I was tagged by Paula (thank you!) for the “three book meme”. I must preface my response by saying that although I was an English Lit major, and the better part of my life, before and after, was spent devouring fiction, poetry, autobiographies and journals, that was before I was given an insatiable thirst for spiritual writers. There has been very little of other reading since, time being the consummate escape-artist that it is. But I’ll give it a try, so you can get a taste of the “early years”…

As everyone who has done this meme has stated, it is next to impossible to narrow things down to this degree, but here it goes:

3 non-fiction:

No specific titles, but I tend towards:

  • alternative/natural medicine
  • holistic living
  • “how to” books on time-management for working moms (nothing which ever seems to gel, she said, as she tripped over the laundry basket)

3 fiction: (they touched my teenaged-heart irreversibly)

  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
  • The Return of the Native (Thomas Hardy)
  • Such Is My Beloved (Morley Callaghan)

3 authors: (passionately used to read anything I could get my hands on)

  • A.J. Cronin
  • Lillian Hellman
  • Margaret Laurence

3 books that no one should read:

  • I don’t think I could ever tell any mentally-stable adult not to read something.  God works in mysterious ways.

Well, I forgot to mention my years devoted to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.  And no one (?) has mentioned the playwrights.  I was desperately in love with Eugene O’Neill.  Has there ever been anything better than, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, I ask you?  Oh, and Arthur Miller.  Have we mentioned any poets?  William Carlos Williams.  Sigh.  Walt Whitman.  Big sigh.  I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t at least mention Stephen Leacock, W.O. Mitchell, Margaret Drabble, Willa Cather, the Bronté sisters, oh, oh, and Misters Eliot and Pound, Daphne du Maurier, oh, this has taken on a life of its own….help me, help me, it’s a meme twilight zone, help…me…

If they haven’t already been tagged, I’d like to pass this on to Judith, Aeternus and Ann. May they not slip into the twilight zone.