Reading through the ages
Apr. 16th, 2008 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emandinkI started posting this as a comment in a community simply about "good books you've read", but I decided I'd rather post it here where I can actually discuss it with people I care about.
When people ask me about my favorite book, it is impossible for me to answer. I've read too much in my life and have had so many wonderful adventures reading, that there's no way I could choose just one. And my favorite books change like the wind with my moods, with the weather, with the passing hours of the day.
So, instead, I shall create a meme of sorts. Tell me about five books or the books from 5 time periods that have been "favorites" or otherwise been meaningful to you at different times in your life:
1. As a little girl, one book I went back to again and again was From, Anna about a girl in a German family who moved to Canada to escape the Nazis. The adaptation of Anna's family to life in Canada was the framework for the story, but the meat of the narrative was really more about how Anna learned that she was nearly blind and was finally able to get the help that she needed to see her world and find her own place in that world in the process.
2. I cannot remember how it was that I discovered Ray Bradbury in junior high, but from the moment I first read his stories they were absolutely magical to me. Perhaps I wanted to read the book Something Wicked This Way Comes because I loved watching the movie on HBO. Perhaps I stumbled across a story in an anthology. However it was, finding Bradbury was like opening a treasure chest, but instead of gold and jewels, I found entire new worlds. A friend of mine loaned me a copy of a collection of 100 Bradbury stories and I devoured them - "All Summer in a Day", "Dark They Were, But Golden Eyed", "A Sound of Thunder"...these were the background to my budding adolescence. I used "The October Game" as one of my selections for Prose Reading in Speech competition...my sophomore year, maybe? It brought rooms to a standstill. I still get that feeling of holding something precious when I read one of his books - especially the short story collections, which are like a string of perfect pearls.
3. In high school, it was The Stranger by Camus that spoke to me. I was 16 years old and haunted Babbits Bookstore, looking for well worn treasures in the philosophy section. I was unfussed by the bleakness of Camus' tale and drawn to the idea that we are all ultimately responsible for ourselves and our actions. So I read Camus and Sartre ("No Exit" was the subject of my direction unit for Advanced Acting and Directing my Junior year) and dipped my toes into Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and luxuriated in my own way. Runner up has to go to Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, which fueled my burgeoning sense of outrage about AIDS and interest in gay rights, which was only fitting, since I was pretty much out as bi as of the summer before my Senior year.
4. Ah college. Never have I been able to so immerse myself in words words words. College would be a three way tie, I think (yes, I'm cheating) between The Handmaids Tale which has always been a favorite of mine, The Last Lunar Banneker by Mina Loy - the best poet you've never heard of, and Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker - not so much because it is a favorite that I want to turn to again and again, but because Acker's prose helped me realize that I could stretch the boundaries of the page in my own writing. There are so many other possibilities for this time period, though.
5. Most of what I read now is relatively ephemeral. Lots of series novels that are quickly devoured and the paper discarded; one off thrillers; pop-culture essays. But I turn time and time again to Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - any of his works, really, but Neverwhere is my favorite, with it's visceral, yet homey, vision of London Below and magic that Richard Mayhew learns to embrace, rather than ignore. Gaiman is one of the few authors, other than Bradbury, that have been able to create that feeling of being entrusted with something delicate and jeweled and precious, just in picking up the book and turning the pages. And I should add that I absolutely adore the introduction of M is for Magic in which he discusses the allusion to Bradbury's R is for Rocket and S is for Space and the conversation he had with R.B. about using the name. It gave me little fangirl shivers.
When people ask me about my favorite book, it is impossible for me to answer. I've read too much in my life and have had so many wonderful adventures reading, that there's no way I could choose just one. And my favorite books change like the wind with my moods, with the weather, with the passing hours of the day.
So, instead, I shall create a meme of sorts. Tell me about five books or the books from 5 time periods that have been "favorites" or otherwise been meaningful to you at different times in your life:
1. As a little girl, one book I went back to again and again was From, Anna about a girl in a German family who moved to Canada to escape the Nazis. The adaptation of Anna's family to life in Canada was the framework for the story, but the meat of the narrative was really more about how Anna learned that she was nearly blind and was finally able to get the help that she needed to see her world and find her own place in that world in the process.
2. I cannot remember how it was that I discovered Ray Bradbury in junior high, but from the moment I first read his stories they were absolutely magical to me. Perhaps I wanted to read the book Something Wicked This Way Comes because I loved watching the movie on HBO. Perhaps I stumbled across a story in an anthology. However it was, finding Bradbury was like opening a treasure chest, but instead of gold and jewels, I found entire new worlds. A friend of mine loaned me a copy of a collection of 100 Bradbury stories and I devoured them - "All Summer in a Day", "Dark They Were, But Golden Eyed", "A Sound of Thunder"...these were the background to my budding adolescence. I used "The October Game" as one of my selections for Prose Reading in Speech competition...my sophomore year, maybe? It brought rooms to a standstill. I still get that feeling of holding something precious when I read one of his books - especially the short story collections, which are like a string of perfect pearls.
