apropos of anything

There’s been so much going on in the world lately, and it’s all a jumble of words in my head, flashes of pictures in an order that makes sense only to me and could never translate onto a blog. It’s partly why I haven’t posted of late. The other part is that the jumble of words is also symptomatic of the disorganization that’s pervading my life at the moment. I have papers and books and yarn, but none of it is where it belongs. I need to tidy up if I’m going to get back on track.

In the meantime, I’m going to succumb to writer’s block and fill out the latest meme I’ve seen floating ’round the Internet. As usual, religious books are exempt because it’s not a fair fight.

1) Name five of your favourite books. It’s always hard to narrow them down, but here goes.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My senior AP English teacher lent me this book the weekend before our first semester finals. I was obsessive about studying for finals; my parents wanted to see perfect scores on our report cards, and that included the semester final grade that showed up right next to the semester grade. I thought I could read a few chapters of the book as a periodic study break. It would have been a perfectly reasonable plan if only I hadn’t loved the book from the very first sentence. Eventually I was studying during my infrequent reading breaks.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
The red-headed orphan who unexpectedly finds herself installed at Green Gables remains one of my favorite literary characters. She’s the one I picked to have lunch with in my Governor’s Honors application essay. Anne Shirley is not perfect, unlike the sickeningly idyllic Nancy Drew, but that’s what makes her a great character.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“Thank you for my children, Arthur.”

That line gets me every time. The whole book gets me every time. It’s such a good story, and it’s written so beautifully. “Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books you can read over and over again, each time finding something new to make you love it even more than you already did.

The High King by Lloyd Alexander
I was introduced to the Prydain Chronicles while I was still finishing up the Chronicles of Narnia, and I wasn’t interested in beginning another fantasy series where the characters might overlap personalities or the plots might overlap thematically. Of course, I didn’t know at the time the Narnia books were a giant Christian parable, although I’d begun to be a little suspicious as I was reading The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle.

In any case, read The Book of Three I finally did, only to discover it was as like the Narnia books as wine is to water. Both series have epic stories, but the difference is in the characters. (Also, now that I am older, the comforting lack of skull-shattering religious allegory.) Taran and Eilonwy live for me far more than any of the Pevensie children. I relate to them more. It helps that Alexander keeps essentially the same set of characters throughout his chronicles while Lewis cycles them out like they’re regulars on a Law and Order series.

Of all five books, The High King is the one that most resonated with me, that got into my head and wouldn’t get out. I think I could still quote lines even though I haven’t read it in years.

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
My introduction to Salinger. After this I read Nine Stories and then Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and after that, Catcher in the Rye. I did it backwards. I gotta say, I like the Glass family better than Holden, which doesn’t mean that I don’t like Holden, just that I like Seymour and company more.

2) What was the last book you bought?

There were three of them, actually, since I was scanning the Borders buy-two-get-one-free table and actually found three books I was interested in and hadn’t already read. I often fall victim to that table, so I’ve adopted a new policy of reading the first chapter in any book I’m considering, and if the first chapter doesn’t hook me enough to make me want to read the entire thing right there in the store, I’m not allowed to buy the book. I used to feel guilty about reading books in bookstores — after all, it’s not a library, and I know I don’t want to buy a book whose spine has been broken and whose pages have been smudged by grubby hands — but I’ve since decided it’s okay since my intentions are good. Also, I take good care of the book as I’m reading it, so there are no cracked spines or dog-eared pages on my account.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
I’m reading this one now, along with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I’m surprised by how much I like it. Vowell relates the history of various presidential assassinations (I’m only through Lincoln as of now) with humor and compassion, sometimes drawing parallels between events then and events now. It’s likely I would be less appreciative of the book if I were Republican, as Vowell makes no secret of her politics, but luckily for me, I’m a Democrat.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Not because of Capote since I’ve never been the kind of person that reads a book because of a movie, but because I’ve wanted to read it since I learned Capote and Harper Lee were such good buddies. I’m not even entirely sure I want to see the movie.

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was good, if a bit descriptive. I like the way Chabon writes, too, and I’ve been trying to read more good writing lately.

3) What was the last book you read?

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud
I liked The Amulet of Samarkand, but I think I love The Golem’s Eye. I’m not sure why. It may have to do with how much more tolerable I found Nathaniel this go-around. In Amulet, he was kind of whiny and raging, while here he’s less so despite being in a position where it’s slightly more warranted. Golem knows more about the themes it’s trying to convey, or at least is better at conveying them, possibly because it’s not facing the unenviable task of setting up a trilogy.

4) List five books that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).

The Holy Quran
Okay, so I lied. Here it is. But making up a list of meaningful books and omitting the Quran is like making chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips: a mere shadow of the cookie (or list) it’s supposed to be.

Many people think of the Quran purely from a religious perspective, as a collection of rules and parables, a book of what to and not to do. It’s that and so much more. In the Quran, I find guidance and support, warnings galore, strength and wisdom. “On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear,” says the Quran, and that’s what I need to hear to know that I can indeed do this, whatever “this” may be.

