Hi xara,
I've been mulling over your question for the past few days. I think each person has a different view of what constitutes the most important literary pieces. What was written by Plato, or, (sorry folks), most of Shakespeare does not touch me, and consequently, I do not consider their work to be among the most important, to me. Do you want to read to please others or to please yourself? You can do both I am sure, but there is an expression that says ‘to thy own self be true’. The most important literary pieces are the ones that you love best.
That said, here are a few that I love best. Maybe you will too.
Who Has Seen the Wind – W.O. Mitchell
A portrait of life on the Canadian prairies during the early 20th century as seen through the eyes of one young boy. It captures something significant about the prairie psyche and the Canadian psyche as a whole.
Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You don’t have to grow old just because you grow up.
The Complete – Illustrated – Lewis Carroll
Wordworth Editions ISBN 1-85326-897-6
a) because it contains two of my favorite books; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, in their original formats (NOT Disneyfied)
b) because it has the rest of his writings
Carroll IS a wordmaster.
The Egg and I – Betty MacDonald
A terrific piece of Americana. Ma and Pa Kettle are created in this book. MacDonald describes her life with her new husband on a chicken farm in the Olympic Mountains of upper Washington State in northwest U.S.A. It is a brilliant piece of writing, touching in places and hilarious in other. A thought provoking picture of a woman’s life in the early 1900`s. Try to find an old version of this book.
Was It Heaven? Or Hell? – Mark Twain
I had the extreme good luck of finding a 1928 edition of The Complete Short Stories and Famous Essays of Mark Twain – P.F. Collier & Son Corporation, publisher. Like most people I was only aware of his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn stories – which do not do justice to this man’s body of work. Twain is a curmudgeon, a humorist, an editorialist an essayist. He writes prose and verse. He is the mirror in which humans get a glimpse of themselves as they really are.
The specific story above is one of my favorites. I won’t tell you what it is about since it is quite short and I will give it away if I do. Find it, read it and have a hanky ready just in case.
What the body remembers – Shauna Singh Baldwin
The introduction says it best..."deeply imbued with the languages, customs and layered history of colonial India, What the Body Remembers is an absolute triumph of storytelling. Never before has a novel of love and partition been told from the point of view of the Sikh minority, never before through Sikh women’s eyes. This is a novel to read, treasure and admire that, like its two compelling heroines, resists all efforts to put aside.
