Apparently I’m a book skank. I loved so many books in 2006 I cannot bring myself to choose a favorite. The sad thing is, I could have loved so many more, had I made the time. So, in lieu of flogging one true love, we’re going to hold a “So Many Books” award ceremony for my most beloved nightstand darlings.
These books may or may not have been published in 2006, my self-centered parameters are that I purchased the book in 2006 — I’m too lazy to flip open the covers and check. These choices are from from those residing in my bedroom or office – there will undoubtedly be some smooth-talking pretty boy downstairs of whom I’ll need to beg forgiveness later.
The So Many Books nominees are:
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst , I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows by Nora Raleigh Baskin (YA), The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Dear Zoe by Philip Beard, and Twins by Marcy Dermansky.
Because this is but a teensy blog post, and speeches tend to run long, we’ll have just one category:
Favorite line plucked from page 83 of a book Tish adored in 2006.
Walls wrote, “‘My daddy is nothing like your daddy!’ I shouted. ‘When my daddy passes out, he never pisses himself!'”
Kilmer-Purcell wrote, “Still in my wig and makeup, I put on his thick white bathrobe and stroll around the apartment, looking out over the sparkling skyline pretending I am anyone from a scorned Ivana Trump to a menopausal Leona Helmsley yelling obscenities at my imaginary domestics.”
Dermansky wrote, “‘I can’t believe you would do that. That you would back out like this after I threw up for you.'”
Sittenfeld wrote, “I imagined they’d let me get a triple with them, which would be better than a single, but not by much. Just as rooming with Aspeth would secure Dede’s status as a bona fide popular person, rooming with Sin-Jun and Clara would signify, if only to me, that I really was one of the mild, boring, peripheral girls.”
Hollinghurst wrote, “Nick could only stop giggling by glaring at the floor, and as soon as he looked up he was giggling again convulsively, it was like hiccups, it was hiccups, all mixed together with the whooping, inexplicable funniness of the brandy bottle, the Renoir lady, the gilded plaster crown above the bed, all of them with their ideas and bow ties and plans and objections.”
Beard wrote, “Getting up early to take me to school was something new for him and you might think he’d find something productive to do with those extra morning hours, but when I asked him once what he did after he dropped me off, he said he crawled into the back of the truck and took a nap and then went to Starbucks.”
Raleigh Baskin wrote, “Taylor must have heard my smile, because then she tried even harder.”
Gruen wrote, “I sit on the horse blanket, bone-weary but not yet tired enough to lie down and suffer the indignities of vermin and mildew.”
Weigh in with your favorite and why, and we’ll announce the winner this evening…
What a great idea! Okay, out of your list, hmmmm, I’m going to narrow it down to books I haven’t read yet so that I’m concentrating only on the line itself, not the line in context with the story…ummmm, okay, MY favorite is:
Walls wrote, “‘My daddy is nothing like your daddy!’ I shouted. ‘When my daddy passes out, he never pisses himself!’”
Fabulous!
Love your list, Tish. The Glass Castle is one of my all time favorites, though. She did such a beautiful job with that memoir.
Have a great week!
How clever, Tish; I love this post. As for my vote, it goes to Sittenfeld. Although I didn’t read PREP (still on my to-read-pile), I did read THE MAN OF MY DREAMS and was enchanted and mesmerized by her thought process as well as her words.
I think I love Hollinghurst’s line. That’s pretty good.
I’m terribly torn between two:
“‘My daddy is nothing like your daddy!’ I shouted. ‘When my daddy passes out, he never pisses himself!’”
and
“‘I can’t believe you would do that. That you would back out like this after I threw up for you.’”
Those are lines I wish I’d written! LOL…
Ooh, it’s hard. I really, really liked Twins, and that is a great line. But as a stand alone line, I think I’ve got to go with Kilmer-Purcell. I can just see it!
All good stuff, Tish, and Prep is one of my very favorites, but Sara Gruen’s line about the horse blanket just about scratched my cheek. I could feel the vermin crawling along my jaw and I squirmed.
I really liked PREP, and Josh’s book as well. I really want to read Sara’s book, as well as TWINS. Gosh, doesn’t help much, does it?
I really like your idea of picking your favorite lines… and I have to admit, there are several books I want to read just based on those lines!
I waited through the night to give west coasters (or islanders – hi Mia!) a chance to vote. That’s a total lie – I went to bed early because my kids had 5am ski trips today. Of course I wound up unable to sleep because of the 5am pressure. So, you know, that stinks.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but I’m going to vote for Josh Kilmer-Purcell. The imagined domestics got to me. Which means Jeannette Walls’s continent daddy wins, with Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s menopausal Helmsley a close second. Dermansky’s vomit is in third.
Oh, I loved The Glass Castle and Prep, too. The Glass Castle was un put down-able and so courageous of her to write, considering she has this glamorous, fabulous persona to keep up. And Prep helped me so much when I was writing Party Girl…just reading a writer with a strong sense of her protagonist’s voice was so inspiring. Although I have to admit that I couldn’t get through her follow-up, The Man of My Dreams (sorry, Larramie).
Too late to vote, but here in time to say that these would be enough to make me read every book on the list. Amazing how effective a snippet can be–if it’s well chosen.