Saturday, May 21: Mississippi Mud
BOOKLIST
by John M. Floyd
A mystery-writer friend asked me a tough question last week. It wasn’t about style or marketing or any of the other things this lady and I usually discuss; this was about my preferences as a reader. She asked me if I could name my all-time favorite novels. (Why doesn’t anybody ever ask about one’s favorite short stories?)
This reminded me of a question I got at a book signing two Saturdays ago: a customer who was considering buying one of my three books asked me which one is my favorite. I told him, very honestly, that that’s like asking me which of my children I love the most. And this later question about novels I’ve read made me feel the same way. How can you single one out?
I told my friend this, and she said, “Make it six, then. Half a dozen novels that you think you liked more than any others.”
I wasn’t sure that would be any easier. She can be a difficult woman, this friend. “What genres? Are we talking mysteries, here?”
“Any genres,” she said. “And quit stalling.”
So I named six novels. Here they are:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Stand, Stephen King
The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
Jaws, Peter Benchley
Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
And I’ll tell you the same thing I told her: these aren’t necessarily the six best novels I’ve ever read. They’re just the six I think I remember enjoying the most. They’re books that I absolutely loved while reading them, books that stayed constantly on my mind every time I had to put them down to do something else.
Which brings up another question. What made me like them so much? What is it about these that so captivated me, and stayed with me long after I finished them?
The answer to that goes back to things we talk about a lot, at this blog: plot, characterization, style, POV, theme, setting, etc. Here are a few specifics that come to mind:
All six of these novels contained characters I’ll never forget. Some of their names (Gus McCrae, Atticus Finch, Martin Brody, Hannibal Lecter) are probably more widely known than their creators’.
At least half of these books included a stunning surprise at or near the end. I love that, in either a short story or a novel.
Two of them (The Stand and Lonesome Dove) are sprawling sagas that cover a lot of time and a lot of geography. Because of their flow and structure, though, those two three-inch-thick books read as if they were much smaller and shorter. I was never bored, and never once lost the desire to find out what will happen to these people?
All were written well. This probably goes without saying, but I liked the writing style of these six authors a lot — or at least the style they used for these particular books. (I can recall too many novels that had great plots and characters but were tedious to read.)
At least four of these books generated suspense throughout the story, and at the end of two of them (Eye of the Needle and The Silence of the Lambs) it was the “sweaty-palms, edge-of-the-seat” variety — two of the best endings I can remember. And all six of course served up conflict on many different levels.
I surprised myself a bit, in that my choices turned out to cover so many different genres. Several of them (Jaws, Lambs, Needle) could be categorized as thrillers, and several as crime fiction as well. One of the six had supernatural elements, one was a western, one was a spy novel, and at least two are considered literary classics. I suppose the only one that contained an actual mystery (a subplot to the main “trial” storyline) was Mockingbird.
Another note: all six of these novels were adapted for the screen, and all except one (The Stand) resulted in an excellent movie. That’s an amazing fact in itself.
Not that it matters, but these six writers were born in places as varied as their subjects: Alabama, Maine, Mississippi, New York, Wales, and Texas.
What are your all-time favorite novels?
And yes, I know it’s a difficult question. How about your favorite short stories . . . ?
Hi John. I agree fully with Mockingbird. I read that in high school, and only once, and it’s been in my head ever since. Every time I write about kids, I am back in that book.
Here are mine. These change as time goes by, but the following six are proven Old Reliables over several decades:
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
I was surprised that there were three mysteries (if you include The Caves of Steel). I would have expected it to be heavily weighted in favor of science fiction, which was the biggest part of my literary diet for many years, but it wasn’t.
Boy, this is a tough one, there are so many! I don’t know whether these are my “all-time favorites,” but they rank pretty high up there. In no particular order:
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The Shining by Stephen King
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
You’re right, JLW, about the way “favorites” lists change with time. By the way, both Rebecca and The Long Goodbye came to mind, when I was considering choices.
The beautiful thing about this is realizing that tomorrow I could read a novel that I like even more than the ones I’ve come up with so far.
My most favorite short story (there are many favorites!)is “The Soldier” that I read in a Jim Henson Presents collection edited by Anthony Minghella. My favorite books include 1) Catcher in the Rye by Salinger, 2)The Stand by King, 3)Gone With the Wind by Mitchell and 4) I, The Jury by Spillane. It’s not that I don’t have other favorites,but these are the ones I’ve read over and over again just because they are so well written and I fell in love with the characters.
Deborah, I’m glad to hear that one of my compadres is also a fan of The Stand. I swear I loved that book–when I finished it (and the revised version is is almost 1200 pages) I still wished it would go on and on. And I’m impressed that you and JLW and Josh included several classics in your lists.
Stephen, I only wish that Harper Lee had written more than one novel . . .
Fun challenge.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle
Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
Eight MillionWays to Die by Lawrence Block
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Two mysteries, twho sf.fantasy, two mainstream. Not by plan, that’s just how they came out.
What startled me was a book that popped intomy head imediately and ALMOST made the list: Good Morning Miss Dove by Frances Gray Patton. A sentimental story about a small town schoolteacher. Arguably nostalgic treacle, but it is brilliantly told in a series of flashbacks and memories, with a collection of believable characters. Inevitably readers end up saying things like “MY MIss Dove was a drama teacher” or “MY Miss Dove sixth grade math.”
Ah well.
Well, now you’ve gone and done it, John! Your challege has been tormenting me and I can’t leave it alone, so here’s my pick: Madeleine’s Ghost by Robert Ghiradi, The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, The Indian Bride by Karin Fossum, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Conner, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
My apologies if I misspelled any of the authors’ names but I didn’t have their books close at hand. I also couldn’t bring myself to cut it off quite at six, but I did ax a few during the process, though it cost me.
Now for the short stories(you did ask): Gabriel-Earnest by H.H. Munro, The Cask of Amontillado by E.A. Poe, Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier (though its sometimes called a novella), The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, The Yellow Wall Paper by Chalotte Perkins Gilman, and A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Conner.
This was a very hard exercise, and like everyone else, I suspect, I could’ve added many more.
As they came to mind:
The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Of The Locust by Nathaniel West
Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
And I have to add Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe. Read when I was teenager and it has stayed with me.
That is supposed to be The Day of The Locust.
Rob and David — Many thanks for those lists, because both of you have reminded me of titles I’d like to go back and re-read. (I knew that would happen.) Block and Westlake are two authors I probably should’ve included in mine — I’m crazy about both — and I’ve always been a huge fan of Flannery O’Connor.
No Country for Old Men — boy did I love that book. And I can always count on you, Melodie, to mention one that was as good in movie form as it was as a novel.
Oh, fun! Off the cuff:
Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson
The Magic Mountain — Thomas Mann
The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett
Death on the Nile — Agatha Christie
The Postman Always Rings Twice — James M. Cain
Sleeping Beauty — Ross MacDonald
Hamilton, any list with Cain, Christie, MacDonald, and Hammett on it is a good one.
For novels I’d pick “A Christmas Carol” by dickens which wonderfully scared me back in 1966, “Twain’s “Conneticut Yankee” if only for the opening scene before the stranger tells his story, and “Around The World With Auntie Mame” by Patrick Dennis, the funniest book I ever read!
Good for you, Jeff. I was a bit surprised that none of the lists so far had included anything by Dickens. I’ve always enjoyed his books, and over the years they’ve probably influenced my writing as much or more than those by more recent authors.