100 Books
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“Things happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t suppoed to be happening this way,’ and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they…
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“A man can’t understand why a woman’s handbag is such a sensitive object-almost an extension of her person. I don’t fully understand it myself. Maybe it’s because we keep so many private, intimate possessions in our purses- love letters, cosmetics, jelly doughnuts…Maybe a purse is a symbol of the womb, or something equally Freudian. I…
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“What they needed most, at the moment, was courage. And courage was something that couldn’t be issued like helmets or hand grenades.” “The Story of D-Day, June 6, 1944″ by Bruce Bliven, Jr. Among the many books I’ve graciously inherited, some of my favourites are the collection of vintage 1950s history books, like this Landmark…
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“Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.” “Anansi Boys” by…
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“Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.” “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” by Beverly Cleary Clearly, I picked up this book as a little bit of a filler book; I know at…
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“‘Let’s see. Kind is better than cruel-I’m sure of that. Loose is better than rigid. Love is better than indifference. So is hate. Laughing is the best. Not laughing will kill you. Alone is okay. Not alone is way better. That’s about it…and in my life so far there’s not a single one of them…
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“We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the World’s generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on Earth.” “Armageddon in Retrospect” by Kurt Vonnegut Slowly, but surely, my…
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“It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.” “Mort” by Terry Pratchett I warned you all that there would be a lot of Terry Pratchett on this list. Mort, Pratchett’s fourth Discworld novel, is…
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“‘Don’t expect miracles. She’s an accident waiting to happen.’” “Lean Mean Thirteen: A Stephanie Plumm Novel” by Janet Evanovich I don’t typically read a lot of chick lit, and I’ve only just recently gotten into mysteries. Lean Mean Thirteen is the type of book that might easily turn me off to both genres by how…
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“It’s a jungle out there in alphabet-land.” “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing” by Margaret Atwood I may be a little biased, since I truly enjoy Margaret Atwood’s writing, but I believe that her collection of essays on writing, reading, and being a writer should be reading for anyone who has ever wanted…
L.S. Engler 