It is a year this month since I started blogging on Elenamary.com When I started counting unique IPs on my blog in February 2004 I got 118 visits on the front page. Last month, I got 1,286 unique visits just on the front page. I feel as if I am wasting this opportunity to share. I have an audience, they are listening, and what am I saying?
I sometimes ask friends that if they could make fifty people read any book what book would they choose? I don’t know what book I would choose. I’d like to say it is because there are so many but it is really quite the opposite. The books and authors I most love I can’t even get myself to read. My favorite book is Stranger in a Strange Land.
And yet I have never finished it. I’ve started it multiple times read more than 3/4 of it. But I get so sad. He is not the character I loved, his soul has been stripped. Which I guess is the point. I also like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I also love Herman Hesse. I feel in love with his book Strange News from Another Star and Other Tales. I cried while reading it. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever read. I cried and stopped reading it. I know that if it was that beautiful in translation what must’ve been like in the original? I couldn’t appreciate it in translation. I never read another Hesse book after that. I decided I wouldn’t again until I could read it in German.
The point of this entry wasn’t to list some of my favorite books. But for me to acknowledge that I have a great pulpit here and I need to appreciate it more.
UPDATE
At least my dude James understands my dilenma. Little does he know though that my most popular entry was about toilets.
Excellent book, Stranger in a Strange Land. I devoured everything Heinlein early on, and (unfortunately) most of it is crap. Stranger is sublime, though.
Elena, next time you’re talking to a gaggle of engineers, drop ‘grok’ into the conversation (“wow, that guy totally groks latino issues”), and you’ll be immediately inducted into the Brotherhood. It’s our secret handshake :)
Given your inclinations, I suspect you would really really enjoy Ursula K. LeGuin. No better american author alive today, in my humble, uneducated opinion. She writes socially relevant, politically and morally charged scifi. You might want to start with one of her older books (Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossed) just to get where she’s coming from, but her new stuff just rocks. I’ve read every book by her, and have really enjoyed her steadily maturing point of view.
Oh, and by the way, if you want thousands upon thousands of hits, try having a url that differs from a famous porn stars by ONE hyphen. You should see the email/comments/propositions/IMs I get… :)
Huh? How can you favorite book be one that you haven’t finished?
What’s funny is I’ve been carrying around the same book for a few years now and have never once turned a page. Picked it up for a dollar at some used bookstore long long ago and it’s been sitting around ever since.
I understand, one of the most magical reading experiences I had was a summer reading off and on Samuel Delany’s massive novel “Dhalgren” … I only got three-fourths of the way through, but damn if it hasn’t haunted me and filled my soul ever since… I’ll have to find another copy and finish it…