‘Pin Picks: The Fifth Estate
Today’s lucky reader, Amy, has an excellent little array of favorite books for us to point our divining rod toward (that’s not really how divining rods work, to be fair). We also wish to offer her our gratitude for having recommended Wise Child and Juniper by Monica Furlong for the Hairpin Baby’s already bloated-and-ridiculous library of wonders. Thank you, Amy! Now, to the books; the glorious, glorious books.
1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald — Okay! Cool. Nooooot everyone likes Gatsby, but I absolutely do, DESPITE being primarily a This Side of Paradise person, and then a Diamond as Big as the Ritz person, and THEN a Gatsby person, and in absolutely no way a Tender Is the Night person. Great title, unbearable book. Ugh. I can’t even talk about how much I wanted all of those characters to die in some sort of poetic aviation disaster. But, okay, people who like Gatsby are drawn to signs and symbols and loss and creating narratives for ourselves that may or may not be true. Otherwise, right, we’d be talking about The Magnificent Ambersons, which is also a fine read.
2. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin — So many feelings about Ursula K. Le Guin! And about Earthsea, because this, the first book of the Earthsea cycle, is such a game-changer. Can we mention that Le Guin’s heroes and heroines are often brown or black-skinned, and she’s had innumerable fights with movie producers over it? Like, “no, sorry, Ged’s black, what do you want me to do? This isn’t Narnia, motherfucker.” Okay, whew, got carried away. But, WHAT did I say about signs and symbols and myth? And now we can add … epic. Epics. I’ve got it. I don’t even care about your third book.
3. The Adam Dalgliesh series, P. D. James — NOW you’re just sucking up. Do you have any idea how much I love these books? Not even just as books, but as an experience. Tea, biscuits, the darkness inside the human heart! Hm. Not just the darkness inside the human heart, though, but the way the darkest moment of your life bleeds forward into the present against your will. Yep, we’ve got a winner here.
I’m going with The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Some of you may not like it. That’s fine for you. Look at you, living your own lives, free from the shackles of my will.
But this book is the best. It’s so good, I’m using it for my next Classic Trash pick at the Awl. It’s not really that trashy, but there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of weird sex? The kind you have in tents on rugs made from skinned animals with a guy who might be your brother, or might be a manifestation of the Horned God, and then afterwards you would plunge into an icy river and step out looking amazing and also have magic powers.
How do you not want that for yourself? Look, it’s essentially Camelot mixed with Willow on Buffy mixed with Game of Thrones mixed with that annoying Celtic music they played on Battlestar Galactica whenever Adama and Apollo were having a Serious Emotional Moment.
Did I mention it’s the longest book ever written? It absolutely is. I think I may still be reading it. Perhaps it’s a charm. Can you even hear me? Am I trapped in a Marion Zimmer Bradley universe? Will my child ever be King?