Hello and welcome back to Desert Island Books on the blog. It is my absolute pleasure to have Tara Lynn Masih joining us this month.
I have been a fan of Tara's ever since I read her novel, My Real Name is Hanna, a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, and you can read my review by clicking here. It is set in Ukraine during WWII and our hearts go out to the Ukrainian people for the current situation that they are in.
Tara also featured as a guest on the blog when she talked about what led her to write about Hanna and you can read her post by clicking here.
Tara has a novella and story selection due to be published in September, How We Disappear, and I can hardly wait to read it.
Without any further ado, let us hear about Tara's Desert Island Book choices.
Tara, how do you think you would cope on a desert island?
That’s a good question. One of my favourite American TV shows growing up was Gilligan’s Island. I used to fantasise about being stranded on the island with the professor. Then my second marriage was to a Gilligan. When we travel all over the world, everyone knows his name through that show. Does that make me a better candidate for being stranded? I don’t know. But we own a copy of Mary Ann’s Gilligan’s Island Cookbook! Besides this book, here are eight special books that I’d want with me for company, inspiration, laughter, and comfort.
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope
This was a favourite book as a preteen and into young adulthood. It even became a tradition that if I was alone on New Year’s Eve, I’d read it through the night to herald in the New Year. It mixed everything I love: fairy tales, magic, history (set in 1558), druids, castles, England, queens, and it was a love story I could relate to. What is especially effective and why it’s perfect for desert island reading is that the heroine travels through underground caves to comfort a prisoner. Pope captures the feeling of claustrophobia so well, understands legends and lore and young girls who always feel less than worthy. Haven’t read this Newbery Honor Book in years and would love to have the time to do so again. But I still have this original edition on my shelves and hope to gift it to a granddaughter!
East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Noel Daniel & Kay Nielsen
I have an early edition of this (it was my mother’s). Not only did I enjoy the Norwegian fairy tales, I loved the illustrations by Kay Nielsen and would stare at them for hours. Good material to have when stranded and have no art to look at. The colour plates are magnificent. And the tales tell us much about human behaviour.
Palm of the Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
I’m a lover of very short fiction and Yasunari Kawabata’s collection is masterful. I go back to his exquisite brief stories again and again. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1968, Kawabata preferred his stories to his novels.
The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
I bought this book when I had very little money. I used to browse the bookstores as free entertainment. But when I opened this one and started reading the title story, “The Shell Collector,” I had to buy it. We now know Anthony Doerr through his Pulitzer-Prizewinning novel All the Light We Cannot See, but go back to this early work to see his true genius in creating layered, beautiful worlds and complex characters.
The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall
Another “collector” book, this one by Tina May Hall is a highly original hybrid novel that crosses many boundaries; gothic, historical, contemporary, mystery, suspense, scientific, borderline dystopian. It was spellbinding and beautifully written. I love Hall’s prose. I could not wait to get back in bed at night to continue reading! And who would not want to read a book all about snow, set in an unknown Northeast town during a snowstorm that doesn’t stop, on a hot island?
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
One of the best nonfiction memoirs I’ve ever read. When the author becomes bedridden by an unexplained illness, she becomes emotionally attached to a snail that lives in a bedside terrarium. It would inspire me to look more carefully at the beauty in nature surrounding me, and to appreciate the island’s tiniest forms of life.
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker
When I look back at the dozens of novels I’ve read over the past few years, Prairie Fever is for me one of the most memorable and one that I want to reread again soon. I’d have time on that island to dive back in. Like Hall’s book, it begins in a snowstorm. Parker writes in luminous, original prose and gifts his readers with Elise, one of the most complex and endearing characters I’ve read in a long time. This book is about words, how they affect us, what they mean or don't mean, the power they have over us, the control we do or don't have over them. It's about the universal drive to feel less alone. It’s a historical novel of the highest calibre.
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
I would have to complete the stack of eight with one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It takes a lot to make me laugh, but I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud and for a very long time, tears sometimes streaming down, while reading in bed, driving my husband crazy. I’d have to repeat what I read, but it wasn’t the same as reading about these two real men who bumble along together in the wild. The movie was pretty good, the book even better. It would make me laugh when I’m feeling down that I’m stuck on an island.
What a fantastic selection of books, and I would definitely take some of those along if I were stranded. Thank you, Tara, for sharing your choices.
If you are an author and would be interested in taking part, then please get in touch by emailing me at leftontheshelf1@gmail.com.
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