From henceforth, for now, I'm going to step back to being a Monday-Wednesday-Friday blogger. Despite all the things I'd like to try on Tuesdays, I have a bigger need to finish revising some novels. But today you get one more list, though I'm not going to mess with numbers.
For my last Top Ten Tuesday, then, it seemed appropriate to pick my favorite story endings.
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It's hard to say why they're my favorites without giving spoilers, so pardon the vagueness. They range from the tender to the sublime, from bittersweet at best to shamelessly happy, and from the simply written to high poetry and prose. But all of them did for me what Tolkien famously believed to be a key function of the fairy tale—and I believe the same just as ardently, though not as famously—they gave me "a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." I will forgive a book a multitude of wrongs if it pulls that off.
The list, then:
Dante's Paradiso
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Persuasion
Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse
Stephenie Meyer's The Host
L.M. Montgomery's Anne of the Island, Rilla of Ingleside, The Blue Castle, and Mistress Pat
Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead and Ender's Shadow
George MacDonald's Lilith
Shannon Hale's Princess Academy
C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy and That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces
John Green's Looking for Alaska
Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess
Charles Dickens' The Christmas Carol
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus
John Grisham's The Testament
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost
Catherine Marshall's Christy
Kate Dicamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie
So many beautiful last pages. The memories keep putting massive lumps in my throat.
What are your favorite story endings?
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. Although technically it's the end of The Lord of the Rings.
ReplyDeleteChronicles of Narnia--all of them, but particularly the end end, i.e. The Last Battle.
And of course Till We Have Faces. Mmmmmm, C.S. Lewis.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.
The Revelation to St. John Ch 22: 20-21
I really wanted to include the end of LotR, but I just don't quite get it. I suck.
DeleteYeah, the ends to all the Narnia books are good. I picked my favorite. But The Last Battle probably did deserve special mention. :)
you don't suck, you're just honest.. I think a lot of LotR fans don't get it, but it looks bad to say that, so the read wikipedia and watch Peter Jackson instead :p I prefer your way :)
DeleteI LOVE the ending of The Fall, by Albert Camus. And Pride and Prejudice Never gets old..neither does War and Peace..if you skip and the philosophizing at the end.
A Horse and His Boy is the best!! I love that ending..Ooh, and the end of Marquez's Memories of my Melancholy Whores! So lovely!!!
I'll miss you Always blogging..but I bet it'll be nice for you! Enjoy Tuesdays of peace and quiet and whatnot!
I, of course, wasn't trying to make any sort of statement about you, Jenna. I just happen to like the end of LOTR.
DeleteHAHA. Watching Peter Jackson to get details on the story could really backfire. Dangerous stuff. ;P
DeleteI'm looking forward to War and Peace! Do remind me to read it in the fall, because I am not going to have time before then unless I break both legs or something.
So... a book called Memories of My Melancholy Whores has a lovely ending? Now I'm almost tempted to read it out of sheer curiosity. ;)
George, I didn't think you were making a statement about me! I made a statement about myself. :P The ending to LotR is so objectively beautiful that I don't blame you at all for loving it. I just wish I liked it as much as it deserves.
DeleteAh, January 25, 2011 for your first Top Tuesday post! I remember it like it was January 25, 2011. I even posted on it that same day! I'm feeling practically giddy. :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's perhaps wise to step away from doing it. It seemed like you were stretching more & more to find something on Tuesdays that didn't seem repetitive.
I suppose I can live with fewer blog posts as long as the quality is good. And there are plenty of cat pictures. ;)
On a related note, even though you are no longer doing your own Top Ten Tuesday posts, are you still following them on other blogs? And if so, which do you think some of us might also like? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteGeorge, I follow a few other blogs that do TTT. Off the top of my head, Pages Unbound and The Bookwyrm's Hoard do it regularly, and write a lot of good reviews besides. :) If I think of any others, I'll add them here.
DeleteThanks, Jenna. I'll add them to Feedly.
ReplyDelete