Saw a Facebook ‘15 books in 15 minutes’ meme a few days ago, and since then, it’s been kinda on my mind. Mostly because I like to look at my new bookshelf and imagine it bigger. And more filled up. And in mahogany. I’ve also been slacking on my reading this week, and instead like to stare into space on train rides than stare into pages of make-believe worlds. However, much to my credit, the book-buying mood hasn’t ceased. What’s with these books-related entries, you ask (you don’t ask), and I shrug my skinny shoulders and blame a lack of good movies (and my present addiction to ‘Word Challenge’).

Random Youtube video.

Anyway, about those elusive 15 books that changed my life. I doubt I have 15, because I like to think that my life has been a well deliberated one and takes maybe 4-5 slow gradual turns around corners rather than 15 (fifteen) sudden life-changing shortcuts through dark alleys with leaky water pipes. Now, that is a shabby excuse.

1. The Faraway Tree Stories – Enid Blyton

My favourite Blyton series. I was a fan of the Famous Five and Malory Towers books too, but nothing tops the magic of the Faraway Tree. Gosh, I really feel like rereading the books now. Once while visiting a friend in her super suburb place in Brisbane (zone 4 and beyond!), we took a walk with her dog in the woods behind her house and I had several ‘it-is-this-tree!’ moments. Sadly, those were just ordinary trees and I doubt any land, good or bad, had ever stopped atop them. And yes, the woods was really in her backyard. Or five amazingly short minutes away. It was certainly an eye-opener for this HDB dweller.

Fansite!

2. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

I think I might have a more optimistic and less cynical outlook in life, if I have never read that book. Damn glad I did though.

3. Nine Stories – JD Salinger

A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Beat that.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Read this once when I was way too young to understand it. Read it again early last year, and it was brilliant. For a very long time, I was not reading any novels / books at all, instead favouring short stories and magazines; not that there was anything wrong with that, but I had missed those days where I could immerse myself in a book for days and days on end and inhabit its world completely. This book reassured that I could still do so, if I so wished to.

5. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / Short Cuts – Raymond Carver

Read ‘Are These Actual Miles?’ during a short story writing class in university, and that started my Carver reading spree. His stories, bleak as they come, for some reason always fill me with a certain optimism. Maybe it was through his stories that I realised that it was possible for people to behave without histrionics. And well, that evolution has got to trickle down eventually to the actual human race.

6. Goodbye Tsugumi / Kitchen – Banana Yoshimoto
 

7. A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

Hmm, just in case it hasn’t been obvious, I quite adore the author. I probably need a little more time to fully digest and reread some of his works so that my assessment of how I feel towards his books will be more accurate. For now, only this is on the list because it was my first Murakami book and a great introduction to the myriad worlds of ambitious sheep, vanishing elephants and talking cats.

8. Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers

This is a collection of writings by erm, Japanese photographers (just in case you missed the title). This is on the list because it provided me with invaluable insights on the work and thought processes of these photographers, and elucidated that writing and words can play an integral part in understanding and creating photographic works, which was something I had always known but had never believed.

8 for now. Sleepy and distracted.