Book Meme

Okay, I told Rach that I wanted to think about this carefully before I posted my response to the book meme she tagged me with the other day. But I've had a nasty little sore throat which has now been diagnosed as a nasty little sinus infection after a second trip to the doctor's office. So I'm a little fuzzy right now due to the $60 worth of prescriptions running through my system. Some of this may not make any sense at all to anyone else, but in my hazy state of mind, it makes perfect sense to me. Here goes:

Book Meme

1. Total Number of Books I've Owned - No way to tell. My parents were both avid readers, my mother taught language arts for 38 years, they read to my sister and me since before we knew what books were and even long after we were able to read to ourselves. I have no idea how many books I've owned through the years, but the topics have covered everything from Winnie the Pooh battling heffalumps to Carl Sagan explaining the cosmos.

2. Last Book I Bought - What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage. It was recommended to me by my friend Jennifer. The author recently spoke at the college near here, but I missed it. Jen said this book had her laughing out loud, so I decided to try it out. I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but so far, so good. It's about a woman who is HIV positive and leaves Atlanta to stay with her sister in Michigan for the summer before heading to California to build a new life for herself. There are some heavy issues addressed in the book, but Cleage's style is straightforward and sassy. I've since learned that Cleage is an accomplished playwright. I'm sure I'll read more of her stuff after I've finished this book.

3. Last Book I Read - Girls' Night In. A book of short stories by several women who are best known for their contributions to genre dubbed chick lit. Some stories were really good, some were not so good. I just read the reviews for the book on Amazon and it seems most people agree with me. Even though some of the stories were less than stellar, it was a great book to read while having to stay in bed and fight an infection. Easy, fun reading, not thought-provoking, no guilty feelings if you fall asleep in the middle of a page. Or set it aside for a few days.

The book I finished a few days before that was much better all the way through. Stephen King's On Writing. I had wanted to read it when it came out, but never got to it. I'm starting a writing workshop tomorrow and they gave us a copy of the book to read. So my usually stress-inducing procrastination finally paid off - I got a free book! In the first part of the book, King describes how he came to be a writer - starting with plagiarising movies he loved and selling transcripts of them at school, to how he came to write many of his most popular novels, like Carrie. The second part of the book is his advice to beginning writers - where to write, how long to write, what tools you need, what NOT to do, how to get published, etc. He also discusses his near-fatal accident a few years ago and how his writing was affected by it. There is some great stuff in this book, and I used up a highlighter marking my favorite passages.

Sidebar - One of the books I'm looking forward to reading this summer is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I've wanted to read it since it was a key prop in the movie Serendipity (I heart John Cusack!), and one of my students gave it to me as a going away present. I had seen her reading another of his books (in Spanish) and asked her about the author since his name sounded familiar. She told me he was one of her favorites. This student is originally from Brazil and likes to act as though she doesn't understand English as well as she does. But I was on to her - she's a lot smarter and more capable than she thinks. I was so touched that she gave it to me, and I can't wait to read it.

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me - This is the hard one. Books hold special meaning to me for different reasons - nostalgia, what was going on in my life when I read it, who gave it to me, what it was about, the author is a favorite, etc. So this list is in no way a Top 5 list. These aren't necessarily my five favorite books ever, the five books I would take to a deserted island, or even five really great, important books. They simply bring a smile to my face for whatever reason, and happened to come to mind when thinking about this question. I'm sure if I think about this question again next week, I'll have five different books to list.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne - A childhood favorite that I have made sure to pass on to my own son. Pooh and his friends are great teachers - patience, thoughtfulness, ingenuity, kindness, friendship, loyalty, overcoming fear (those frightful heffalumps and woozles), even anger management (Rabbit offers terrific examples of what not to do in so many situations). Plus, it's just fun to read. The language is melodic and engaging. I love that silly old bear.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - I know it seems like an obvious choice, great Southern classic and all that, but I really do love this book. It was one of two required books in the 11th grade that I actually read. (Yes, I am an English teacher who did not always read everything she was supposed to read in school. There. I said it. The weight has been lifted.) I even named a dog I used to own Scout, because she followed our older dog around like Scout followed Jem. I also love the movie. Gregory Peck/Atticus Finch = greatest dad ever. It's powerful, thought-provoking, and multi-layered, yet easy to read. A real page-turner.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - Another obvious choice, I know, but this was the other required book I read in the 11th grade. Again - powerful, thought-provoking, and multi-layered. How could anyone not love this book?! Plus, Mockingbird and Huck Finn both characterize a South I know very well, having been born and bred here. Thankfully, much has changed since the times represented in these books. Unfortunately, some things haven't changed. But I do love reading books that represent my heritage, warts and all.

