Holy cow, this is amazing.

I love this. (I just, in general, seeing how other people live with book collections)

Book-lined London staircase (in case the perspective in the first photo seems weird to you, it is looking DOWN the stairs).

The architect built a little loft bedroom and then on the stairs leading up to it, constructed them so an enormous book collection could be shelved there. (I like how the stair treads, viewed from above, also look like file folders in their shape).

I can imagine climbing those stairs...grabbing a book on my way...stretching out on the daybed...and reading in my own private sanctuary. Awesome.

"The Magicians"

One of the books I'm reading right now. I bought it a couple months back - in hardcover - which I rarely do (most books I wait for paperbacks, or until Powell's or somewhere have used copies on their website).

But I had read a really interesting review of it, and I wanted to read it.

It's what I call a "secret lover" book - one that you find so absorbing that you wind up sneaking off to read a few pages here and there, stealing time from other things you really should be doing.

Normally, for me, those kinds of books are one written in first-person POV; this one is in (if I remember the terminology correctly) limited third-person - the world is seen through the eyes of Quentin Coldwater (the protagonist)

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here (and anyway, I'm about 1/4 of the way through the book so far, so there's not much to be spoiled yet, I guess) but I have to give a little bit of detail.

The story involves a school for magicians. But this is not Hogwarts...the students are older, the stakes are a lot higher. (And something really terrible just happened a few pages ago, something that will probably really divert the path of Quentin's life, and not in a good way, I expect).

Actually, it's reading a bit more like "The Secret History" (roll your eyes if you must, but I kind of liked that one) than Harry Potter. Or maybe it's like a mash-up of Harry Potter, The Secret History, and Catcher in the Rye - in that Quentin is in some respects kind of a Holden Caulfield-like character. Or at least, a character who read Catcher in the Rye once and decided it was cool and decided to model himself somewhat on Holden. (And I knew people in high school who were like that).

And maybe there's a bit of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" (Another book I LOVED) thrown in.

Brakebills (that's the magicians' college) is a lot less warm and fuzzy than Hogwarts (even in Hogwarts' least-fuzzy portrayals). Bad stuff, seriously bad stuff, can and will happen. Eternal vigilance is required on the part of the faculty to tamp down that darkness and keep it from invading.

Also, the characters are not lovable Ron Weasleys or Hermione Graingers. They're foul-mouthed, one of the students apparently sexually abuses some of the other students (well, maybe abuses is not exactly the right word; it seems the encounters are consensual). Quentin gets into a spectacular fight with a punk who calls himself Penny. Again, you get a sense of a dark current running under things, that there's this struggle between good and evil and evil could just possibly win.

But aside from that, there's all the fascinating (made-up, obviously, but I find this is a book it's easy to suspend disbelief for) impedimentia dealing with learning to work magic. One of the early tests students face - they are given a clear glass marble and asked to enchant it in some way. (Alice, who seems to be the most powerful magician there, but is painfully shy and has secrets of her own, animates it and turns it into a small glass creature that runs around the table top). And there are different "Disciplines," vaguely corresponding to college majors (though they are chosen for you by the faculty, based on what they deem your aptitudes to be: there are Physical Magicians, and Herbalists, and Healing Magicians...)

And I think part of it is, really, at its base, it's a school-story. (Just like Harry Potter is, just like many of the British childrens' books I read as a kid were). And I find school-stories interesting. I suppose it's because I'm in academia, it's something I know and love and find familiar.

And I admit - something I've never totally outgrown - I catch myself writing myself into the story. Or reconfiguring the world to put myself in it. Would I be the student gifted in herbology, who can make healing potions from simple garden flowers? Or would I be a Knowledge magician, who keeps the secrets and the information and sees that it is passed on? And it's a fascinating world, despite the fact that I fear it may "break bad" in the coming chapters.

It's an absorbing book. I may not wind up loving it (many "modern" novels frustrate me in some way; often it has to do with the unwritten rule that every character has to be tragically flawed and deeply troubled and do something that screws up their life, even when that "something" is a thing that I - as a relatively innocent and unworldly person can see coming, and wind up cringing and doing the literary equivalent of the person saying "don't go in the basement!" to a character in a horror movie). But it's a fascinating story and the characters are rich and complex.

Catalogs, I get catalogs...

...and sometimes they have stuff in 'em that make you go, "What the HECK?"

Here's one. This is from Acorn, which is sort of an Anglophile catalog. They are offering editions of three well-known works where they can substitute in your name...or names of people in your family - to up to a certain number of characters in the book.

(They had books like that when I was a little kid. They were frankly pretty crappy, or at least the couple I had were. Not well written at all and once you got past the novelty of seeing your name and your pet's name in the story, it was kind of MEH.)

The three classic works currently on offer are

Pride and Prejudice.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

AND

Romeo and Juliet.

That was the one that made me truly go "WTF." Because, if I remember correctly, the catalog copy seemed to hint that these would make nice romantic gifts.

I have not read Romeo and Juliet, I admit it. But it's kind of hard not to know the story in our culture.

THE TWO LEADS DIE AT THE END!!!!

Doesn't it seem a little creepy to you, to have your name and the name of your SO subbed in for R and J, knowing that he will drink poison and she will stab herself?

Or is it the kind of thing you have made up as a "Fatal Attraction" gift for a lover who has spurned you?

I don't know, but if I see that sort of thing promoted as a Valentine's Day present, I will know there are some very stupid people in this world.

(And the others: it feels kind of banal, and perhaps heretical, to me to have, say, "Brittany" and "Josh" take the place of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.)

The comfort of reading

It's been a rough couple of weeks. It seems like every year, there is more work to be done (or perhaps, I put more on myself that I need to do; I'm constantly updating the teaching, I strive to grade more closely and precisely, do more research, keep up with reading in my field...)

I get tired a lot.

And I get distressed a lot. One of my colleagues was bloviating politically yesterday. (Yesterday! September 11!) It was the kind of stuff that I tend to regard as both stupid and wrongheaded, the kind of "we need to regulate the American public for their own good...but of course people like me who Know Better can be exempt. Because we Know Better."

And you know, I come home just tired. Tired, and worn down, and kind of sick of people. I hear stuff on the news and it makes me kind of sick of people.

(I swear, some nights, the only human being I can tolerate on the teevee is Mike Rowe. Because he seems not to be an idiot. Oh, and Leroy Jethro Gibbs, except, of course, he's not real).

But anyway. I've been reading a lot. And more than that, craving reading.

I crave reading, periodically. Where the one thing I can think of that I want to do is to just get into bed, open up whatever book I have going on, and read.

I can feel myself, as I read, slipping between the lines of words. Disappearing from the here and now. Moving into a world that is quieter and, in many cases, calmer. Getting away from the loud people or the rude people or the people who always think they're right. It soothes me to read.

Even history. I realize that history in the happening is a big horrifying mess - I think about what I was thinking yesterday eight years ago and I wonder at how freaked out I got, how irrational some of the things I did were. But that's how it is - just as Britons writing in 1940 and 41 by and large believed that the Third Reich was going to invade them, and a lot of ordinary Britons (this Mass-Observation book I have) were deeply fearful and some even already were mourning the "British way of life" and speculating whether they'd be killed.) But when you read history, by and large, it's been ironed out. Things are explained. Patterns are visible. And I find that oddly comforting.

I like being able to see patterns. I think that's also why I like "stories" (narratives); I like to feel like this life is comprehensible and there is some underlying order to it after all.

I do not like chaos. I know I've talked about Madeline L'Engle's words on chaos and "cosmos" here before - in her worldview, great art looked into chaos and pulled out cosmos, it showed how there are patterns and (in her worldview and mine) we are connected to the Divine. But she also noted a distressing trend; that some people were trying to promote the chaos, that they were trying to drive wedges where bridges should be built, to deny that there is an order and a rightness and that doing the loving thing is preferable to doing the hateful thing...

So I like narratives. And I like good books of history. Because a well-written history is a narrative. (And I know: you can go all deconstructionist on me and claim that finding a pattern is bootless; that history really is a big mess, it's written by the winners or the White Men or the rich folk or whatever. And maybe that's true. But I don't necessarily read it for received truth; I read it because it makes me feel like the world is less chaotic).

I particularly love ancient history; the idea that there was a world here long before us, that there were people who lived so differently from how we do. I am curious about ancient Greece and Rome, in particular, and love to read about them.

Another genre I deeply, deeply love is mystery novels. In particular the Golden Age mysteries of the 30s and 40s. One thing these have in common (or at least most of the ones I've read) is that the person who did the wrong is ultimately figured out by the intelligence and persistence (and sometimes luck) of the detective, they are caught, they are brought to justice, and the world rights itself on its axis. That, while the murder committed cannot be undone, at least there is some sense that the person who did it won't be doing any more of them. And also, in most of the novels, the murder is explained - there is a reason why, it is not some random act, it is not some person with a knife or a gun or poison or a bomb who just is taking another human out for the sheer sake of killing; it is someone who has a terrible grudge, or who has been blackmailed, something, and while it's clear that what they did is VERY wrong, it is not random.

It's not chaos.

And I also like classic novels. The big, thick, multi-character things, with lots of subplots and digressions. Stuff like Dickens wrote, like Trollope wrote. Part of it is the promise that by and large, injustices are righted, "good" people get some kind of a reward, and people who do wrong face consequences.

I want to believe in a just world. Even if the one we live in is not very just sometimes. I want that reassurance that a just world carries with it.

And frankly, sometimes - especially in the earlier Trollope novels - there is really nothing all that BAD that happens. The biggest worry is that the female lead will make a good marriage match, or that the main male character will be able to keep his inheritance even though a blackguard cousin has shown up claiming HE is the one who deserves it.

And I enjoy entering the lives of the characters. I tend to read slowly - because most nights I'm tired when I finally get down to reading, and I may not read too many pages before I have to put the book aside and sleep. I never was a particularly fast reader.

(It feels almost shameful to admit that. Like my academic cred is lacking in that area. Like I'm not as smart as I claim to be. But it's true: I read pretty slowly. I can skim when I need to, but I don't like speed-reading books.)

It can take me six months - sometimes more - to complete one of the long Victorian novels. But I have to admit, I like that: I like the idea of carrying the characters around in my head for that long, thinking about them at odd moments, having quotations from them pop up in my brain. It makes me happy. It makes me feel less lonely. It makes me feel connected to things, somehow.

I find I have more intense "relationships" with the book characters I read about than with people on teevee. Even though I love Mike Rowe. And L.J. Gibbs and his colleagues. They still do not seem as real to me as Gervase Fen (my new mystery-novel interest) or to Pickwick and his fellows.

When I find an author I enjoy, I set out to read everything I can find that he or she wrote. (And I admit, I have been at times disappointed - some people do not cross genres well, or else they have one or two enjoyable books in them and the rest are not so good).

I live in a house that is slowly having the walls lined by stacked bookshelves. I acquire books more rapidly than I read them. I am quite sure I now own more books than I will read in what remains of my life (even if what I worry is a coming civil war occurs and I have to hole myself up in my house).

But I keep buying them. Books make me happy. All the possibility there! Almost any topic I could want to read on, is somewhere on a shelf. It's like my own personal messy incarnate Internet. An Internet made of papers and pasteboard and glossy covers.

Reading right now is one of my greatest comforts.

It has long been thus. I remember shortly after September 11, 2001 - I was still living in the horrible sad apartment I had here, the one where they wanted me to rent a storage unit because I had "too many books" (they were all on shelves, so I am still puzzled by that complaint). I had recently bought a set of the Borrowers books, in hardback, from a bookclub I used to belong to (I think it was called Bookspan? It was one of those that was an opt-in club rather than opt-out; you only had to buy a book every six months or so to stay a member).

I had loved The Borrowers as a child, and decided I wanted my own set of the books.

And I found that they were the only thing I could read right then. Everything else distressed me. Detective novels had people dying. History books featured wars and bad leaders and people doing evil things to each other. Novels, even my beloved Trollope, were too complex - too many people, too many plots for my brain to take in.

But the Borrowers - that worked. I could even forget what was going on in the outside world when I was immersed in the adventures of Pod, Homily, and Arietty. Even the "scary" adventures were okay - you knew they would ultimately survive and be all right, even if it meant they were living in a discarded shoe in the middle of a field somewhere.

(I suppose I should note, in case there is anyone who does not know them, The Borrowers were tiny people - a couple inches tall - who lived in people's houses and made their household items from lost/discarded/"borrowed" things - like hairpins and spools. I loved the whole idea of these tiny lives going on alongside the big grown-up lives, I loved the idea of them "borrowing" things to use in their houses - and how the grown-up people explained it as stuff getting "lost")

Of course, eventually things calmed down and I shifted back to other books. But I do hang on to a lot of children's books - some, like my Narnia set, that I've had since childhood; others, like the Borrowers and the 101 Dalmatians that I had originally borrowed from the library as a kid, but now have bought my own copies of.

And so I come home at night, to my books. To the books (multiple) that I am reading right now (I always have more than one book in progress at a time; usually a mystery, a history, and a novel). To the books that sit on the shelves, patiently waiting for me to choose them someday.

Books are my pets.

Cookbooks

Recently, there's been a lot of bad, weird, and bad-weird news out there. Every day I see or hear something that makes me kind of panicky and worried about what's becoming of us.

Times like these, it helps me to retreat into something that's kind of a fantasy world, kind of home-centered.

So I look at my cookbook collection. I do not think it is too pompous to call it that. I have a LOT of cookbooks. Most of them are older - I tend to scour used-book stores when I get to them, or antiques shops, or I've ordered a lot through various online sellers (I love how Powell's does the whole used-book thing - one order, through one seller, coming in one box. As much as I love Amazon, I have to admit I love Powell's even more, at least for how they handle used books)

Looking at them makes me feel happy. Now, I don't cook a WHOLE lot (at least these days, when I'm so crazy busy - most nights a big salad and maybe a couple little pieces of some good cheese serve for dinner) but I do like to cook. And I enjoy reading recipes.

I particularly love cookbooks where the author has injected some of his or her personality - where there are little short commentaries or introductions before each dish, like "this is my great-grandmother's recipe for barbecued lamb" or "this recipe never fails to impress guests, yet it is so simple."

I have cookbooks spanning from the 1930s up to modern day. Most of my collection - of the "vintage" books at least - comes from the late 50s and early 60s. I know that it because a lot of the books I went out in search of, when I was finally out on my own and finally had enough space to store a sizable number of cookbooks, were ones my mom had. My parents were married in that era, and I'm guessing my mom got some cookbooks as wedding gifts, and they probably bought others as they moved out from grad-school life into "full fledged" adulthood.

I have a lot of the Farm Journal cookbooks. I don't know if anyone else is familiar with these - Farm Journal is (was?) a magazine, and for years Nell Nichols was the food editor. And she developed a line of cookbooks. And they are, by and large, fantastic cookbooks - nothing fancy, just basic good food (as you might guess from a farming magazine). I've bought most of the ones I know about; I think I even have one or two my mom doesn't have. (It's my goal, someday, to find a copy of every one they put out in the 1960s. I still lack the bread book, I know that much, and the canning and freezing one. I have a reprint of the bread book, but it is "updated," and has some of the good old recipes removed, and other newer ones substituted in their place. So I want a copy of the original).

I also have "Dinner for Two" - one of the Betty Crocker cookbooks. My mom actually had two copies of this - I think she said she got duplicates as a wedding present, and she KEPT THE SECOND ONE ALL THOSE YEARS. And then let me take it when I moved out. It's a good book, especially because the recipes make small quantities. Some of the recipes rely more on mixes or pre-prepared foods than I like, but they have a very good basic brownie recipe (no mix) and some other good "basics."

One thing I like about these cookbooks is the food photography. Some of the more modern cookbooks have gone very minimalist and streamlined - maybe the food is plated, but it is on a plain white tablecloth in a rather unadorned room.

Not my older cookbooks. The pictures in some are almost lurid. And I love that - all of the colors, the fact that they set them on backdrops with checkered tablecloths, or an Early American Revival background, or a fishing pole (for fish dishes, of course).

The BEST one of all of these - and one I like to look at for sheer nostalgia - is "The New Joy of Jell-o." Copyright date 1973. The men all have sideburns, they all have that sort of goofy middle-class 1970s look to them - and I find that oddly comforting. It is the time when I was a child. My parents' house was decorated in that sort of mock Early American style popular then. We had big giant ugly wallpaper in the dining room like some of the rooms shown in the book have.

I've never made anything out of the book (I got it for a buck at a used-book shop), but I still love to look at it because it is so much of its time - of my time, when I was a little kid.

Oh, I do use some of the cookbooks I own. My go-to for good "basic" recipes, or "I have this food and I want to cook it in some different way, what other ways are there" is my 1953 copy of the Settlement House cookbook. It is my favorite cookbook and if I could only have one, it would be the one I choose - it's huge, it's detailed, it tells how to cook eggs in every imaginable way, it tells how to fix vegetables, how to braise meat, how long to cook roasts of different sorts. It has great bread recipes. It has many complex and interesting desserts (none of which I have tried to make, but I would like to). It even tells how to make soap and pasteurize milk, which I tend to think are useful things to know, even in this day and age.

But I also love my Farm Journal Country Fair cookbook - all different types of breads, cakes, pies, and so forth - every one a ribbon winner at a fair somewhere. The corn muffin recipe in that book is my favorite one (and it's not that complicated to make). There are a lot of good simple 'coffee cake' type cakes that I can make when I need to take a treat to church or in to my department. (And it also has the wonderful whimsical photography).

I make a special effort to seek out "cooking for one" or "cooking for two" books.

(A favorite, among more recent books, is Jane Doerfer's "Going Solo in the Kitchen" - many, many good recipes, including some unusual ones. And an attitude of "single people have as much right as families to eat good food and to enjoy their meals" - there is no suggestion of resorting to things out of boxes or from the deli)

There are a few of them out there. Along with the Betty Crocker book, I also have one from the 50s called "Quick and Easy Meals for Two." This book comes divided into interesting sections - they have a "seasonal" section, to take advantage of foods that come abundantly or cheaply at certain times of the year (but it does have an East-Coast centric philosophy: there are dishes made with shad roe, for example. I don't think I've ever even SEEN shad roe). There's also "The Little End of the Horn" - meals for times when the budget is stretched (and actually, some of the recipes in that section are not just economical, but pretty healthful and good, too). There's even a section providing suggestions to people who find themselves in tiny apartments with a two-burner set up in place of a "real" kitchen. I use this book a fair amount, too - it has some interesting ideas for salads and vegetables in it.

Among newer books, I really love Jane and Michael Stern's "Square Meals" (which, sadly, is out of print) - a collection of historical recipes from the first half of the 20th century in America. Some of the recipes are mainly there for historical interest (or for laughs) but there are also some good ones that I make again and again. (I use their gingerbread recipe, for example, when I want gingerbread).

I also have Mark Bittman's huge "How to Cook" (or whatever it's called). But you know, I don't use it that much - Bittman has a certain, shall we say, attitude, that comes through in the book. An attitude of UR DOIN IT WRONG! if you like certain foods or prefer to cook things a certain way. I mean, it's a good book and all, but I almost don't get the same sense of LOVE for the recipes and for those who developed them as I do from Nell Nichols' books, or from the Sterns' tome.

