Thursday, November 15, 2012

Top 10 books of the forest

Sara Maitland is the author of several books including Book of Silence and Daughter of Jerusalem, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1978. Her latest book is From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairytales.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten books of the forest. One title on the list:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I was surprised at how few adult novels focus on woods and forests, but this classic novel has long been one of my favourite bedtime reads: astonishingly sexy as well as dark, painful and gloriously romantic. The night scenes in the woods are superb, catching at that forest atmosphere of beauty and peril.
Read about another book on the list.

The Scarlet Letter is among Susan Cheever's six favorite Massachusetts books, John Mullan's ten of the best reformations in literature, and Paul Auster's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue