Books, books, books

As I lamented in yesterday’s post, I love to read and I don’t get to do it enough lately. If I had to choose between giving up reading or giving up my kids, well, I’d sure miss my kids. I found this quiz on someone else’s blog and just had to answer it. Sorry it goes on and on and on and on…

1. A book that changed your life.

Well, there hasn’t been just one, so in chronological order: Nancy Drew and the Sign of the Twisted Candlesticks: this was the first “chapter book” I ever read (thanks to Gran Valoris for giving it to me for Christmas, 1979!) and reading it made me feel so grown up and smart. Ditto The Count of Monte Cristo, which was the first “classic” book I read (in the fifth grade.) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier just amazed me. Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy (which actually has four books – The Crystal Caves, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day) started my fascination with all things Arthurian, while Beryl Bainbridge’s The Birthday Boys sparked my interest in South Polar exploration. And The Sound and the Fury is the book that convinced me that I’ll never be a novelist (because if I can’t write that well, then what’s the point?).

2. A book you've read more than once.

I am a great re-reader and always have been. When I was 10 or 11, I must’ve read The Outsiders and The Westing Game forty times each. At least. I re-read less often now, but when I’m in the mood for an old favorite I usually pick up Anna’s Book by Barbara Vine or Talking it Over by Julian Barnes. The Solace of Leaving Early, by Haven Kimmel, is a book that I started re-reading the minute I finished it because I loved it so much.

3. A book you'd want on a desert island.

The Once and Future King by T.H.White. It’s a huge book, so it would keep me occupied for a long time; it’s funny, which is something you’d want on a desert island; it’s beautifully written so I don’t think I’d get tired of it if I had to read it over and over and over again.

4. A book that made you giddy.

I remember grinning like an idiot at the end of Catch-22. “Yossarian jumped.” Whether I understood the book as a whole or not is up for debate (I was, I think, in 10^th grade), but that was some kind of perfect ending.

5. A book that you wish would be written.

What I want is a book that reveals age-old secrets and mysteries. What really happened to the Lindbergh baby? Did Jeffrey MacDonald (the Fatal Vision guy) really kill his family? What about OJ? I guess those aren’t so much age-old secrets, but you see what I’m getting at. A perfect book in this vein is The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, in which it is revealed that Anastasia did, in fact, die with the rest of the Royal Family, and the imposter who claimed to be her for fifty years was just that, an imposter. (And interestingly, the final proof of this – a lock of the imposter’s hair which provided a DNA sample – was found in an envelope in a box of books in a secondhand bookstore I used to frequent when I lived in Chapel Hill. Well, that was interesting to me at least.)

6. A book that wracked you with sobs.
Where the Red Fern Grows. And, hm, I don’t remember a recent book that’s made me cry (other than Dog Heaven). I think I got teary at the end of Atonement by Ian McEwan – so, so sad. But “wracked with sobs,” no.

7. A book you wish had never been written.
Well, I don’t want to wish any book out of existence. There are many books I wish I hadn’t had to read, including…well, here’s the thing. When I was, I don’t know, probably 6 or 7, we went on a family vacation to Ruidoso, NM. We stayed in my grandparent’s condo and for some reason there was a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lying around and one morning, because we had complained of being bored, my dad started to read it to me and Jana. (Okay, it’s possible that it was in fact The Adventures of Tom Sawyer instead, I don’t know.) Daddy read the section in which Tom and Huck were hiding somewhere, and they had to be very still and quiet so as not to be discovered, but they started to itch all over and it was tortuous to them that they couldn’t scratch. Dad was reading in a very animated way but Jana and I just didn’t get it and I’m sure he called us both knuckleheads for not appreciating this classic bit of humor. But ever since then, whenever I’m reading a book I absolutely hate, I think about that passage…because when I'm reading a book I loathe, I feel like my brain itches all over, and I feel mentally squirmy and sometimes I even get enraged at the awfulness of the book (yeah, I should calm down). Books that induce this feeling in me include:

Pamela by Samuel Richardson and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, and really any piece of fiction written in the 18^th century.

Ironically, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This may be because I had to read this book for a class almost every year, it seems, between 7^th grade and my last year in graduate school. And I appreciate Twain’s intelligence and talent but oh how I hate the dialect, and the duke and the dauphin, and the feud, and the adventures in general, and just please, if I never have to read this book again I will die happy.

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. I wanted so badly to love this book, and it has all the elements that I usually adore. It’s long, it’s faux-Victorian, it’s full of mystery and intrigue and old family secrets and hidden journals and lore…and yet I hated, absolutely hated, the whingy narrator, and I spent weeks and weeks reading his 4700 pages because in spite of everything I, too, wanted to find out who his father was and what was the big secret that had plagued his family for centuries…but at the end of the 6830 pages, guess what? He didn’t find out. Oh my god I have never been so mad in my life.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. I was reading this book because I thought I should, but I really disliked almost everything about it. Then one of the characters made some sort of statement about breaking free from expectations and rules and, among other things, not reading books because you thought you should, and I thought, okay then, and I stopped reading it. No regrets! And mostly I follow this rule – if I hate a book, I stop reading it (much easier now that I’m not in school).

And, most recently, The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman. I liked Goodman’s previous books but this one started out good and then spiraled into stupidity and I kept reading just because I had purchased it new! As a hardcover! And I wanted to get my money’s worth! But it was really awful. It was laughably bad. I hope she recovers before she writes another one.

I guess I would also include on this list the true-crime books Small Sacrifices and The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. They were well-written but I really wish I didn’t know that there were such evil people in the world.

8. A book you are currently reading.
Digging to America by Anne Tyler.

9. A book you've been meaning to read.
Oh, this list is far too long. And so is this post so I’m going to stop now. But here’s your assignment – answer just one question from this list in the comments. If you want. Or if you have your own blog, you could answer them all!