First Real Book I Ever Read: I'm going with Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, given the impact it had on me and continues to have, despite the fact that it is classified as a children's book.
Best Loved Children’s Book: See above. Also Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series. I adored most of The Chronicles of Narnia but the end of the last one nearly destroyed the lot for me.
Best Loved Children’s Author: L'Engle.
The First Book To Change Your Life: Ready for it? One Saturday when my family was driving to an amusement park, I read Ayn Rand's Anthem on the way there and Richard Bach's Illusions on the way back. The first significantly altered the way I thought about education. The second transformed the way I thought about spirituality. To this day I can't think of a day I've spent reading that had so much of an impact.
Most Overrated Book: Milan Kundera's Immortality. Ugh.
Most Underrated Book: Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which too often gets dismissed because it's fantasy and spawned inferior sequels. It's another book that changed my life.
Another Underrated Book: Marina Warner's The Leto Bundle. Ever heard of it? Thought not. Go read it.
Best Loved Novels: Not counting those named above, these are some other favorites:
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Octavia Butler, Dawn
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Michael Chabon, Summerland
Don DeLillo, Libra
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery
Janette Turner Hospital, The Last Magician
Marie Jakober, The Black Chalice
Clysta Kinstler, The Moon Under Her Feet
Nancy Kress, Beggars In Spain
Jeanne Larsen, Silk Road
Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
Michael Malone, Handling Sin
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Jane Mendelssohn, I Was Amelia Earhart
Lawrence Norfolk, Lempriere's Dictionary
Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne In Splendour
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Theodore Roszak, Flicker
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes In Amber
Richard Zimler, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon
Best Loved Short Story collection: Janette Turner Hospital's Isobars
Best Loved Horror Authors: Unless Zimler counts, I don't read horror
Best Loved Science Fiction Authors: LeGuin, Kress, Butler
Best Loved Fantasy Authors: MZBradley, Zelazny, Diana Paxson...oh, and Tolkien I suppose!
Best Loved comic writer: The guys who do Promethea
Best Loved History Book: Carrolly Erickson's biography of Elizabeth I
Most Right Wing Book I Have Ever Read: The Closing of the American Mind
Most Left Wing Book I Have Ever Read: The Communist Manifesto
Books I am Reading Right Now: Rodger Kamenetz's Stalking Elijah, James Hetley's The Summer Country
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