For the last two books, I'm going to have to cheat and combine books. I simply can't choose between them.

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals and Ryan White: My Own Story by Ryan White - two books that tell real stories of teenagers overcoming prejudice in order to get an education. Melba Beals was one of the Little Rock Nine who had to be escorted to school by the National Guard. Before reading this book, the story of Central High School being integrated was just a historical fact to me. I had no idea what really happened on a daily basis to those nine kids who just wanted to go to a good school. I cannot imagine putting up with the humiliation and torture they faced every single day. Not just from white students, but from the school's administration, many of the white adults in the town, the government. Even part of the black community in the town was against them. The courage these kids and their families had is truly inspiring.

Equally inspiring is the story of Ryan White, the teenager who became HIV positive because of a blood transfusion. This was back in the early days of AIDS when few facts were known, but fear was rampant. Ryan had to fight to go to school because other students and their parents didn't want Ryan around in case he might pass the disease on to them. Ryan was about a year younger than me, so I remember him and this time period well. But, like the Little Rock Nine, it was just a news story, far removed from anything I knew personally. Hearing what happened to him in his own words made me remember those days. I thought about what might have happened if he had gone to my school. I'd like to think we would have welcomed him as one school eventually did. But knowing my small hometown, I'm afraid we might not have been so enlightened. By the end of the book, I was crying for the struggles he faced and the life he never got to live.

Watchers by Dean Koontz and Christine by Stephen King - two page-turners that introduced me to a different genre that I still love to this day. The horror/thriller novel is a favorite of mine because of these two authors. I honestly can't remember if Watchers was the first Koontz book I read, but it was at least one of the first, and it's still my favorite of his books. A loner, a super-smart dog, genetic engineering, and a scary monster. I even recommended it to my dad. King's Pet Sematary was far scarier to me, but I read Christine first. It scared the hell out of me, especially since I read it when I was about 15, with the lights off except for one little lamp, on a rainy, stormy night in the boondocks, aka my hometown (far away from police and hospitals in case the car jumped out of the pages of the book and into my room so it could run me over and kill me directly instead of by giving me a heart attack simply reading about it), with wicked shadows falling on the ground outside my window. Is there any better way to read King's books?

Some honorable mentions - A Separate Peace by John Knowles - the only required book I remember reading in the 10th grade; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - I did do the required reading in college (okay, except for history courses) and I loved this book, even though I couldn't articulate what a catch-22 was for the exam; The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger - amazingly, this was not required for any course in high school or college that I remember, but when you hear a book referenced on TV and in the movies your entire life, you get to a point where you just have to read it (and I'm so glad I did); and, finally, the Sweet Valley High books by Francine Pascal - the defining books of my adolescence, my friends and I would take turns buying them and passing them around. The mother of chick lit, as far as I'm concerned.

5. Tag Five People and Have Them Do This on Their Blog - this is a problem, too. I don't know five people who have blogs. Rach is the one who tagged me for this, otherwise I might send it to her. She also tagged Brian, so I won't tag him twice. I think I will tag one of my students from my student teaching. Chris is a smart kid, who I'm sure reads a lot on his own, even though he didn't like reading what I assigned. (I guess I can't blame him, since I've already confessed I was the same way in school.) I'd like to see what he does with this meme. I think I'll also tag Ms. Frazzled, a fellow student teacher who has introduced me to lots of other great teaching-oriented blogs via her links list. She also has a great sense of humor. And here's a tag for MaraJade, another Star Wars enthusiast. I bet she has some interesting sci-fi books on her list. So I'm a little short of the five people I'm supposed to tag, but the ones I've listed will surely make up in quality what I'm lacking in quantity.

Thanks again, Rach, for tagging me. You made me think about books I haven't read in ages, as well as books I'm hoping to read soon.