|
| As a lifelong reader, I read books for many reasons. Some provide me with intellectually compelling information or satisfy my curiosity. They may even influence how I think about the world. Others may entertain me, distract me, or even charm me. Still others bring me delight or humor. Some merely while away boredom, which sounds like a trivial thing, but when stuck for hours in a waiting room I find this a very valuable service indeed. All of these are valid reasons for me to read.
But my favorite books of all completely entrance me, enticing me into another reality. When I am caught in the rapture -- and it is a rapture -- I resent the intrusion of the physical world. I want to read uninterrupted, immersed until the book is done. When at last I close the cover on the final page, I am as sad as I am happy. I suppose it is an addiction of sorts. Finding these few, perhaps one or two or maybe three a year, is the reason I willingly I wade through a hundred or more far less satisfying books every year of my life. Often these are the novels that stand up best to re-reading, though naturally repeated readings are different in their rewards. I suspect that it is sometimes the book itself, and sometimes the reader's susceptibility that enables this to happen. There may be books that appeals to may people in this way. Others may appeal so strongly to only a few. If you are like me, what books have engaged you in this manner? Rosefolly |
Follow-Up Postings:
|
- Posted by carolyn_ky (My Page) on Thu, Sep 13, 12 at 22:14
| Old Favorites: Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier Green Darkness, Anya Seton The Nonesuch Lure, Mary Luke Hannah Fowler, Janice Holt Giles Hawaii, James Michener Winds of War & War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk Many of the Morland Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles New to me: I'll think of a dozen others as soon as I hit post. |
|
| I've given this quite a bit of thought and honestly find very few book have enraptured me or left me entranced. Perhaps I am just too fussy or an old cynic. A few books I read as a child/young person could come into that category: The Fearless Treasure by Noel Streatfeild (yes it is spelt that way) about a group of children taken back on a journey to find their 'place' in history. Redcap Runs Away by Rhoda Power. A prosaic title for a wonderful story set in medieval England about a boy who leaves his village with a band of travelling minstrels. It is full of the old songs and tales of those times and a child learns so much without being given a history lesson. The Wonderful Winter by Marchette Chute. This time a boy runs away to the London of the early theatre and meets Shakespeare's players. I think all these books are long out of print. Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce is one of the best children's books ever written IMO and I think still available. As a child when reading the above I never wanted to be disturbed and was almost upset to find myself back in the 'everyday world'. |
|
- Posted by chris_in_the_valley (My Page) on Fri, Sep 14, 12 at 17:47
| Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle enraptured me. History, the history of science, grand adventure - designed to enrapture me. YMMV. Harper's To Kill a Mockingbird which I came to late in life. Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon and, to tell the truth, her entire Darkover series. A fully realized, invented world has a special appeal to me. Perhaps that is why I love George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. JosephC, remember him?, introduced me to the series here on RP. Amazing how much I care about some of the characters and how much I hate some of the characters and how much I admire Martin for changing my mind about a couple of the characters over the course of this long series. Layers and layers of characterization. |
|
| There have been many books I've completely lost myself in, most recently Lev Grossman's The Magicians and The Magician King. I'd qualify that reading experience as "enraptured". Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of the Night pulled me in completely, too, though not to the same degree. It's not just that I can't put the book down, it's that I'm so deeply engrossed that I've become part of the book, I am in the book, to the point where it takes more than a few minutes to wrench my brain back to the here-and-now. ...the reason I willingly I wade through a hundred or more far less satisfying books every year of my life ... , yes, exactly! |
|
- Posted by chris_in_the_valley (My Page) on Sat, Sep 15, 12 at 13:36
| Add Georgette Heyer to the list. Takes me a while to readjust after I read one. I talk in Regency language and on Regency subjects for an hour or so, deploring my nevvy's behavior.... |
|
- Posted by woodnymph2 (My Page) on Sat, Sep 15, 12 at 15:18
| Here's my list, going back into decades ago: The Secret History - Donna Tartt |
|
| Chris, I agree with you about immersing oneself in the Regency world of Georgette Heyer. I spent my late teenage and early 20s life living in Brighton and had visited Bath. I was familiar with the buildings etc. When I had a young family and was living in the racket of an Australian suburb which was being built around me, I could escape it all in one of her books from my collection. |
|
- Posted by chris_in_the_valley (My Page) on Tue, Sep 18, 12 at 16:19
| Add Dorothy Gilman's Caravan to my list. For some reason that book particularly charms me. I like her Mrs. Pollifax series well enough, but Caravan is special for me. |
|
| Not a great work of art, but a novel that took all my attention when I was 14 and which has continued to intrigue me over the years is: KATHERINE - Anya Seton I just found the love-story intriguing, the background fascinating and colourful and the whole thing quite unforgettable: the love between John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Katherine de Roet, the herald's daughter, in the 14th century. Her brother-in-law was Chaucer. I have gone back to this for most of my life, but more recently I find I can't take the cliches which at first I glossed over. Nevertheless, though I might never read it again, I will always remember it. |
|
- Posted by woodnymph2 (My Page) on Wed, Sep 19, 12 at 9:14
| Another that enraptured me as a girl was John Bennett's "Master Skylark", about a young boy who wanders the England of Shakespeare's day. Has anyone else read this? |
|
| I remember reading The Portrait of a Lady while seated in a lawn chair in a field of long grass at the tail end of a beautiful late August afternoon. I had a very powerful reaction to this book. Not only can I recall the book in great detail, but I can remember myself actually reading it. When you are deeply connecting to a book, it feels almost like its writer is speaking directly to you. Time seems to stand still. It seems to happen (to me, at least) only rarely. But when it does, it is unforgettable. Some of the books which had this kind of impact on me: My Antonia by Willa Cather. |