3. In high school, it was The Stranger by Camus that spoke to me. I was 16 years old and haunted Babbits Bookstore, looking for well worn treasures in the philosophy section. I was unfussed by the bleakness of Camus' tale and drawn to the idea that we are all ultimately responsible for ourselves and our actions. So I read Camus and Sartre ("No Exit" was the subject of my direction unit for Advanced Acting and Directing my Junior year) and dipped my toes into Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and luxuriated in my own way. Runner up has to go to Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, which fueled my burgeoning sense of outrage about AIDS and interest in gay rights, which was only fitting, since I was pretty much out as bi as of the summer before my Senior year.
4. Ah college. Never have I been able to so immerse myself in words words words. College would be a three way tie, I think (yes, I'm cheating) between The Handmaids Tale which has always been a favorite of mine, The Last Lunar Banneker by Mina Loy - the best poet you've never heard of, and Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker - not so much because it is a favorite that I want to turn to again and again, but because Acker's prose helped me realize that I could stretch the boundaries of the page in my own writing. There are so many other possibilities for this time period, though.
5. Most of what I read now is relatively ephemeral. Lots of series novels that are quickly devoured and the paper discarded; one off thrillers; pop-culture essays. But I turn time and time again to Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - any of his works, really, but Neverwhere is my favorite, with it's visceral, yet homey, vision of London Below and magic that Richard Mayhew learns to embrace, rather than ignore. Gaiman is one of the few authors, other than Bradbury, that have been able to create that feeling of being entrusted with something delicate and jeweled and precious, just in picking up the book and turning the pages. And I should add that I absolutely adore the introduction of M is for Magic in which he discusses the allusion to Bradbury's R is for Rocket and S is for Space and the conversation he had with R.B. about using the name. It gave me little fangirl shivers.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 05:19 pm (UTC)I'll do the meme later when I need a break from researching middle eastern scientists...
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Date: 2008-04-16 05:56 pm (UTC)At least that's according to this site: http://www.raybradburyonline.com/bibliography/bradbook.htm
no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 05:50 pm (UTC)Young Child: "A Wrinkle in Time," by Madeline L'Engle, is a children's book for grownups, I swear. I still reread it (and its sequels) every now and again, and love its imagery so very much. I also loved L.M. Montgomery's "Emily of New Moon" series, much more than the "Anne of Green Gables" because Emily was a reader, a writer, and different. I tended toward books with strong female heroines, like "Caddie Woodlawn" (Carol Ryrie Brink), and some of the Laura Ingals Wilder books as well.
Tween: I was introduced to Jane Austen in my 7th grade English class (thank you forever, Mrs. Church!), and she's been my favorite author ever since. I've tried to enable everyone I meet who doesn't know Jane, and since the P&P miniseries with Colin Firth came out, it's been much easier!
Teen: Science Fiction! While at the beach (Cape Hatteras) with my family, I found an anthology with short stories by every famous writer you could think of, from Asimov to Ellison to Heinlein, and was in love. I sought every book I could find, old and new. Woo-hoo! After a bit of googling, there's a Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_Fiction_Hall_of_Fame_Volume_One,_1929-1964) on this book! I wore out my copy so long ago I wasn't even sure of the title, but now I am so I'm getting another copy.
Young Adult: Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Mists of Avalon" made such a huge impression on me that I became Pagan. Oh, not that I believed what she wrote about the Arthurien legend was true, but the story made me think. It made me want more than the patriarchal godhead I'd always been presented with during my whole life. And this began my love for fantasy, even more than Science Fiction. Another book, discovered when I was in my 30s, was "The Copper Crown," a novel of the Keltiad by Patricia Kennealy, who has since hyphenated her name to Kennealy-Morrison. Her books, about Celts in space, are the perfect amalgam of fantasy and science fiction, and endlessly fascinating to me. It is her world I would rather live in, above all others.
Now: sad to say, I don't read nearly as much as I used to, mostly due to spending far too much time online. Like now. But when I do read, it's as you said above: it's ephemeral, a very quick read just as quickly discarded (mostly passed along, either to a friend or via Book Crossing's way). But one current book I've reread more than once is Starhawk's "Five Sacred Things." It's prophetic, and never more so than what is happening to our world (and our country) now.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-17 12:34 pm (UTC)