352.

[straightforwardly]

I have a request for anyone who sees this on their reading page! Could you please give me a list of five books that you, personally, gave five stars to?

Doesn’t have to be Top Favorite Of All Time (and tbh it might even be more fun if they weren’t, necessarily!), just five books that you liked enough to rate five out of five stars. Any genre is fine, as is nonfiction or other formats like poetry collections and plays!

You also don't have to tell me why you picked those books if you don't want to; just the list is enough. (But if you do want to tell me, then of course feel free to do that as well! I'm open for everything.)

(Context: there’s a reading challenge I do every April—the spring semester of the Orilium Magical Readathon—and this year, one of the prompts I need to fulfill is “ask a friend for a list of five 5 star reads; pick one & read it”, but asking my irl friends would run the risk of me getting lists filled with daddy doms or inspirational nonfiction, neither of which is precisely in my wheelhouse, so I’ve decided to turn to fannish circles instead. Though I've now also become curious & excited to see what books people will name even outside of the context of my needing to pick one to read! <3 It's a fun question, I think.)

Comments

[yuuago]

HMMM.

Olav H. Hauge - The Dream We Carry, translated by Bly/Hedin. One of my top favourite poets, I love his work. This translation is (from what I have been told) not actually the best but it was the first one I encountered, so it's the one I reach for most often.

Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities. I thought it started off kind of slow but the ending made me go WHOA.

Jan Zwicky - Thirty-seven small songs and thirteen silences. Just very good Canadian poetry.

Tim Wynne-Jones - The Maestro. I read this in high school (it was required reading) and it made such an impression on me that I kept thinking about it occasionally and eventually bought it a decade later so I could re-read it whenever I wanted.

Stephen King - Firestarter. Something about this kind of story scratches my brain on a really base level.

[straightforwardly]

Ahhh, I'm so glad to see poetry show up on someone's list! <3 I did think that if someone was going to mention a poetry collection, it might be you. The store I usually order my English-language books from doesn't seem to list Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences on their site, but it does have The Dream We Carry (trans. Bly/Hedin) on backorder, and I'm intrigued by the summary. Between the way it describes his writing, your recommendation, and reading this snippet/poem that was shared in the summary:

The rose has been sung about.
I want to sing of the thorns,
and the root--how it grips
the rock hard, hard
as a thin girl's hand.

—I'm finding myself quite tempted to order myself a copy!

[yuuago]

Whoops, forgot Zwicky's work was published by a Canadian small press. Yeah, no surprise it would be unavailable.

Re: Hauge, I like that poem you mentioned too!! Definitely worth a look if poetry if your thing and if if you like that one in particular; I would say it is a good example of what's in the rest of the collection. Might be possible to ILL this volume depending on what your library network is like.

While I am here I will also suggest:
Tomas Tranströmer - The Half-Finished Heaven (Bly's translation)
Appeals to me in a similar way to Hauge, in that his work tends to have great images and is usually on the short side.

[straightforwardly]

and if if you like that one in particular; I would say it is a good example of what's in the rest of the collection that is very useful to know; thank you! I also appreciate the additional rec <3 I love poetry, but it's been a while since I last was able to really sink into a good collection of it, and both of these seem promising!