|
- Posted by chris_in_the_valley (My Page) on Tue, Sep 25, 12 at 19:22
| Tim, your description of time standing still for a book brought to mind The Old Man and The Sea. Time stood still and I was in the zone while reading. |
|
- Posted by carolyn_ky (My Page) on Tue, Oct 2, 12 at 19:50
| I'm still reading along in Drood, interspersed with lighter fare. Today I read a passage that fits with this thread. "Yes," said the Inimitable, smiling towards Cecile Macready as if in apology for the interruption of his narration. "You know the incomparable and--I would dare say--unique feeling one has when reading. The focus of attention to the exclusion of all sensory input, other than the eyes taking in the words, one has when entering into a good book?" "Oh, rather!" cried Dickenson. "The world just fades away. All sounds and characters and world created for us by the author! One might as well be anaesthetised to the mundane world around us. All readers have had that experience." "Precisely," said Dickens . . . |
|
| I am currently enraptured with Sacre Bleu - A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore. From the intriguing deep hue of the cover to the rough cut pages to the font to the painting reproductions sprinkled through the text, this book screams BOOK! LOVE ME! When I'm not reading it, I'm looking at it. And I am reading it very slowly as I am enjoying it a great deal and I don't want it to end. |
|
- Posted by woodnymph2 (My Page) on Sun, Oct 7, 12 at 11:12
| I had the same impression of the Moore work---- magical! |
|
| I have never used the word "enraptured" but I have read books that have given me an almost physical "thud" when I realize I have read the last page. Most of them I have read more than once. ...and Ladies of the Club Santmyer |
|
- Posted by pheasantfarmer (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 18:45
| I'm new, so I hope you don't mind me joining in. I have been reading people's lists and so many are books I love too. I was enraptured by: |
|
- Posted by pheasantfarmer (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 18:45
| I'm new, so I hope you don't mind me joining in. I have been reading people's lists and so many are books I love too. I was enraptured by: |
|
| Louise Penny's books are the only recent reads which totally engage me. Another Canadian, Alan Bradley, is charming - can't wait for Flavia's next adventure. And Elizabeth Peters' series had me hooked. Good bedtime reads! |
|
| Iris, the newest Flavia book is coming out in January -- I can't wait either! Speaking From Among the Bones, link below. Welcome pheasantfarmer, we're always happy to see new posters! |
Here is a link that might be useful: Newest Flavia de Luce
|
| Here are a few that I recall really enjoying when I first read them: THE GIRL OF THE SEA OF CORTEZ by Peter Benchley SHAPE OF ILLUSION by William E. Barrett LOVE LETTERS by Madleine L'Engle WITH MALICE TOWARD SOME by Margaret Halsey GREAT MALICE by Josephine Pinckney (this was a very eerie one !) |
|
| I must add Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I completely entered that world, and if it were a real place I would have gone there. The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden enchanted me as a teenager, and I recently found a copy at a used book sale. I am happy to report I found it just as moving all these decades later. |
|
| Great topic, Rosefolly! But you haven't told us your list yet. Would you care to share it? |
|
| Siobhan, Yes, LOTR to the extent that once, when I was a teenager, I just KNEW the Nazgul were hovering above my house waiting to pounce on me as soon as I walked out the door. I was totally in that world at that time. Other books that I have been totally immersed in include Beauty, The Blue Sword, and The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley; the early Dragonrider series by Anne McCaffrey (I could close my eyes and totally visualize Benden Weyr); and The People series by Zenna Henderson, just to name a few. There are many more but these are all I can think of just now. |
|
| I know exactly what "enraptured" by a book means. It means that whatever I have cooking in the oven is going to be one black inedible mess. Or immersed in a book & coming up from under water on the bus to find that I missed my stop and should have gotten off 15 minutes ago. My latest kitchen disaster was about a month ago. I put linguine in the pot to boil for a few minutes, went downstairs and picked up a book I had been engrossed in, thinking I would have time to read a few more pages....I COMPLETELY FORGOT about the linguine until this most acrid horrid smell drifted down the stairs almost two hours later. I had to open all the doors and windows to the house and scrubbed that *&!!@#$ pot forever to try to remove this blackened sticky mess. It took over a week for the stench to dissipate. I have also learned from past experiences that if you allow eggs to boil too long, they explode like minibombs, sending shell shrapnel throughout the kitchen. I kid you not. Blame it on the books. I think the linguine disaster was due to "The Hunger Games" books as I read all three in about two days. But as I read through your lists above, I found myself nodding in agreement to many of the titles. I had totally forgotten about MZB's Darkover series - that one made me check out any guy with red hair a lot more carefully. ;) |
|
| I just lifted this quote from someone's email signature because I thought it fit in here perfectly: In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet As for my own list, it is dozens and dozens of books long. Several have been listed here by others already. Two that just crossed my mind to be added to the list are Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier, and The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. Rosefolly |
|
| Adding a few: Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje The Woman in Black - Susan Hill |
Please Note: Only registered members are able to post messages to this forum. If you are a member, please log in. If you aren't yet a member, join now!
Return to the Reader's Paradise Forum
Instructions
- You must be a registered member and logged in to post messages on our forums.
- Posting is a two-step process. Once you have composed your message, you will be taken to the preview page. You will then have a chance to review the contents and make changes.
- After posting your message, you may need to refresh the forum page in order to see it.
- It is illegal to post copyrighted material without the owner's consent.
- HTML codes are allowed in the message field only.
- No advertising is allowed in any of the forums.
- If you would like to practice posting or uploading photos, please visit our Test forum.
- If you need assistance, please Contact Us and we will be happy to help.
|
|