Bogdana Golub Whitaker, graduating this June from the Honors Program with a double-major in English and History, discusses what she feels to be the best book ever written, and also her favorite book. Other Honors students and faculty also sent in their best and favorite books, which appear following Bogdana’s write-ups.
Best Book – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
It is a harsh thing to ask any lover of books what they consider to be the best book ever written. But there are stories that a reader cannot help but think about over and over, that they cannot help but obsess over. One story, in particular, has captured my attention. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is considered one of the greatest texts of Britain’s Middle Ages. The author might be unknown but the story captures the most important elements of the Arthurian tradition: the bond between Gawain and King Arthur, the test of honor in the deeds of the Green Knight, and most importantly the integrity behind Sir Gawain’s journey and choices along that path. The details of the story encompass gothic as well as romantic elements of the world King Arthur inhabited. What’s more, this story combines entertainment and history, permitting the possibility that Arthur and his Knights actually existed. More than ever I find that history and literature combine in uncovering the greatest truths of life. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one such story.
Favorite Book – The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)
The Bear and the Nightingale will be a book that I carry with me throughout my life. It follows a young heroine from a medieval village in Kievan Rus history. The story is based on an ancient fairy tale of a young girl forced to travel into the woods in order to retrieve a specific flower during the harshest part of winter. In reality, this task is a ruse by her stepmother, who hopes the young girl will die along the way. Whilst in the forest, weak from cold and hunger, she meets Father Frost. He asks her if she is cold but knowing that she cannot dissuade nature she merely shakes her head and thanks him for his concern. Father Frost asks two more times and receiving the same answer he sees that she is true of heart. Due to her kindness in return to nature’s own she is saved and given great blessings. This folktale is at the core of the book but the story also interweaves various other tales. Alongside the folktale elements, the entire series interweaves the true history of Kievan Rus’s battle and the eventual bond of the Orthodox Church with the Old Religion. The story is one I can reread over and over again, and will forever carry with me. The heroine’s strength, as well as imperfection, is a personal inspiration to me each day.
Best Book
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
The Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
Go Down, Moses (William Faulkner)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Ranger’s Apprentice (John Flanagan)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
Attack on Titan (Hajime Isayama)
Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Robert Kiyosaki)
Legend (Marie Lu)
Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
The Gay Science (Friedrich Nietzsche)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Stormlight Archive (Brandon Sanderson)
The Overstory (Richard Powers)
The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
Favorite Book
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
The Science of Evil (Simon Baron-Cohen)
Life Together (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)
Ender’s Game/Ender’s Shadow (Orson Scott Card)
The Maze Runner (James Dashner)
The Strongest System (Xin Feng)
Dahveed:Yahweh’s Chosen (Terri L. Fivash)
The 48 Laws of Power (Robert Greene)
Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
The Black Books (Carl Jung)
Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo)
The Giver (Lois Lowry)
The Lies of Locke Lamora (Scott Lynch)
The Host (Stephanie Meyer)
Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Rick Riordan)
Crush (Richard Siken)