I also have some of the other Betty Crocker books - I have the one on Mexican cooking and the one called something like "The New Chinese Cookbook." I'd like to track down more of these - I know there is a Southwestern Cooking one, because my mother has it - and again, these have wonderful food-photography that's lots of fun to look at. And they have some really neat recipes in them.

If I had the time, I'd cook something fairly elaborate every night. I love to cook and I enjoy using my cookbooks.

Seven weird reading facts about me

Since Joel tagged me.

Seven weird reading facts about me. I don't know how "weird" all of these are, some of you may do these also:

1. I always have more than one book going at a time. I like to trade off what I am reading on based on how I feel any given day. I always have a novel and a non-fiction book going at once, often I also have a mystery novel and a second non-fiction book as well.

2. When I am planning travel, even before I start thinking about clothing, I think about what books I am going to take to read while traveling. Because you have to be very careful about this: you do not want to take a total unknown quantity on vacation with you, and find you are stuck on a train or in an airport with a book you loathe and want to throw across the room. I usually take multiple books with me, usually 2 more than I actually realistically can finish.

3. I actually read kind of slowly. I'm not one of those people who can blow through a novel in a weekend. It can take me six months or more to read a thick novel, especially if the language is a bit archaic. I can tell I read much more slowly if I'm reading Dickens or Austen than if I'm reading some recent novel that's written in today's vernacular.

4. I have weak muscles around my eyes (I forget what the eye doctor said they were called) and I find if I get too close to a page of print, the words kind of "jump around" because the focus-muscles are twitchy. I've never had a problem with reading because of the weak muscles, though, I just have to be careful not to get the book too close to my nose. (Except I am pretty near-sighted, so I can't have the book too far away).

5. I wear eyeglasses to correct nearsightedness and astigmatism; I nearly always take them off if I'm reading something for any length of time. It seems more comfortable for my eyes to do it that way (and I secretly believe that maybe doing that will help stave off my needing bifocals for a few more years).

6. I can remember where a particular passage is in a book - if it's on a right or left hand side page, and roughly how far down the page it is. However, I'm terrible at actually REMEMBERING the passage so if I want to quote something, I have to go and look it up. I'm also often really bad at remembering author's names, so if there's a book in a series I like and I want to buy more by the same author, I have to write down the name and take it to the bookstore with me.

7. I rarely get rid of books, even if it's very unlikely I will read that particular one again. Even the cheap paperback mysteries. Even though I really DON'T re-read (except for a few beloved books/stories and, of course, the Bible), I still like to have all my books around me.

And I'm going to cheat and give a couple more:

8. I will use any flat object at hand as a book mark. I've used receipts, ticket stubs from the train, envelopes, even cancelled checks (not so smart if you take the book out of the house). I sometimes will dog-ear a page but only on books I paid less than $10 for.

9. I read cookbooks while I eat, sometimes. I like to read cookbooks, especially those that are "historical" in nature (like the Little House cookbook) or those that have a lot of "commentary" from the author.

I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you've not done this and would like to, consider yourself tagged.

****

And I'll also mention the two books I'm reading right now:

The Pickwick Papers (which yes, has a longer name, but this is what I know it as) by Dickens, of course. I love this book. It makes me chuckle. I would love to be sister to Mr. Pickwick or Mr. Snodgrass (or perhaps Mr. Snodgrass' sweetheart). There's such a humor to this book. I love rambling books like this - where there might be a whole chapter devoted to a story that one character tells, or where there are funny little side-plots.

This seems to me (though I could be wrong), the sunniest book Dickens wrote. I'm about half way and haven't seen any of the classic Dickens downtrodden folk or outrage at injustices yet.

And the story about the Sexton and the goblin reads like an early draft of "A Christmas Carol" in some ways.

I'm also reading a book called The Spartans by...hold on, have to go check (again: bad at remembering author's names)

It's by Paul Cartledge.

I started this a while back, put it aside when I got distracted by another book*, and just recently re-started it. Ancient Greece fascinates me because although it's supposed to be the model for our democracy, it is SO different. The culture is totally different - and there are a lot of differences between the different city-states.

I admit that I'm still weak on the different "ages" of Greece - Classical, Hellenic, etc.

I read a lot of history about ancient cultures because - I can't quite explain why - they interest me a lot. I suppose it's that distance, that wondering about "How did they think? How did they live?"

I can say from what I've read I'm fairly glad I don't live in Sparta or in a culture like it. Not as a female (even though they were apparently better treated than they were in Athens) and not as a male, either. It's this culture that is almost monofocal: training up an army to fight. Young men are sent away to military school. They spend their teen years training and their young adult years serving in the military. To not serve is a deep dishonor. Apparently they don't even marry until later on in life.

Still, it's fascinating to learn about, especially when I'm tucked up comfortably in my nice bed. There's something oddly appealing - perhaps a bit of schadenfreude involved - about reading about historical hardships others have faced when you're safe at home.

I had begun a biography of Alan Turing but put it aside because the author's intense focus on Turing's "gheyness" kind of put me off. Perhaps it really was that important to the man; perhaps it really did shape his life (and lead to his premature ending of his life). But I'm more curious about how the man came up with his theories than I am about all of the supposed buggery he was involved with in school. (Or perhaps I just need to blip over the first few chapters).

It's like the guy writing the book is salivating over all the "lascivious" stuff he can write about Turing. And while the fact that the man was gay, and was gay at a time when it was dangerous in Britain to be gay, it's like that information isn't presented in a matter of fact way, it's presented more like "hee hee hee, look what I know." And that bugs me.

I don't know. I get frustrated with books that are supposedly about the "great ideas" (which is how this one was marketed) and they turn out to seem to have been written to titillate. I mean, it's unfortunate that Turing was persecuted for his orientation...but that's really not what matters to me about the man; what I want to know is how he thought and what he did.

(*This is another odd reading habit of mine - I will "throw over" books I'm partway through if another book on a different topic grabs my interest. I almost always come back to the original book though.)

y'all know me

....probably actually almost as well as some of my "real life" friends know me.

So I have a question for you. I've been seeing lots 'o' folks referring to the novel "Atlas Shrugged," and apparently, it's going to be a new cultural wave (if what I'm reading is correct), and perhaps it would be good to know more about it. (I understand the basic idea: John Galt gets pissed off at the "parasites" and goes counter-culture).

So here's the question: Should I read "Atlas Shrugged"? Is it something I really need in my knowledge store? Or is it something, like Gulliver's Travels, that I will get depressed by and give up on when bad stuff goes on in my life concomitant with reading the novel?

Also, is it really really dense? Like, fruitcake-dense? I can hack 1000 pages, but not easily if it's a really dense read - I read right before bed and if it's a slow slog, I probably won't stick with it.

I'm curious, because I finished the current mystery novel, I'm getting close to the end of Pickwick Papers (which I love and which makes me chuckle on a regular basis. I so would like to inhabit that world. Well, maybe that world but with better hygiene and antibiotics, but you know what I mean...) So I'm kind of looking around and contemplating which book to read next. I have several lined up*, but could always buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged** and read that first.

So, comments: yes/no? Will I hate it? Will it be "good for me"? Is there something better I should read instead?


(* The Red and the Black, Slammerkin, Georges (a novel by Dumas that I had never heard of but which sounds interesting), the rest of the Thursday Next books...)

(**And if I'm buying it, it will have to be before any rumored "credit card bailout" comes. 'Cause if that happens, I am still, as I said, going Laura Ingalls and stopping my consumption of other than the bare necessities. Just as a little protest. And I might cut up my Kohl's credit card and send it back to them as well).

retreats

I find myself, these past few days, craving reading.

Now, normally, reading is a good-sized part of my life - I read at work. I read work-type stuff at home. I read for fun. I read because I want to learn stuff.

But right now - and this often happens when I'm under a lot of stress - it's almost a physical need. Like how you need to sleep when you're sick.

I've kind of put aside fiction for now - oh, I'll come back to Pickwick Papers in a couple days, I'm sure. But when I'm really distressed, I sort of like FACT. I like not having to deal with drama (even the very minor and usually comic drama of something like Pickwick Papers). I'm reading Thomas Cahill's book on Ancient Greece (and now I'm wanting to pull out the copy of Plato's "Republic" that I saved from Great Books - mainly because I liked the pretense of having Plato on my bookshelf - but now I do want to re-read it. And I want to read the copy of The Peloponnesian War that I bought in a "new exciting translation" five years ago and haven't gotten 'round to yet).

There's something oddly comforting to me about reading about events that took place thousands of years ago. And yet, kind of not.

In a way, it's kind of like reading the Pauline letters. Part of me is relieved that whatever problems my church is facing, whatever's screwed up in society, people nearly 2000 years ago faced the same problems and saw the same screwed-upped-ness. But on the other hand - it's kind of aggravating, like "We've put a man on the moon and invented flush toilets and we still treat each other in the same way that we did when we were crapping out on the street and thought the moon had rabbits in it?"

There's a quotation - I don't remember it exactly - from The Once and Future King that goes something like "the cure for sadness is to learn something." And I've found that to be true - if I can keep my mind busy trying to differentiate between the beliefs of the pre-Socratics and the Socratics and the Pythagoreans (and you wanna hear about a freaky bunch? Read about the practices of the Pythagoreans - they were this weird silence-loving non-bean-eating commune of early math geeks), I'm less likely to focus on what's happening to people around me and to ask that horrible question What's going to become of us?, which seems to crop up in my head too often these days.

I think it also helps that the last time I really thought about ancient Greece - at least in terms of the philosophers and literature - was Great Books in college, 20 years ago now. Twenty years ago my life was different, and while it was not necessarily better, there were things I worry about now that I didn't worry about then. I still believed in true love then, I still thought I would, in fact, meet my Soul Mate and live happily ever after. I thought I'd take a particular class and a dove would descend from Heaven and sit on my shoulder and I'd know that subject was what I was supposed to study for the rest of my life. I still believed that if I hit on the right combination of foods, I'd magically become slim, or at least smaller than a size 10. I was pretty naive.

But somehow, reopening that part of my mind again comforts me.

I also want to start reading a bunch of other books. I want to find the Thursday Next sequels I bought over a year ago, and re-read the original book and then the sequels. And I want to (finally) read all of the Harry Potter oeuvre.

It's funny, but I do tend to retreat into non-fiction and fantasy when I need a retreat.

Right after September 11, 2001, the only thing I could read - don't laugh - was a set of Mary Norton's "Borrowers" novels. I had recently bought the set - I belonged to a book club called "Bookspan" in those days; they had fairly reasonably priced hardbacks and it was an opt-in club, meaning you didn't have to send back some darn card or risk getting the Selection of the Month. And they reprinted a lot of the classic children's novels: I bought all the Mary Poppins books from them as well.

But anyway. The last time I had read "The Borrowers," I had been about nine. And opening those books again - not unlike learning about ancient Greece again - sort of re-opened a door in my mind, or maybe a gate, that led down a path, to who I used to be when I was nine.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't regress or anything - I didn't wind up sitting on the floor with a bunch of My Little Ponies or develop a strong desire to eat Spaghetti-os while watching the Smurfs - but it was almost like I could have a glimpse, again, of who I used to be when I was nine.

(Even though I had all the same problems, all the same sadnesses, of other children, I pretty much liked who I was as a kid. I was pretty genuine, and creative, and funny, and smart. So getting to "see" that kid again comforted me).

It reminded me, I guess, that things were not always thus: that I didn't always live in a world where horrible and unexpected things could happen between your first and second class of the day.

And I guess that's what this kind-of regressive reading is doing for me - it's reminding me of a time when I, maybe, had more hope that my life was going to turn out the way I wanted it to, instead of my having to adapt myself to how it, in fact, is turning out. Where I hadn't yet seen the full panoply of crap that people do to each other. When I wasn't quite so tired and worn, before I had gray in my hair and lines around my eyes. A time back before my problems with insomnia started (I can trace my first attack of insomnia back to 1991. April 1991 to be exact). A time when I lived in a big city and it was still exciting and fun and full of possibilities and I could kind of overlook the fact that I was getting panhandled on nearly every corner and there were men who would go and pee against the wall of a CHURCH that my apartment faced (and yes, I was pretty scandalized the first time I saw that).

The thing is - it is kind of like looking at that time over a garden gate. I remember what it felt like, I remember what it was like thinking the world was just opening up and any wonderful thing could happen. But I can't quite cross that gate again; I can't quite get back there. And so my reading - even though I'm happy when I'm doing it, because my mind is diverted, when I'm thinking about it (like now, between classes), it makes me a little sad, because it's indicative of a time I won't get back.

On books, and book-like objects

As most of you know, I own a lot of books.

Probably more than I will read in what remains to me of my lifetime, even given that women in my family are extraordinarily long-lived.

I like books. I enjoy having them around. I enjoy arranging them on shelves, pulling one off here and there and opening it up to read a bit of it. I like having the books I've already read around, to refer to, to look up quotations in, to re-read particularly heartwarming or instructive or funny or just plain good passages out of.

I think books are a good technology. You can use them anywhere, provided you have sufficient light to read by - out on a trail in the middle of the forest, in your own bathtub at home, in a car going down the highway (ONLY, I hasten to add, if you are a passenger!), curled up in bed, at the park while your children play on the monkey-bars, in the doctor's waiting room. Even by the side of the road while waiting on the tow truck after your car broke down. (Not that I would probably be in a frame of mind to read in that case, but a person COULD.)

I've seen the various new "readers" - basically a computerized "book" that has files on it that you can read through by scrolling, rather like on a computer screen. I have to admit that although I like the idea of a "book" that you could fit the contents of 15 or 20 actual, physical books on (or more; I have no idea of the storage power of the newer models of these items), I have to admit they leave me a little cold. If you like them, fine, more power to you: they're just not something I can get into.

I like books because, well, they're BOOKS. Every one is a little different. Some of them have their own particular scents. Some creak a certain way (especially the older ones) when you open them. The covers differ - some paperbacks are slick and shiny, some have a slightly pebbly feel, some have a nice satiny finish to the cover. The paper differs - the cheap, now-self-destructing paper of 1940s pulp novels, the lovely cream-laid paper of some of the more expensive scientific books I have, the thin tissue-y paper in my Bibles. (every Bible I own, every translation - and I have three or four - is like that. I suppose it's to make it more compact).

I think part of my disappointment with the e-readers is that although the material you're reading is different, the aesthetic experience is the same every time. And you know, that's kind of important to me. The aesthetic experience with a book.

I also love used books. I don't have as ready access to them as I once did; the nearest decent used-book store is 1/2 hour away. One of the things I love most about used books is how sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll open one and something, some missive from the past, will fall out - a pressed four-leaf clover. A newspaper clipping. A letter. A recipe someone wrote out quickly on the back of an envelope. These things are wonderful and mysterious - why did the book I buy have a partial account of Miss Debra Castleberry's cotillion pressed in it? Why is there a flattened, yellowed carnation in the middle of this old cookbook? Is "Aunt Hitt's reciept" for rice timbales any good? Why did someone save the radio programming listings for May 8, 1949?

I like that feeling of wondering connection - the realization that someone, maybe many years before me, held that same book in their hands. Owned it. Read it. Maybe, if it is a pattern-book or a cookbook, made something described in it. (I can often tell with cookbooks; the pages with paprika stuck to them or with spots from grease or fruit juice). It, oddly enough, makes me feel a little less alone. (I like used books and will usually buy the used one over the new one if given a choice).

I also like seeing how other people deal with there books - I have two big volumes about this. One is called "At home with books" and the other is called, I think "decorating with books."

I enjoyed browsing through the writer's rooms that Sheila linked to a while back, especially the darkish ones lined with bookshelves. (Even though I can't write well in a messy room, I like the messy ones too.)

(And I admit - looking at some of the rooms that make me happy, if they belong to a writer I've never read, like Beryl Bainbridge, it makes me want to read them, just to see if their writing somehow carries a little sense of that room in it).

And I love the staircase that Brian Micklethwait posted about the other day. (Alas, I live in a one-story house or I'd be trying to figure out if someone could build one of those for me.)

I am a member of the Folio Society. For me, it is a kind of expensive affectation but I do like the books - big, heavy, hardbound, with good paper and actual illustrations in them. (I maintain that adults should get illustrated books just as children do - maybe not as many illustrations, certainly, there needs to be enough room for all the words - but I do like the occasional illustration). I tend to order books every fall that are slated to come out at different times. So it's always kind of exciting when I get a package-slip indicating I have a Folio Society box waiting for me at the post office - I never remember what I ordered, what I'm still waiting to come. So it's a little bit like Christmas.

One of the ways I sometimes soothe myself a little when I'm having a bad week is promising myself that as soon as I can find time to make the (hour's round-trip) drive to the nearest bookstore, I'll go. Even if I just browse without buying anything (though that is rare). Or I'll tell myself I can order something from Amazon - last spring I went for that Prime shipping, and it's been worth it to me - being able to get an in-stock book in 2 days (sometimes it's only one!) is wonderful.

Every evening ends for me with my reading a bit before bed. If I have a meeting that runs late or I have to be out somewhere and get home and it's so late I go to bed without reading, I don't sleep as well.

I always travel with books, even if it's just a day-trip somewhere (you never know - you never know when your car might break down. Or when the bridge you have to cross to get back home might collapse. Or something might happen that traps you away from home, and if you don't have a book, you have nothing to DO). I take several books when I travel for longer than overnight. It is partly a "security blanket" thing and I openly admit that - for me, books are totems of home. Home and comfort. They are also an escape. I often travel with at least one scholarly book, because if I wind up sitting next to some kind of strongly opinionated chatterbox (the worst kind) or boor, I can pull it out, smile apologetically, and make some kind of half-truth about "having" to read the book for my career. And in waiting rooms, in concourses waiting for meetings to begin, anywhere - a book is a good way of closing yourself off from the world if you don't want to interact just then. (I'm really not that antisocial or unfriendly; it's just that I get overwhelmed easily in crowds, and the book becomes an item of defense. A way of protecting my brain from the "too much" out there, but also a way of sending a signal, "Hey! Friendly person who wants to talk to me about what Obama can do for me! Not now! Thank you."

They are probably my favorite object of everything around me.

Book meme

No one officially tagged me but I'm in my office trying to write an exam (which is NOT writing itself, I tell you), so I'm going to do this thing.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

Pretty much any book that hints that lots of bad crap happens to the protagonists, and they basically wallow in the bad crap. Or that it's crap they brought on themselves. (One thing that frustrated me about a particular novel my book club read? The female lead started sleeping with her boyfriend's best friend and was all "Nothing bad can come of this, la la la."

Well, I've never even BEEN in a position where I had a boyfriend with a sleep-with-able best friend, but I know that nothing good can come of that situation. And the nothing good DID come of it, and the next 75 pages or so were the heroine wondering why her life was so mucked up.

I'm sorry, but any book that makes me want to go Dr. Laura on the characters of, I don't want to read.

Oh, and Danielle Steele. It's an irrational prejudice but I will not read Danielle Steele.


If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

Okay, I'm going to assume I get to interact with them, and I get to set the thing in the time and place I want.

So I'm going to indulge my deep and abiding love of Golden Age Mystery here and say I'd bring to life Hercule Poirot (to talk about stuff with, and perhaps play chess with - did Poirot play chess?) and Albert Campion (even though that's not his real name, and even though he does put on that affable-idiot pose a lot of the time, I still have a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him. He'd be the one who'd get to take my arm when we all went in to dinner.) And Archie Goodwin. Because as much as I love Poirot and Campion, if someone was really going to try to HARM me, Archie'd be the one most likely to be able to kick their ass.

Oh, and the setting? Some kind of upper-middle-class Edwardian British thing. A tea-dance or something, or maybe a weekend in one of those immense country houses where the host and hostess invite all their friends and relatives.

I'd like to be able to swan about in high-society 30s-era clothing.

Yes, I just made that question all about me.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

I know there are people who will be horrified at me for saying this, but: it would have to be something by Ayn Rand. Perhaps The Fountainhead. I tried reading it and my brain just started going Do. Not. Want.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?

Man, that's hard to think of one like that. I'm more likely to hint at familiarity with movies I've not actually seen.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?

No, can't think of any, but in a similar vein, one of the things that annoys me? The fact that publishers, sometimes, when they re-issue books, will give them new titles. The re-issuers of Golden Age mystery novels are particularly bad for this. And I can't always remember from the catalog blurb which ones I've read and which ones I've not, so I have more than one copy of a couple of them.

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)

This is kind of tough. Since the person's not a "big" reader, it would have to be a book that's fairly arresting and not "boring." (I am well known for selecting books other people find "boring.").

I might consider "The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" which fascinated me because it was a peep at the way someone who thinks very differently from us (a boy with autism) has an inner monologue, it's fairly short, it's suspenseful in places (well, if you have enough empathy to feel for the main character), and you do feel a bit like you understand human nature better at the end. And it's not a book that "breaks bad" like some of the novels I referred to in the first question.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

Oh, man, that's tough.

I'd probably choose New Testament Greek so I could read the New Testament in the original.

Or maybe Japanese so I could read some of the poetry. I'm sure it comes through very differently in translation. (Bonus with knowing Japanese would be that I could read manga without having to refer to translations)

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

I'd probably pick something like C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce." It's not overly long, it's deep enough that multiple re-readings would reveal something new, and it's well enough written that I'd be less likely to get sick of it.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?

Hmmm...I've learned a bit more about "steampunk" (even the sheer fact that it's a genre) from reading around on blogs.

I've also purchased the occasional book because someone referred to it and wrote a review of it that made me think I'd like to read it.

Oh, and I bought a Philip Yancey book (which I haven't read yet, yipes) because Tracey talked about him.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

Oh my goodness. How much time do you have?

It would be a large room, perhaps octagonal. Two or three of the walls would boast leaded-glass, diamond-paned windows that look out over a large lawn that slopes down to a forest (and I would own all the land so no one could ever come and build condos on it). One window would probably face west so I could watch sunsets (I'm usually at work up until sunset). The room would be paneled in sort of a medium cherry or oak - not too dark but not that blonde wood that smacks of 1950s Danish Modern, either. All of the non-window walls would have bookcases on them. (One of the windows would have a small desk below it - not a "work" desk but a place to write letters or sit and read).

There'd be a deciduous tree outside the window so there'd be shade in the summer, but not too much of the view would be blocked.

There'd be a good carpet - either Aubusson or some kind of older Persian rug - in the middle of the wood floor, and arranged on that would be two good comfortable armchairs and a sofa. There'd be a coffee table and a small side table between the chairs, because one needs a place to put one's teacup while reading. The sofa would also have enough loose pillows to make a comfortable backrest for reading while stretched out. There'd also be an ottoman big enough to serve both armchairs if both were occupied.

The sofa would be a good glove leather but the armchairs would be a subtle brocade.

There'd be good light - the ceiling would be vaulted but not too high and would have down-lights in it, and there'd be good lamps near each reading spot (including one on the desk). It would be possible to make the room as bright or as dim as desired, especially to dim down the ceiling lights at night and just rely on the single pool of light from a reading lamp.

The books would be mostly hardbound, lots of vintage books, lots of books with illustrations in them (I tend to think adults are as deserving of illustrated books as children). There might be some paperbacks if that's the best way to compile sets - some of the old orange-bound Penguins, some of the sets of re-issues of detective novels all from the same publisher so they're identical. (I have a big thing about wanting all books that I own by a particular author to be as similar in binding and style as possible.) The shelves would go nearly to the ceiling and there'd be one of those rolling ladders to gain access to the books higher up.

The topics of the books would be anything and everything that interested me. I'd have a wall of mysteries, a wall of history books (focusing heavily on the ancient world, my current historical interest), a wall of classics with full sets of works by people like Dickens and Austen, a wall of books about quantum mechanics and math, etc., etc.

I'd also have a knitting basket next to my armchair - either for times when I didn't feel like reading, or for times when I want to knit on something simple AND read at the same time (I guess I'd also need a bookstand to hold up my book in that case).

And there'd be a good radio in there, with the ability to pick up quiet classical and jazz stations, maybe even more than one of each (this is an issue in my part of the world, where the music choices tend to be Top 40, Top 40 Country, and Top 40 "oldies" which are actually from the 70s and 80s.)

Just outside the door of the library, there'd be a sort of mini-kitchen with a set up for making tea, and perhaps a couple of canisters of good crackers or "biscuits". A filtered-water tap, a single burner for heating the kettle on, some canisters of tea, sugar, a small refrigerator for milk and lemons, a sink for washing-up, and a cabinet with mugs in it.

Daring

So I bought a copy of "The Daring Book for Girls." I kind of wanted to see what all the fuss was about - I remember when the boy-version (which is by different authors; this one is actually sort of an "inspired-by") came out, it was alternately praised and excoriated. And some people just kind of scratched their heads.

These are great big compendium books (in case you totally ignore the "children-and-teen" section of the bookstore or live under a rock). The Girl's book - the only one I've looked at - has a lot of rules-of-games (basketball, something called netball, softball, tetherball, even hopscotch. But not Badminton, which is one of my favorite easy-for-even-kind-of-lazy-people games of all times. You can even play Badminton in a dress - I have. I knew Indian ladies who played it in their saris - there was a large Indian community in the town where I used to live, and they used to get together a lot, and for some reason Badminton was a very popular game. But I digress)

It also tells you how to build a scooter, and how to change a car tire, and how to make ivy crowns. And how to whistle with two fingers in your mouth, which I really really want to learn to do (it would be extremely useful in the field, if I needed to call all my students together quickly) but have not yet managed, despite a number of trials.

It also has the typical you-go-girl stuff about women scientists and inventors and famous queens.

(Did you know Hedy Lamarr - yes, that Hedy Lamarr - helped invent some kind of code-breaking thing that was used against the Germans in World War II? I didn't.)

All proto-feminism aside, I like the book a lot. I look at it, and I go, "I wish this had been around 25 or 30 years ago, when I was a girl." It is exactly the kind of book I loved - packed with information, lots of odd little things, skills you can perfect, stuff to learn that's cool. And the you-go-girl stuff would have impressed me, too. I remember doing a lot of book reports on Famous Women (two memorable ones being Maria Mitchell - who, oddly, is not mentioned among the women scientists and inventors - and Annie Oakley.)

Actually, another digression: when I was a kid, a lot of times when we did "book reports" on biographies we read, or historical reports on a person, we were required to dress up as that person and present the life as if that person were speaking. I loved that. (My mom, who I would have to hit up at least once a year for "a floor-length dark skirt and dark shawl" (for Mitchell, who was a Quaker) or some kind of ethnic costume for some woman from Europe, probably didn't love it so much). I suppose schools still do this - I hope they do, because I loved doing it. It was a lot of fun. (And part of the fun was seeing the other students going through the day in their getups. I learned fairly early on to pick people like Mitchell who dressed plainly and comfortably enough).

Anyway. A few people commenting on the books noted they didn't like the title "Daring," that "why do Boys get to be Dangerous but Girls are only Daring?"

But you know? I personally like Daring better than Dangerous. For two reasons: first of all, Daring has the connotation of doing something good, something useful - for example, Josephine Baker working for the French Resistance during WWII. That's useful but it's also dangerous. And it takes considerable daring.

It seems to me that it's entirely possible to be Dangerous and also stupid, but it is far less likely to be Daring and stupid.

I also like Daring better than Dangerous because to me, it seems to have more elan - James Bond (at least the "classic," Moore or Connery Bonds) was Daring, but his enemies were merely Dangerous. Daring, to me, seems to have a sense of style to it - a little smirk in the face of real danger, the ability to do things smoothly and well to get out of it.

I would much rather be a Daring Girl (well, the ship probably sailed on "girl" 10 or more years ago, at least in the chronological sense) than a Dangerous Girl. Unfortunately, in this life, my lot seems to be less to be Daring than to be Responsible.

(If I were writing my own parody or "answer" to this series {and yes, there are parodies - there is now the Dangerous Book for Dogs}, I would probably title it

The Responsible Book for Adults.)

And I would talk about things like balancing checkbooks, and leaving notes on people's windshields if you ding their car door with theirs in a parking lot, and being on time to meetings, especially if you are the one who called the meeting. Of course the book wouldn't sell because that kind of stuff is boring and the people who would read it already live it, and probably most of the people who need to read it, wouldn't. But I have to admit a certain longing for a "Handbook for Adulthood" - I really and truly (when I was like 8 or so) believed that there was a handbook you were given, probably on your 18th birthday or so, that explained all the stuff adults were supposed to do and know. Of course no such handbook exists and we are all essentially making it up as we go along, but frankly, I WOULD like to have a handbook. Oh, I have Emily Post and some kind of book about Investing for the Fiscal Idiot and another one about not getting one's feelings hurt, but none of these books has quite the encyclopedic completeness, or the secret knowledge, that I assumed this mythical Handbook for Adulthood would hold.

But at any rate - while one's on the way - I suppose something like a Daring or a Dangerous book makes the journey more fun, and perhaps more remembered once one is an adult.

RIP, Madeleine L'Engle

I saw on Sheila's blog that Madeleine L'Engle had passed.

I wanted to write something here, but couldn't think of anything good - and I wanted to be home, with my copies of books she wrote, to take a few stories and quotations from them.

I only read 2 of her books - "A Wrinkle in Time" and the sequel (the one with the mitochondria and farandolae) - before the age of 20 or so. I didn't know of her as an essayist or a writer on faith until fairly recently.

But I did love "Wrinkle in Time" - not just for the language, not just for the concepts, but for the underlying worldview, I think.

Two of my favorite books of L'Engle's essays are "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" and "The Rock that is Higher."

In "Walking on Water," she brings up a couple of concepts that I carry with me now, every day of my life: the idea of cosmos vs. chaos, and the idea of being "named."

...all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos. At least all Christian art (by which I mean all true art, and I'll go deeper into this later) is cosmos in chaos. There's some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in mysic, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.

I know there are perhaps things to quibble with there. I don't think you have to be a Christian (or even a Deist) to try to find the cosmos - the pattern, the meaning - in the universe. But I do agree that there are some (and probably not just confined to "modern" art) that only want to keep showing us the chaos, without any sense of cosmos.

It's interesting... that I should be reading these words again so close to the anniversary of September 11. (In fact, I just saw a bit on television of the firefighters of the 54th being interviewed, and footage of them carrying the remains of one of their men out of Ground Zero. And I found myself tearing up again, feeling both sad and angry for the monumental loss). You can look at that event and see the horror - the loss, the lives destroyed, the security shattered. Or, you can TRY (and I realize it's hard, especially for those who directly witnessed it) to look at it and see the thousands - millions - of Americans who rolled up their sleeves to donate blood (even if they knew that was an entirely symbolic gesture - and the first time needle-phobic I ever gave blood in my life was shortly after September 11, 2001). The people who comforted the fearful, who tried to console those who lost loved ones. The outpouring of artwork - maybe it wouldn't be called "art" by some, as it was entirely amateur-made - by people memorializing their loved ones or trying to make some sense out of what happened (I think, again, Sheila posted some photos of these).

Or you can see it as a wake-up call, a reminder that we need to be vigilant. That we need to define who and what we are, that we need to protect that which we hold dear.

But we (or at least I) can't look at the event and just shut down, just stop going forward, just say "This is how the world is." (As one of my friends said: "I prefer to think of God as not being in the towers falling, but of God being in what the people did to try to pick up the pieces afterward).

L'Engle also talks about the concept of being Named. Which, if I understand her meaning, is similar to being loved, being a part of God's creation - she also introduces the idea of Naming and being Named in "A Wind in the Door" (one of the Time Quartet novels). In it, at the very end...not to give too much away, but one character has to Name another character, a character who has done his best to make himself unlovable...and there's something very deep about it - realizing that we are at times pretty unlovable ourselves, and yet there are still those here on Earth (and, if you believe in it, Beyond) who would Name us and call us their own.

...the act of Naming is very closely connected with the act of loving, and hating is involved with unNaming - taking a person's name away, causing anyone to be an anonymous digit, annihilating the spirit.

When we are unNamed, we are broken; all around us we see fragmented, mutilated people. And the world offers little help for healing, for knitting up the "raveled sleeve of care."

I think she also is saying something about the anonymity many of us feel in modern society. I describe it as feeling "invisible."

Another, unrelated quotation that I find in my copy of "Walking on Water":

Children don't like anti-heroes. Neither do I. I don't think many peopl do, despite the proliferation of novels in the past few decades with anti-heroes for protagonists. I think we all want to be able to identify with the major character in a book - to live, suffer, dream, and grow through vicarious experience. I need to be able to admire the protagonist despite his faults, and so be given a glimpse of my own potential. There have been a few young-adult novels written recently with anti-heroes; from all reports they are not the books that are read and reread. We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with the sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination

(emphasis in the original). Again, some might quibble with this. But it's something I personally agree with. The books I tend to press on people are the ones with, as L'Engle says, protagonists I can admire despite their faults.

At any rate. (And I have not read all of her works, for that matter. I still have a goodly chunk of the Austins books to read, and also the other three Crosswicks journals (I read the one dealing with Spring). And I recently got a copy of her Genesis trilogy). I've re-read both the books I referred to above (Walking on Water and The Rock that is Higher) a number of times; they are books that I keep on hand for when I feel kind of beaten down by the world. Or when I feel that dark night of the soul opening up to me, when I wonder - how on Earth and beyond can there be a loving God when people are so evil to each other? Or when I feel like the odd woman out - I think I said once before I pretty much ALWAYS feel weird, because I'm a bit too theologically-liberal in some ways to run with a lot of the Christians around here, but I'm too much of a person of faith to run with many of the academics. Reading L'Engle (and also, C.S. Lewis, and to a lesser extent [merely because I have to think so hard while I am reading him] Chesterton) comforts me - makes me feel "less weird," and tends to assuage my doubts. And reminds me that God really doesn't want me to "check my brain at the door," which is what some flavors of Christianity (or at least the stereotypes of them) seem to suggest these days.

I am a little sad I never thought to write a letter to Ms. L'Engle; that I never wrote to thank her for what her writing has meant to me. (I am sure, however, that many others did the same; it seems that a great many people love her writing very deeply and that gives me hope). Her books - especially the books of essays on faith and life - are among the small number of books I re-read, and among the small number I'd take with me if I had to move, say, and could only take two boxes of books or so with me.

Book Tag

Saw this at Sheila's:

What are you reading right now?

Mostly "Gulliver's Travels" (also am reading a mystery for when I need something that doesn't require concentration and decoding of the 1700s spellings).

Most of the "novels" I read are Victorian-era, so it's kind of refreshing, after all the talk of "limbs" and very delicate euphemistic references to someone's "confinement" and such, to read about a guy who puts out a fire by peeing on it. Or who remarks about the Lilliputian soldiers looking up through the rents in his breeches and finding something for....what was the statement? Amazement and jocularity? (I do think I need the Cliff's Notes or some other "guide to the symbolism," I don't think I'm getting all of what Swift intended, because of my lack of experience of early 1700s British/European society and politics).


Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?

I don't know. I have a book on Britain in WWII that I might read next. (It's called something like "Mass Observation: Britain in WWII." Folio Press book.

What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?

I don't really spend enough time in the bathroom to get involved with reading, unless I'm reading in the tub, and then, magazines aren't the best choice, the edges dip in and get all pulpy....

What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?

"Worst," I don't know. Thing I hated the most? Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." Please, Edna, just drown yourself already....

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?

Depends on the person but I've pressed "Middlemarch" on some people, and Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book" (and I claim to be an anti-fan of sci-fi.) I've also encouraged people to read "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" and "A Sand County Almanac" and "Bird by Bird."

How's that for diverse?

Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?

Yeah, the university librarians. But that's partly because I'm on the Library Committee. Like Sheila, I'm much more of a book-buyer than a book-borrower.

Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?

I've had a few people give a cool reception to my suggestion of "Doomsday Book" but I can't say that there's any book that's met with disapproval across the board.

Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?

Let's see: "yes," "sometimes," "sometimes," "yes," "sometimes," "that's a rather extremely personal question and I honestly can't quite figure out how it would be DONE anyway, I mean the mechanics of it [and NO, don't tell me]" and "good heavens, no."


When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?

Oh, hell, I was teased for EVERYTHING when I was little. Reading was no different.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?

I hate to say it, but I don't remember. Sleep is very important to me - even more so than reading.

SSR

...which stands for "Sustained Silent Reading." Which is one of the happier memories of my grade-school days.

When I was a grade-schooler, I think up to about 6th grade, they'd do that at the end of the day - the last 15 or 20 minutes of class time, before the buses came, was Sustained Silent Reading time. The idea was - you just sat and read. You weren't expected to write a report on it, you weren't expected to get up and tell the class about it - it was just "free reading." (Which I think was one of the other names it went by.)

In the primary grades in particular - I think it was second grade - the teacher let us sit whereever or however we wanted. You could sit AT your desk, or you could sit ON your desk (we had desks that year that were kind of like little individual tables with four legs and separate chairs. There was a small shelf under the desktop where you could keep your textbooks). Or, as I most often chose, you could sit UNDER your desk. I liked the little cave that the desk formed - the privacy of it. (And the dimness, though perhaps that contributed to my needing glasses later on. I still prefer lower light levels). You could read however you wanted provided you weren't disturbing any of the other students (And you know? That's kind of my political philosophy in a lot of ways, today, figuratively speaking: read however you want as long as you don't disturb any of the other students.)

The books could be pretty much anything, also. I think some of the kids brought comic books (which normally were frowned upon) but the teacher didn't say anything. You could bring a book from home (and, coming from a book-filled house, that's what I normally did). Or you could check one out from the school library. Or you could pick one off the shelves of books the teacher had in the classroom - and the deal was, if you were reading a "classroom book," no one else could cop it for SSR until you were done (which seemed eminently fair to me, as a child - I'd have hated to start a long "chapter book" and then find that someone else grabbed it for the next day.)

"Chapter books." Heh. I hadn't thought of that term in a while.

I'm thinking of some of the things I read during that time. I think I had my mom's old copy of "The Red Fairy Book" and read from that. And I read "No Flying in the House" during SSR. And I think, in later grades, the Chronicles of Narnia, and Harriet the Spy, and some of the Oz books....and Summer of my German Soldier, and Where the Red Fern Grows, and all of the "dog" and "horse" books that girls read...

It was a nice end to the day. (Oh, maybe not all the kids liked it. Probably not all of them did.) But I liked it - it was sort of taking a breath at the end of the day, being able to spend a little time in something quiet and private (even as a child I was an introvert - in fact, I was probably more pronouncedly introverted and withdrawing as a child than I am now). It was a nice transition - in a way, the fact that I usually read before going to sleep at night is a similar type of transition. It's sort of a quietening-down, a being-still, after the activity of the day.

And with a good "chapter book," there was always something to look forward to - the next bit, especially if you were forced to stop (by the arrival of the buses and the ringing of the end-of-the-day bell) at an exciting part. (Of course, if it was a book from home - you took it home with you, and I often continued reading after I got home [the bus was far too chaotic to even try to read on.])

I'm sure schools still do this. (Or at least, I hope they do). I can picture legions of kids, sitting at, on, or under their desks, reading Harry Potter. (I would have loved the Harry Potter books as a child. I also would have loved the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books. And I marvel that no one suggested I read the "Dark is Rising" sequence - the early books were published shortly before I was born, and reading it as an adult, I realize I would have loved that series as well).

Another thing I thought of, that's tangentially related - not quite 150 years ago, crowds were meeting ships bound in from Britain with the question, "Is Little Nell dead?" ("The Old Curiosity Shop" was being serialized, and I guess the latest installment had not made it to the U.S.). Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people were wondering, "Is Harry Potter alive?" (Although they probably, or many of them at least, would have stopped any potential informant with "No, don't tell me, I want to read it myself!") The power of good stories.

(I just love the mental image of thousands upon thousands of people reading Harry Potter. I'm not a big fan - actually, haven't read beyond the second book - but it makes me happy that so many people are entranced by it.)

bookshelves

There are a lot of things going on in the "outer" world - a group of fools choosing to use their freedom of speech to desecrate the graves of the very men who fought to defend that freedom of speech, some fool who got on a plane when he had a contagious, drug-resistant form of TB - because he didn't want to change his wedding plans, the usual round of human selfishness or foolishness that tends to make the news.

But today I want to talk about something happier.

My bookshelves.

This is in part because I bought MORE yesterday. I have a Target visa card, which means that every time I accumulate purchases of $1000 (which takes a while - I'm pretty frugal and don't shop at Target all that often - but it happens) - I get a certificate good for 10% off one day's shopping.

(Last time I got one, I used it to buy my dvd player).

I had big plans for this time - I needed more bookshelves, Target has these fairly cute, easily-movable, faux Mission Style folding bookshelves. I thought I could fit two more in my living room, so I bought two.

(My house is rapidly reaching Total Bookshelf Domination. I have shelves in every room except the bathroom and kitchen, and those don't have bookshelves only because they are too small (and the bathroom tends to be too damp; I don't have a fan to exhaust the steam from the shower).)

I put up one bookshelf in my living room, though. (And it's okay that the other wouldn't fit; I can still have my nice big comfy chair in its same spot - it would have had to move if I had put the other shelf in - and I have a place to put the second shelf).

I started filling it. My shelving-system for books is a mixture of my own idiosyncratic preferences and laziness (as in: "I don't feel like carrying this book back to its proper shelf but here's a spot where it will fit"). So my bookshelves are even more confused, in many cases, than the famous files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

But when I get a new bookshelf, and can fill it "from scratch," there is more of a semblance of order. I have three of the Target bookshelves in my living room now; one has my math and science books on it (top two shelves: biology and ecology. Third shelf: math and physics. bottom shelf: geology, geography, and a few other things that are probably more anthropology than anything). The second bookshelf has some of my history books (top shelf: Euro history since about 1500. Second shelf: American history, mostly Revolutionary Era. Third shelf: ancient history and pre-1500 Euro history. Bottom shelf: again, a mix of stuff, some of them books on single topics (like "The Amber Room.")

This third shelf I decided to put "read-reading" books on (novels). The top two shelves are mystery and spy novels - the top shelf has all of my snazzy Folio Press editions of things (Hercule Poirot stories, Miss Marple stories, the new huge "Anthology of Shorter Crime Fiction") and also some other nice hardbacks (an older - but not antique - edition of Sherlock Holmes, some Dorothy Sayers. The second shelf is paperback mysteries - though mostly only ones I've not read yet; the idea is that I can reach over from my big comfy chair and pull books off the shelf when I want to read.

The third shelf is just a mix of novels, mostly more recent novels, a lot of them were books that had been piled beside my bed (part of the reason I wanted more bookshelves was to get rid of that pile. I kept knocking it over and having to re-stack it, and it makes sweeping the floor a pain because you have to pick up all the books and put them somewhere while you do it).

The bottom shelf is some overflow (from other bookcases) of spirituality, ethics, and religion books - mostly stuff I've already read, because that shelf is less accessible than the others.

(I'm not a big re-reader, but I rarely get rid of books. And I NEVER get rid of a book I really liked when I read it; I always figure I will want to look something up in it someday).

I do have three other bookcases in the room (my living room is quite large; it's like 20' by 15'). These are three, seven-foot-tall bookcases I had custom made years ago, back when I had a doll collection. (Now they house books). It's pretty much a gallimaufry on those shelves - I should go through and rearrange them sometime; what happens with those is I'll move books off to other places as I read them, and stick new books on as I get them, so the original order has pretty much mutated into a disorder. I have a couple shelves of other Folio Press books, and a couple shelves of British Victorian (mostly Anthony Trollope, one of my favorite authors). And I have a shelf devoted to some old Heritage Press editions that I either inherited or bought cheaply used. And a shelf of South Seas stuff. And one of poetry (although that spills over onto other shelves). And on, and on.

I love books and it gives me a lot of pleasure to have them around. Especially on a newly-arranged bookshelf, like my new shelf. There is something shiny and pleasant and nice about it - part of it is the order, part of it is perhaps a little bit of seeing-things-new (I didn't realize how many unread Ngaio Marsh mysteries I had until I tracked them all down and put them in one place).

I sometimes wonder if the love of books is somehow partly genetic. One of my grandfathers (the one I spoke of the other day, the WWI aviator) was so devoted to books that I've been told one of his sisters said, "He will wear the same awful old winter coat, and spend all his money on books." And one of my great-grandfathers on the other side of the family didn't learn how to read until he was 25 or so, but once he did, he was never without a book or other reading material, because he was so proud of finally knowing how to read and he loved it so much.

(I have books inherited from both of them).

I have books lots of other places, too - my guest room has some built-in bookcases where I mainly keep books I've already read, but want to hang on to. And in my dining room, I have a wall of bookcases (again from Target but a different style than the Mission ones) that house my cookbook collection (I have lots of cookbooks; I love cookbooks, especially slightly older ones) and some of my gardening/nature books.

For example: I have a field guide to the mushrooms. The mushrooms of France, which is totally impractical, because the species here are different and I never plan on going to France (to hunt mushrooms or otherwise). But it's such a beautiful book - two little volumes, printed in, I think, the 1920s. Full of color plates that were made from watercolor paintings of the mushrooms, some quite colorful. I got the book because when the mycologist at the school where I did my grad work retired, he gave away a lot of his books. (An aside: my slightly jerkish labmate-at-the-time heard about it first and didn't tell anyone else - even though the prof had asked him to pass on the news - until he had gone down and pulled out all the immediately-useful books and the ones that looked like ones he could sell). But I still got the little French mushroom book and I look at it from time to time just because it's so pretty.

I also have bookcases in my bedroom - a big bookcase full of "childhood books" (both books I had saved - like my well-used set of the Chronicles of Narnia - and also books I had read as library books but then tracked down because I wanted to re-read them as an adult - like "The 101 Dalmations" [which is VERY different in some ways from the Disney movie] and "No Flying in the House" [which I searched for FOR YEARS and was overjoyed to finally find in a used book shop].) I also have two smaller bookcases with mainly spiritual/religious/ethics books on them, and also a few novels interspersed (again: my filing system breaks down periodically).

Finally - I have a sewing room with shelves; those house my quilting books and magazines and my knitting books and crochet books and other craft books.

It was actually good the second bookcase didn't fit in the living room; I can put it in here - my knitting magazines are beginning to overflow their current housing. (And I don't get rid of "pattern magazines" either - I figure there will be something I want to make someday, or something I want to adapt). I think what I'm going to do though is put all my quilt books together on the new shelf (right now they're mixed in with the other craft books) and use the newly-emptied spaces to hold the magazines.

I suppose to some of you this all sounds a bit Collier Brothers. And really, looking at it coldly, maybe it does. (I do get rid of some things: I don't keep "magazine-magazines" and I have given away books I didn't care for. In fact - I have a big box of "meh" books that I keep saving for the library's used book sale and should take down there some time).

The last apartment I lived in - when I had probably only 2/3 of the books I have now - when an inspector for HUD came through (it's a long story but all the apartments in town have to be inspected by HUD; it has something to do with some of the people who live there getting assistance. But HUD can inspect ANY apartment, not just the ones they're subsidizing). She didn't like what she saw, all the books (but they all were on shelves! That's what gets me - they were all neatly arranged) and she claimed they represented a "fire hazard." The manager of the complex recommended I rent a storage unit for some of the books (and, of course - they also rented storage units on the side).

That was actually what propelled me to go looking for a house of my own to buy - I was so fed up with the silly "rules" that came down new every year. And I was fed up that my upstairs neighbors smoked, threw their still-burning cigarette buts into my potted plants on my patio, and yet, my books were a "fire hazard."

I tend to feel like, by offending me that way, the rental company lost out: I was a quiet tenant. I never complained about anything. I didn't break stuff. I ALWAYS paid my rent on time (actually, usually a day or so early). I didn't mess up the apartment, I didn't do anything that attracted bugs. I just had a lot of books.

Three characters meme

This is to keep me from totally bugging out as I grade papers...

I've seen this lots of places - at Sheila, and Pale Page, and now Nightfly's. So I'm gonna do it. I must warn you, I mainly read mystery novels these days (all my poor overtaxed brain can take), so my choices won't be as literary and intellectual as some

Three characters (at least) you wish were real so you could meet them:

1. Albert Campion. Is he really that "ineffectual" looking? What's his real name, and why did he adopt "Campion" as his nom de guerre? Besides, he's a young-ish, single (at least in the novels I've read) male detective, and that interests me. (And if he really looked anything like Peter Davison, who portrayed him for the BBC, that would be a plus).

2. Nero Wolfe. I like to think he'd appreciate my intellect (and perhaps my legs as well; several times it's reported he positioned a young female witness who was talking to him so that he could see her legs). He is a "difficult" person - in fact, many women repulse him, because they are very utilitarian or they are of a somewhat hysterical bent. I like to think I'd be that rare woman who could keep up with him conversationally and intellectually. (And I don't use "contact" as a verb. And I know the difference between "infer" and "imply.")

3. Merriman Lyon, from the Dark is Rising sequence. He's fascinating - it's implied that he was actually Merlin, somehow kept alive and safe, all these years. He also seems like a very gentle person - with people who are fundamentally good and moral - but also very strong and tough when good people are threatened.

4. Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows. Oh, I think he'd probably annoy me after a while, but I think it would be fun to meet him.

5. Claudius from I, Claudius. Yeah, it's an odd choice, I know. But ancient Rome fascinates me and also the idea that this guy was such an "outsider" (he stuttered, and apparently had something like epilepsy...). Yes, I know Emperor Claudius was a real person but I'm assuming the fictionalized version is fictional enough to count.


Three characters you'd like to be:

1. Precious Ramotswe, from the Ladies' Detective Agency series. She's wise, she's more than ordinarily perceptive. She also seems to have a good humor and a sort of a quiet way of accepting the things that happen in life. She does not seem to be a worrier and that appeals to me.

2. Elizabeth Bennett. Oh, hell, it would just be FUN. You know it would.

3. Lucy from the Narnia books. What an amazing thing...to walk through a wardrobe and be in a different world. And yet, one that plays by rules not unlike (and perhaps, in some respects, better) than our own. And I'd love to meet the various talking animals. And the description of Lucy and Susan watching Aslan's resurrection is one of the more touching scenes I've read in a book (as either a child or an adult).

4. While we're on the subject of childhood books: Sam from "My Side of the Mountain." I read that book obsessively as a child - I loved the back-to-the-land idea, the thought of being totally self-sufficient. And the thought of being ALONE, without having to deal with any other people. I realized (even as a child) that it was basically an impossible dream - the world I lived in was even then too dangerous for a girl to go out on her own and live in the woods. And besides - running off with just a flint and steel and a pocketknife? I'd miss my books too much. And comfortable bedding. And indoor plumbing.

Three characters who frightened you:

1. I'm going to be unoriginal here and list Cathy from East of Eden. But...she IS scary...as close to a soulless character I remember reading in literature.

2. The Dementors, from Harry Potter. Something that can suck away your soul....ugh. It makes me feel cold just thinking of them.

3. Gollum, from The Hobbit, and later, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gollum scared me when I read "The Hobbit" as a child; I think he is even scarier after you learn his origins. I think the whole "soul fallen from grace" (or perhaps rather more, "Soul that voluntarily gave up grace") thing tends to scare me..other characters who were unpleasant but made less of an impression fit this mold.

4. Michael Valentine Smith from Stranger in a Strange Land. Yes, he scared me - there was something MISSING there - something not-right, by earthly standards. And besides - someone who could vaporize you with just an odd thought? That's creepy. I know lots of people regard Stranger in a Strange Land as a real masterpiece but I frankly found it kind of cynical and depressing.

Childhood books

Sheila has a post up about children's books that influenced you.

Some of mine are totally predictable, but some are less known.

1. The Chronicles of Narnia. I first got "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" as part of a set of books - it was five books, called something like "Classics of Children's Literature." Black and green bindings. Also had Mary Poppins, and Wrinkle in Time, and Little Women, and one other...some horse novel, I think. (I never cared for "horse novels" like Black Beauty when I was a kid).

Oh, wait. National Velvet. I don't think I ever actually read that. Part of it was that horses scared me a little (and still do). They're so BIG. And they can break your foot by stepping on it without their even knowing.

But back to Narnia - later on, a relative of mine (I think he was a second cousin) passed his entire set on to me, with a series of letters describing each book. (The idea was: I was supposed to read them in order. I wasn't allowed to open the next book until I had read the previous one. The letters were to pique my interest for the next book.)

Well, I TORE through the books. Loved them immensely. I loved the language. I loved the talking animals, that they could be grave and dignified, that they weren't just cartoons. (I loved Reepicheep, and I cried when he set off to find "the Utter East" in his little coracle. And like Lucy, I would have been horribly tempted to pick him up and hug him at times.)

I still re-read them from time to time. I know, they have their detractors (Philip Pullman is one), but I love them. I don't see them as being misogynistic (a common charge) at all - basically it is a chivalrous world with slightly different rules from our own, that's how I always justified it, when I needed to.

2. The Moomintroll books. I loved these for the characters. Tove Jansson (the author) apparently patterned them after people she knew. What I loved is that the characters were IMPERFECT. They had flaws. They sniped at each other sometimes.

My favorites - and the one I have sort of adopted as a bit of a "totem animal" (though without the religious significance) were the fillyjonks. They were a group (species?) of tall thin creatures. Only females seemed to show up in the books. They were flighty and houseproud and worried and tended to "borrow trouble." And I loved that these books had a character that I felt UNDERSTOOD me. (one of my father's classic admonitions to me as a child was to tell me not to "borrow trouble.")

And besides, sometimes the books are very droll. And they have this great otherworldly quality to them.

3. My Side of the Mountain. Jean George. This is the story of Sam, who ran away from home (with his parents' blessing!) to go and live in the woods in upstate New York. He finds a hollowed-out tree and makes a home in it, he tames a falcon to hunt for him, he makes salt from walnut twigs (funny how I remember that all these years later). It read like a how-to manual of self-reliant living.

I loved it.

I wanted to run away and live in the woods and catch my own dinner and endure storms and all of that. I wanted that solitude and that sort of meaningful work - where you had to keep your own self alive.

But even at eight or so, I knew that was a fantasy.

I still read "back to the land" type books to this day (both novels and the how-to manuals that you can buy out of the back of places like Mother Earth News). They make for great fantasy reading. But I know, as soon as I ran out of toilet paper, I'd be coming back out of the wilderness.

4. No Flying in the House. Betty Brock. This was the first "chapter book" I remember reading at school - it was in first grade, it was during "free read" time (do schools still do that?). It was from the classroom's "library" of books.

It was about an orphaned girl, Annabel, and the fairy-guardian who watched over her - Gloria, who took on the shape of a dog.

I must not have read the whole book though - or I forgot the second half. For years I remembered it as ending very hauntingly. Annabel had done something that had mortally offended Gloria - maybe it was that she revealed she was a fairy to someone? And Gloria sat down in the rich lady's curio cabinet and WILLED herself into a tiny golden statue.

So sad. And it seemed like a perfect ending to the book - very open, very haunting.

Well, years later when I tracked down a copy at the used bookstore, I found out there was a whole other half to the book - Annabel found her parents again (she was actually only half-fairy; her father was human). There was a conventionally happy ending - with the reunion, and Gloria going on a "world tour" to show off the tricks she knew, that sort of thing.

You know? I like the way it ended when I read it as a child better. (I really do wonder if the ending in the newer version I found was a later addition; I so strongly remember Gloria turning herself into a statue and that being that from my childhood reading).

5. This isn't a fiction book, but it was one that affected me a lot (and, ha ha, I found the title again): Steven Caney's Kids' America.

I had this book out from the library All. The. Time. (I remember it as having come out about the Bicentennial, but the Amazon page says 1978...)

It was basically a big compendium of STUFF - how to make things, recipes, games. I remember it had a recipe for corn dogs and how to make mobcaps and clowning and handwriting analysis and all kinds of crazy stuff. It was basically a book that celebrated American history and American culture by showing kids how to make stuff that related to topics.

I had a "magpie brain" even as a child - where I was interested in tons and tons of things and I could get interested in new stuff easily, and this book totally fed that interest.

So there's my five. There were a lot of other books that were important to me as a child:

The Beatrix Potter books. Part of the reason I loved these was that the library in my town had the little Frederick Warne library-bound editions - tiny green hardback books, which all lined up in a row on the shelf and looked so appealing to me. I think we checked these out and read them multiple times, first when I was of the appropriate age, and then when my brother was.

The Bill Peet books. These were big picture books, mostly about animals. He had one about a capybara, I remember, which made me curious about them. And he had a couple about mythical animals - a dragon and a griffon. (I loved mythical beasts when I was a kid). I think I read all of these multiple times as a child (again, these were mostly library-books).

It's funny, you know? When I think about the Beatrix Potter and the Bill Peet books now, I can picture the children's room (the way it used to be, before they renovated and "modernized" the poor old library) of the library in my town. I remember the funny reading-benches, which had the tops set at about a 45 degree angle, so you could sit and read and prop your book on the lip at the bottom of the table, and it would be at an ideal angle for reading. And I remember the "Story Hour" that they used to have - in the cold tiled basement of the library! (But it was still fun; we had such a wonderful children's librarian that it didn't matter that we were relegated to the basement for Story Hour.)

I also remember reading "She was Nice to Mice" (by Ally Sheedy, no less!). And the Daniel Pinkwater books which were bizarre and wonderful.

Any my mom checked out (from the adult section) Edward Gorey's Amphigorey. (My mom has a bizarre sense of humor; she loved his "Bug Story" where the red bugs and green bugs and blue bugs are invaded by a big black bug that terrorized them, until they all conspired together to drop a shoe or something on the big black bug. Hahahaha. I can still picture the bugs at the end of the story, all dancing around the corpse of the big black bug.)

I remember as a child, summer afternoons - either when it rained, or when it was too hot to go out - going into the living room with my big big stack of library books, and lying on the couch (which I was not allowed to do otherwise) and READING. And just having the time and freedom to read for hours on end. It was great.