BTT: FLAVOR

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

When I enjoy a book, I really enjoy a book it has taken me somewhere. I have hopped on a plane weather the place be real of fictional and have "really been" there throughout the reading process of the entire book. If a book fails to deliver, it has failed to make me believe that I have really "been" anywhere but my own imagination.

The places I most like to be are different from my own, I would love to travel, constantly in real life and visit people and places. But since my husband has a job, and we have two little boys (2 and 4) I travel in my books. However for me, my literary traveling goes much deeper than just being somewhere else...I feel that when I go there I am learning about what the culture eats, some of their special customs, some of the things that are struggles for that country, and what unites me with them. People are the same everywhere in the world, and yet very different as well...depending on what they have gone through (war, famine, complacency, overeating....) but, there is a common human bond, a thread of life by which I feel tied to all the peoples of the world.

Having said that, there are peoples lives that I am not interested in. I find them generaly in classiscs, as most classics are writen about afluent wealthy people who live big and hurt even bigger. I know not all classics fit into this category and there are books that are not classics that would (so don't freak!). The ones I am talking about are where there is a wealthy american/european couple/family/individual and they trample everything around them, their servants, eachother's lives, pretty much any part of the world that they come into contact with and then in the end realize: "there was no point in that". AHHHHH! It drives me crazy. I guess mainly books like Portrait of a Lady and Anna Karenina, and that is where I have stopped counting. I know many of you don't feel this way about the classics...and since I am about to begin my reading for the Classics Challenge I should not be feeling this way either. So do you know of any classics that I could read for the Classics Challenge that wouldn't fit into the conquer and devour section of my library? I have read classics such as To Kill A Mockingbird, and Uncle Tom's Cabin and LOVE them...are there any more like that that you could recommend?? And what about you, what books really take you somewhere that you love and want to go?

HAPPY BTT everyone!