6 -- Frannie and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Yes, I read Catcher in the Rye and liked it; However, this "book", really 2 stories about the Glass family, sucked me in as a student learning about the world at large. This was unlike anything English that I had lived . At that time, all the friends I associated with were voracious readers and we shared what we liked. I was given this book by a friend and it has been everywhere with me ; I read it again every couple of years. It is multi-layered liked its author.
7 -- By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart. Actually a Canadian authoress. A beautiful novel full of metaphors. Love lived, and lost. I bought it in central London as a student, by the time I had arrived home in north west London I had finished it; Could not stop reading as I rode the tube and bus and even as I walked ! Gave it to my great friend Dee that night. She loved it. Bought myself another copy the next day. It is still with me.
8 -- Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro : This is the only novel by this Canadian Nobel Laureate of Literature. (Her speciality is short stories.) It came out in paperback just as I fell for my first "born and raised in Toronto" girl! (Woman, of course, as we were both in our mid-20's.) Our frames of reference were clearly different and this book helped me understand hers.
9 -- Winter: A Berlin Family by Len Deighton. I loved all his spy novels and his eye for detail in cold-war Berlin. This novel takes in the whole sweep of C20th Germany through the lens of one family - the Winters. The book is a terrific primer for any person interested in how Germany came to be embroiled in WWII.
10 - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Cavino. A book for book lovers. Each chapter is a different story linked by the search for a special edition of a famous radical's book. The first line of each story, when read as a chapter heading, describes the novel's outline. Ingenious.
11 - Dune by Frank Herbert. A great novel, sweeping in scope, vivid characterisation that has lead to a whole series of Sci-fi novels, inter-linked by characters and planter descriptions. 40 + years since its publication but it is recognised now as fostering an environmental awareness.
I was lucky enough to meet Frank Herbert in Toronto the day Queen Elizabeth II was signing our constitution in Ottawa It was ironic that only a handful of us turned up for Herbert's book-signing. We had an engaging chat as he had time on his hands and no customers !
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