! i googled, i can own a pair of oliver goldsmith's "manhattan", they reissued them last year. but what i admired most was that she was so cool and it was so effortless. i mean my favorite outfit was the mens dress shirt as a nightgown complete with eyelashed sleeping mask and ear plugs (seriously does anyone know where i can find her ear plugs?). such a cute outfit, and yet it was something she slept in!

hepburn was so delightful and charming, you can't help but fall in love with her. i was so excited about reading the novella, but at the same time wondered if it had the same whimsical magic of the film? i know most films ruin books, but i love hepburn's verison of golightly so much, that i couldn't imagine another. however, there was nothing to worry about. the movie stayed true to the book (well as much as society standards would permit back then) and majority of the lines i loved came straight from the novella. and the crazy thing is that most of the storyline stayed the same (there are some major difference but read it for yourself, i promise you won't be disappointed). even with the sameness, surprisingly the film's "golightly" is completely different from the book verison.

as cool as she is in the movie, holly golightly is even hipper in the book. she is this raw, no nonsense, do-as-she-pleases, free-spirited boheminian. as much as i want to be her in the movie, i would much rather be her in the book (well minus all of the sally tomato and jose drama). she is edgier and way ahead of her time when it comes to sex and drugs. it's like this perfect person you always admired ends up having a sailor mouth and does drugs. its kinda like discovering that your grandma cusses (which grandma bea does and did shock me when i first heard her. lol)

holly was never much of a lady in the movie, she did drink at all hours, had numerous male callers, and did go to girlie shows. but that is all child's play in comparison to her behavior in the book. i was shocked that she smoked pot. she also used phrases like "nigger-lip" and "preggers". and though it was implied that she got around in the film, it didn't prepare me for hearing a story about her being bit during sex or advising her friend to have sex with the lights on!??! (remember this was 1950s) here are some things i was shock to hear (well read) from her lips:

"rusty thinks i should smoke marijuana, and i did for a while, but it only makes me giggle"

"i told him look, darling, you've got the wrong miss go-lightly, i'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side."

"i wish, please don't laugh--but i wish i'd been a virgin for him . . ."

the most shocking was how open she was when it came to sexual orientation. i know i shouldn't be too shocked considering capote's sexual orientation. but i was surprised to hear her speak so frankly about it in the 1950s (i mean this was the era of joan cleaver). she used phrases like "dyke", "bull dyke" and was convinced that rusty was gay. but she wasn't opposed to homosexuality. in fact, she thought it was fine for people to be in love with members of their sex. for as she explains, "of course people couldn't help but think i must be a bit of a dyke myself. and of course i am. everyone is: a bit."

even greater are her views on marriage equality:

a person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, i'd respect your feeling. no, i'm serious. love should be allowed. i'm all for it."

i love that last quote not only for showing how silly it is for us to be concern with who others want to marry. but also because it reminded me of when my friend miguel when he told a panel of judges, it shouldn't matter if he loved men, women or giraffes on bravo's "step it up and dance".

but even all this aside, i fell in love with holly golightly for the same reason, one does in the film. her quirks (the stealing, not giving her cat a name becaus they don't belong to each other, her visits to tiffany's) and of course the little tibbits of life advice she gives out.

on diamonds:
"it's like tiffany's. not that i give a hott about jewelry. diamonds, yes. but it's tacky ot wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky."

her mean reds:
" . . . the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. you're sad, that's all. but te mean reds are horrible. you're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. except something bad is going to happen, I ly you don't know what it is."

her free-spiritedness:

"i don't want to own anything until i know i've found the place where me and things belong together."
-her card that read "miss holiday golightly, traveling." which were made because as she explained "after all, how do i know where i'll be leaving tomorrow."-her singing of "don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go-atravelin' through the pastures of the sky" (ps in the book, "fred" gives her a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i googled and he is a patron saint of travelers. adorable huh. also i googled and you can purchase a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i might!)

her musing on love:"never love a wild thing, mr. bell . . .but you can't give your heart a wild thing: the more you do, th estronger they get. until they're srong enough to run into the woods. or fly into a tree . . . if you let yourself love a wild thing. you'll end up looking at the sky."
"--i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street, or a house, something, anyaway, tha tbelongs to me cause i belong to it."

such a character and what a mess but a charming one. i actually think i will put this on my list of 30 before 30. she doesn't make the best decisions in life, but i think she has some great tidbits that one should live by. also who doesn't love a kinky pot smoker who supports gay marriage? so yes, definitely worth the read.