What I am Reading
Cindy Harrison loves books. As a reviewer for a national publication, she reads about 20 books per month, and still finds time to teach at her local community college."I am also deeply loyal to writers whose work changed my life in significant ways, even if I have not read them in ages. Plus, all kinds of books have marked meaningful moments in my life." Visit her at
Cynthiaharrison.com or email her
Cindy@CynthiaHarrison
My Five Favorite Books
When I set about compiling a list of my five favorite books, the challenge seemed enormous. I love books. Depending on length and time, I read from two to six books a week. I’m always acquiring new favorites, so it would be much easier to only list my five favorite books for this minute, day, month, year. However, I seem to love doing things the hard way, which is why it took more thought come up with my final list.
Some particular challenges: I tend to adore authors for their entire oeuvres, not for single books. I am also deeply loyal to writers whose work changed my life in significant ways, even if I have not read them in ages. Plus, all kinds of books have marked meaningful moments in my life. I love, with equal intensity, memoirs, essays, biographies, spiritual self-help, poetry, short stories and novels. In order to get a list down to my five favorite books, I limited my choices for this list to novels.
After much adding and crossing off, I have a list of five novelists I can honestly say are my all time favorites: Jane Austen, Alice Hoffman, Erica Jong, Gloria Naylor, and Barbara Samuel. Novelists I also considered but finally, painfully, had to cross off the top five include Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Crusie, Louise Erdrich, Gregory Maguire, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and Sara Lewis.
As evident from this list, I’m heavily into fiction written by women. I attribute this to an on-going backlash due to the sheer number of dead white male novelists I had to read in college. This backlash has lasted 20 years and shows no sign of relenting. Although there are a few male novelists I currently adore: Paul Auster, Michael Cunningham, Tom Perrota and Nick Hornby top that list.
But back to my five favorite novels of all time. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has been in my top five almost as long as Erica Jong’s How to Save Your Own Life. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read it. I taught the novel to reluctant college freshman a couple of times, too, so I am on an intimate basis with every delicious word. I have savored, countless times, every nuance of genius, every sprinkle of dry wit.
Elizabeth Bennett is one of those flawed heroines I immediately want as a best friend. Her rocky path to love with Darcy stole my heart on first reading, and Colin Firth’s portrayal as Darcy in the BBC filmed version of the book made me love him as fiercely as I did Elizabeth. The other thing Austen does is make a historical time and place immediate and compelling. Such are her gifts that these characters and their world are as real to me as my own ancestors. Maybe more real.
Alice Hoffman writes magical realism for women. Her stories touch a deep spiritual chord within me. Her characters read tarot cards and take fate into their own hands, turning it by force of will or accepting and dealing with it in unique ways. Practical Magic is the novel that did all of this best for me. It’s the story of two sisters who grew up with reclusive aunts who had strange powers. The sisters have powers too, and this novel tells the story of how they learn to use their legacy and make peace with their past.
What can I say about Erica Jong? She showed me how to be a poet. She gave me the courage to leave a bad marriage. She taught me how to value my own gifts as an artist. And she did this all by writing the sequel to her bestselling first novel, Fear of Flying. How to Save Your Own Life got a drubbing by the critics when it came out in 1977. At that time, I was a young wife with a subscription to a book club that offered current titles at a reduced rate. I didn’t care about critics, I cared about reading books with relevance to my life.
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