full circle

I rarely do memes. In fact, probably never. But Toni tagged me for this book meme, which involves writing fifteen things about books. Talk about books? How can I resist?

So here goes.

1) I wasn't one of those precocious learn-to-read-at-age-three kids. In fact, my mom loves to tell the story of how, the summer before I started first grade, I was pouting because she was settled on the couch reading a book rather than playing with me as was her civic duty. I declared then an earnest six year old's vow that "When I learn to read, I'll only read when I have to, like signs and stuff, and never any other time!" Well, um. That winter I learned to read. And never stopped.

2) I feel somehow incomplete when I’m not in the middle of a book. There's a part of my brain always wanting to be enmeshed in story and character, anticipating what's going to happen next and mulling over what's come thus far. When I was a young teenager, I used to walk down the Manhattan sidewalks reading books. People would marvel at my ability to dodge poles and fire hydrants and stray dogs as I went. I had good peripheral vision, what can I say? I also used to bring a book to the movies because, after all, you sit there for several minutes before the lights go down and the film starts. Why not read? In fifth grade, I used to slip a book into my desk and read while the teacher wasn't looking.

3) A shameful confession: if a book is getting slow or going in an irritating or frustrating direction, I'll flip ahead to the end. Sometimes when I do that, I'm satisfied that I won't be disappointed and I go back to where I left off. Sometimes, though, I read enough to feel like I got the book. I read the first half, the last chapter, and I can guess the in-between parts. And then I put the book down. Have I read it? Yes and no. Do I feel guilty? Not really. An author has to work hard these days to earn my undivided attention.

4) I am seldom blown away by a book these days, but I loved Aimee Bender's An Invisible Sign of My Own, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and Julia Glass' Three Junes, to name a few recent books. I also really liked The Time Traveler's Wife, but it hasn't aged as well in my memory.

5) There was a time, somewhere around junior high school, when I read a number of Shakespeare's plays. Comedies, mostly. Sitting on my bed after school, turning the onionskin-thin pages of my mom's Shakespeare anthology. The language was tough, but the cadences enchanted and I became deeply involved in the stories, seeing them play out in my mind's eye.

6) The single biggest influence on my writing was the French author Colette. I became enchanted with her books, god, maybe in college? Maybe earlier. I loved her voluptuous imagery, her command of the specific detail that illuminates the scene, her thoughtful yet emotional characterizations, and the immersion in that time and place. Her time and place. Her mind. I fell in love with her along with her words. I try for such specificity, such emotional acuity, such sensual language in my own work.

7) Lest you think from the previous paragraphs that I'm a literary snob who only reads classics and high lit'rature, I also love genre fiction. SF/F, mystery, and even, yes, romance. No westerns, though. It does get harder to read genre fiction after returning to fiction writing myself. I'm just too damned aware of the prose and shape of the work. Some writers still delight me – Lois McMaster Bujold in SF, Diana Wynne Jones in (young adult) fantasy, Judith Ivory and Jennifer Crusie in romance, and recently I've enjoyed Harlan Coben in mysteries (albeit with some quibbles), but it's getting harder for me to dive into competently written journeyman novels the way I used to. This makes me sad. What do I do to satisfy my escapist fiction jones?

8) I don't get chick lit. Sorry.

9) From age five to twelve, I spent the summers with my mother and brother in the southern Berkshires. We would make a weekly trek into Great Barrington, and one crucial stop was the library in a converted brick church. I still remember the bell chiming the hour, the damp, musty but somehow comforting smell of the basement where they kept their children's books, and the piles of hardback copies of Lad, a Dog, The Black Stallion, Misty of Chincoteague, Five Children and It, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond that I'd carry as cherished prizes as we walked back to the car along the sun-dappled sidewalk.

10) I still love the smell of library books. Not too good at the returning-them-on-time part, though.

11) When Damian was three months old, I began reading to him. I'd put him on the bed, pick up The Penguin Book of Nonsense Verse and read him Jabberwocky. I figured the most important part was simply the cadence of my voice. And I was amusing myself during those sometimes-endless days alone with an infant. Funny thing, he loves making up nonsense words these days. Did Jabberwocky implant permanently in his tiny baby brain?

12) I used to do what Toni described, read under the covers with a flashlight. I don't know who I thought I was fooling. My mom knew, of course. I still stay up way too late reading if I'm hooked on a novel. Nowadays the price I pay is worse than falling asleep at my desk in math class, though.

13) I remember when I was a kid, looking through my father's old Golden Age science fiction novels. Reading them, which was sometimes difficult, since the pages were yellowed and brittle. Thinking how very old they must be to be that fragile. Now the paperbacks I bought as a teen are yellowed and brittle. Please tell me paper is aging faster these days.

14) My mother has classier taste in fiction than I do, or rather, more unerringly classy taste. I love sharing novels with her, and I now have a long list of books to read from her descriptions of them.

15) I never understood why my father would come home with stacks of books from the bookstore when he already had stacks of books to read on his nightstand. Now I do. It's like buying yourself another chance at a quiet kind of joy.

That was fun.

I tag Tiny Coconut, my mom, and Eliza.