In the Quran, I find a message I can believe. I find faith. And in the Quran, I find poetry.

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth know all things. [24:35]

As with all religious books, the Quran means more to those of us who believe in its message. To me it means very much indeed.

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
This was my very first novel. I read it over and over again until the cover started to fall off and my mother had to put it back together with masking tape. I think I like the later Little House books more (there’s nothing better than Laura telling Almanzo whether she’ll marry him depends on the ring he offers her), but I have a special fondness for the one that got me into the series in the first place.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
The funny thing about this book is that I avoided it for years. Almost everyone I knew had read it, and I was not going to be like everyone, especially since if everybody read it, that meant it probably wasn’t good anyway. I don’t remember why I finally read it in high school, but I do remember the copy I had gotten from the library was missing the last few chapters. It had the page where Anne is standing in the door of the farmhouse holding narcissi and Matthew falls… and then nothing. Waiting to find out what happened next was agonizing, especially because I always have to know what happens next, even if I hate the book/show/movie itself. It’s much worse when you love the characters, like I did (and do) Anne and Matthew and Marilla.

I took to haunting the library for the sequels, which never appeared in the order I needed them to, until finally I just gave up and read Anne’s House of Dreams before the elusive Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars. I had problems obtaining Anne of the Island, so many that I asked one of my middle school friends if she’d check it out of her school library for me. In exchange, I’d get Gone With the Wind for her from my high school library.

The only copy of GWTW my school had had a cover whose photo was a still shot of the scandalous Rhett/Scarlett scene from the movie version, with Vivien Leigh in Clark Gable’s arms, her red dress just about falling off in places it most certainly shouldn’t, so I put the book into a paper bag as though it were contraband whiskey and took it with me to Islamic school at the mosque on Friday. I was too young to drive, and the mosque was the one place we were both guaranteed to be.

We met up to make the switch, only she’d forgotten to get Anne of the Island for me. I gave her GWTW anyway, and she said bring me my book the next week. On Sunday, she returned GWTW to me because her father had seen the cover and didn’t approve of her reading “those kinds of books,” and that was the end of our deal. I didn’t actually read Anne of the Island until I bought myself the entire set, figuring I checked the available ones out of the library so much I might as well own them.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
Like and equal are not the same. Love is more powerful than evil. Being different is a good thing.

This is a book whose first line is, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

I wanted a Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit of my very own, but I think I know now what they meant when they said there were some things we have to do by ourselves.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
I bought this book to give myself a distraction, possibly a happy distraction, so I wouldn’t pay quite as much attention to how tumultuously sad I was at the time. It was forty percent off at Barnes and Noble (the one on Peachtree right before the Buckhead bar district that I used to go to in college because it was (at the time) the closest bookstore to Tech, that I don’t go to now because it’s no longer in my line of activity but that I still love because it takes me back to being in college), it was in hardcover, and it had been positively featured in an articled I’d read recently. This was, I should mention, back before Harry Potter took the States by storm.

Dan and I went to the Caribou Coffee on the corner of 10th and Piedmont (the intersection made infamous in an episode of ER for being a drug corner although I think they meant the corner of Juniper and Pine because I actually have seen drugs there, whereas 10th and Piedmont is just flamboyantly gay) to study theory, except that I couldn’t put down Harry Potter, and Dan had to give me A Lecture On My Priorities. But y’all, I loathe computing theory.

I am personally responsible for addicting a dozen people, none of whom had previously heard of the book, by either raving about it or giving them a copy of it, whether they appreciated it or not. (Somebody who shall remain nameless dismissed it as a children’s book she’d never read or like. She brought it out one night when she was suffering from insomnia, only to sit up until dawn reading it.)

The Harry Potter series I love because they are good books, but this particular one is special because it brought me brightness at a time when I dearly needed it.

5) Name three books you’ve been dying to read but just haven’t gotten around to it.

The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong
I’m holding this book hostage as incentive to get me through The History of God, which is long and cumbersome even if it is also incredibly interesting. I keep getting distracted when I make an attempt to plow through the latter as it reads like a text I’d be assigned in a history course, so I’m not allowed to read the less-scholarly Battle until I’ve finished its predecessor. I’m really curious as to how reading Battle will affect my perspective on the rising religious fundemantalism in the world today.

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
I loved The Namesake for its writing and its story and the way it made me think about changes and sacrifices and fitting in. I’ve heard Maladies leaves Namesake in the dust, so I have to read this book. I put it on the bookshelf in a fit of cleaning one day, and now I tend to forget that I have it since usually the only books on the bookshelf are the ones I’ve finished reading.

Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud
The last book in the Bartimaeus trilogy, but it’s not out in paperback yet, and I can’t buy the hardback version because that will ruin my set. Having a matching set is very important to me. Yes, I am a little obsessive. It’s okay, though. I’m a patient obsessive.

Whew. That’s a long post, both in terms of content and how much time it took me to do. And now, who do I tag? Hmm… Aisha, of course, because of all the times she’s tagged me, Dan, Rashaad, and Alicia, if she’s reading this post because I know she has something to say on the subject.